Good RAID cards?

[budec]

I'm building a home data server. I play on sitting 4 1TB drives in. I'll probably do something like 1+0 or 0+1 (?) or RAID 5.

In the past I've used 3ware cards, but the problem I have with them, they are very finicky and complain about degraded array, etc (this always has happened with 5 different workstation/servers) They also have very shoddy connectors.

The Promise cards seem to be really bad (performance wise).

I was thinking of going with a Adpetc. There SCSI cards have been really good in my experience and the RAID cards at work are awesome. The only problem is they are pricey.

Thoughts?

 

[Blue Fox]

You want high performance? Go with Areca. If you are doing a RAID level without parity however, don't bother buying a RAID card (unless your board doesn't have it integrated).

 

[Dangman]

If you don't mind buying used hardware with little or no warranty, you could buy a Dell Perc 5/i card off eBay for ~$125 or so plus two of these SFF-8484 to 4 x SATA Cables for ~$25. Thus, you get 8 ports and a true hardware RAID controller for around ~$150 or so. Add a battery backup unit for ~$50 and you're set in case of power outages. Not a bad deal considering that a new true PCI-E hardware RAID controller is around $300 (Areca ARC-1210) for 4 ports. But those Dell Perc 5/i cards are finicky about motherboards. It will take up PCI-E x16 slot if you don't have a PCI-E x8 slot.

Read these threads for more info:
Dell Perc 5/i RAID Card: Tips and Benchmarks
Finally went to a Hardware Raid5 controller...
Dell Perc 5/i - Mainboard Compatibility List
Solution for Dell Perc 5/i for Intel Chipsets
Add 8 device SAS/SATA 256MB BBU Enterprise class RAID card to your rig for about $100 w/ PERC 5i (LSI 8480E OEMed to Dell)