Hardware RAID Solution? (Adaptec RAID 5805)

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robbob4

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I am currently working on my third custom build computer on my own, a water cooled one this time, and I need some help deciding on a raid controller since what I originally picked did not turn out so well. I am also not certain if I should install Windows 7 on to a raid0 ssd array or a raid0 hdd array.

I originally bought the Rosewill RC-218 controller which is a pcie controller that has 4 internal SATA2 plugs but no bios you can configure the drives with. I am forced to software raid with this controller. In addition to this, I can not enable both the motherboard's raid controller and have any drives on the RC-218 without running out of space on my BIOS' rom.

I will try to RMA or sell this one but first I need to pick out a new controller. Just to give everyone an idea what I am trying to shoot for though, I have two Corsair P128 SSDs from my old system, two Corsair F120 SSDs new that I want to focus on IOPS and two Samsung HD103SJ 1TB HDDs new for storage and maybe my OS. Sadly one of the new Samsung HD103SJs and one of the new Corsair F120 SSDs I have to RMA (2/4 of the new drives are defective -- such a crappy ratio...) The P128s are from my old system and I planned on selling them but I may use them for Windows 7 depending on what you guys suggest. I understand no matter what I will want to throw my page file and temporary files on to my HDDs though.

On Newegg I started looking for one of the best SAS controllers since I learned that SAS is backwards compatible with SATA and I found the Adaptec 2244100-R (Adaptec RAID 5805) which is pciex8, has 2 internal SAS controllers, has 512 memory and a 1.2ghz dual core processor. I want to know if I am going to even utilize even half of this beast because otherwise I can look for a lower end model that doesn't cost me $518 lol. I also looked up the compatibility chart and I only see the Corsair F120 listed out of the three but I will try calling monday to see. They only list the F1 series spinpoints for example for samsung; it ought to support more than that.

Also, if anyone has any suggestions on how I should raid these drives instead of three raid0 arrays feel free to tell me.


Corsair CC800DW Obsidian 800D Full Tower Case - Steel, ATX, 4x 120mm Fan Ports, 3x 140mm Fans
Corsair Professional Series Gold High Performance 1200-Watt Power Supply
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula - AM3 - AMD 890FX - DDR3 - Republic of Gamers - ATX Motherboard with EK ASUS Crosshair 4 Formula Full Board Cooling Block Kit - Nickel + Acetal
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor with Swiftech Apogee XT Extreme Performance CPU waterblock
XFX ATI Radeon HD5970 2GB DDR5 2DVI/DisplayPort PCI-Express Video Card with EK Radeon HD 5970 VGA Liquid Cooling Block - Acetal+Nickel
CORSAIR DOMINATOR 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model
ASUS Xonar Essence STX Sound Card
2x Corsair Force CSSD-F120GB2-BRKT 2.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
2x Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB SATA2 7200rpm 32MB Hard Drive
LITE-ON Black 12X Blu-ray Burner with Blu-ray 3D feature
Rosewill RC-218 PCI Express x4 (x8 and x16 slot compatible) SATA II 3G Controller Card/ 4 internal SATA with 2 external eSATA
Hardware Labs SR1-360 Radiator
Black Ice SR1 Low Air Flow Optimized - 140 Radiator - Black
2x Swiftech MCP655-B 12 Volt Pump with Bitspower Dual D5 Mod Top Extreme
Swiftech MCRES-MICRO™ Rev. 2 Reservoir
 
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Since you are just using RAID 0, a hardware RAID controller would really be a waste of money. Why don't you just ditch the Rosewill card and use the on-board RAID on your motherboard instead? If you really want a separate controller however, I would get an LSI 9211-8i or something similar instead.
 
@BlueFox -- I don't think you have ever raid0 any SSDs then. My motherboard gets about 6,000 IOPS with one of the old P128s by it self and then caps out at 7,400 IOPS with one of the new F120s by it self. If I raid0 them on the motherboard I get a staggering(sarcastic) 7,400 IOPS and a little improvement on the MB/s. If I hook up a P128 to the rosewill card right now I get about 6,000 IOPS but with the new F120 I get 12,000 IOPS by it self.

Unfortunately a software raid0 is not a true raid and any hard drive benchmark tests understand each drive individually. A long with that there is lower throughput, and my performance is based off of my cpu/memory usage. And considering I will be wanting IOPS while playing games such as ARMA2, my cpu usage will be high and therefore my software raid performance will degrade.

My intention is to raid0 these and get somewhere near double the result; but I need a card that does not cap out like my motherboard is doing. Same kind of issue with my old MSI 790FX-GD70.

@brutalizer I am mostly concerned with performance, not with data corruption or hard drive failure. Since I am a gamer, the most I am really concerned with are my settings for my mouse (which the mouse has its own memory for) and my save files, which are backed up reguarly. Yes it is a pain to format and reinstall but I don't plan on having hard drive failure very often. Also just to point out, Adaptec 2244100-R (Adaptec RAID 5805) can run in write-back mode if it has an optional BBU installed. With BBU pending writes are not lost on a power failure.
 
brutalizer said:
Why dont you ditch your hw raid card and use ZFS instead? Research shows that ZFS does protect your data against data corruption. HW raid does not protect. Read the research here
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1036395000&postcount=49
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Go spam elsewhere. You obviously didn't read a single bit of their post. :rolleyes:
robbob4 said:
@BlueFox -- I don't think you have ever raid0 any SSDs then. My motherboard gets about 6,000 IOPS with one of the old P128s by it self and then caps out at 7,400 IOPS with one of the new F120s by it self. If I raid0 them on the motherboard I get a staggering(sarcastic) 7,400 IOPS and a little improvement on the MB/s. If I hook up a P128 to the rosewill card right now I get about 6,000 IOPS but with the new F120 I get 12,000 IOPS by it self.

Unfortunately a software raid0 is not a true raid and any hard drive benchmark tests understand each drive individually. A long with that there is lower throughput, and my performance is based off of my cpu/memory usage. And considering I will be wanting IOPS while playing games such as ARMA2, my cpu usage will be high and therefore my software raid performance will degrade.

My intention is to raid0 these and get somewhere near double the result; but I need a card that does not cap out like my motherboard is doing. Same kind of issue with my old MSI 790FX-GD70.
Click to expand...
I didn't say that the motherboard was the optimal solution. I just believe that a hardware RAID card will be a complete waste of money for you. The LSI card I mentioned should give you an ever IOPS count at a fraction of the price of a hardware RAID card. I just didn't expect a cheap HBA to perform better. Guess Intel chipsets really do excel compared to AMD ones (as those are the ones I primarily use).
 
which is pciex8, has 2 internal SAS controllers, has 512 memory and a 1.2ghz dual core processor. I want to know if I am going to even utilize even half of this beast because otherwise I can look for a lower end model that doesn't cost me $518 lol.
Click to expand...

No you will not be able to utilize this raid card using raid 0. The only benefit that will have over a descent HBA in raid 0 would be the 512 MB of cache. The xor and most of the other raid function will not be used or needed.
 
Blue Fox said:
I didn't say that the motherboard was the optimal solution. I just believe that a hardware RAID card will be a complete waste of money for you. The LSI card I mentioned should give you an ever IOPS count at a fraction of the price of a hardware RAID card. I just didn't expect a cheap HBA to perform better. Guess Intel chipsets really do excel compared to AMD ones (as those are the ones I primarily use).
Click to expand...

The reviews for the LSI card on Newegg are very promising if I intend to only use it with only my SSDs because it lacks a cache and NCQ. It would bring the cost from $518 down to $318 (because I would have to buy the cables as well). However I think I am going to run in to the same problem I did before. I don't think there is going to be enough space on my BIOS' rom to have both my motherboard's SATA controller in RAID and have this PCIE raid controller at the same time. Right now I haven't found a solution for it and I may just be out of luck working around BIOS' small rom size. (Though I just thought of something to try considering my optical drive is on the motherboard's second sata controller -- maybe if I disable that it would free enough space for the raid controller) I also cant find a compatibility list from LSI's website but usually drive compatibility isn't a problem.

I could throw my HDDs in a software raid, but not if I intend on putting windows on them (but I may throw windows on a SSD instead). I also don't know if there would be problems with pagefile and temporary files on HDDs in a software raid. Reason why I want them in a raid is both the performance and I don't like having tons of drives and have to divide up my files.

Otherwise I can get the LSI card, put the F120s and the P128s on there, have windows on the P128s and my games on the F120s then have everything else including my users folders, temporary files and pagefile on the spinpoints on the motherboard in either AHCI or IDE.
 
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Okay so I got the new LSI card yesterday as well as one of the RMA's (the samsung 1TB). It is probably going to be a while until I get the replacement F120 but not to worry.

The LSI's bios has a lot of functions and I am happy with the amount of advanced features I probably will never use but at least they are there if I need them. I did not notice anything about STRIPE size though, which the motherboard does allow you to specify in a RAID. Hopefully that wont be a problem.

Then, as expected, the POST time is now even longer and I run out of room on my ROM to have both onboard RAID and PCIe RAID with cards initialized; So I have all my drives on the PCIe card and then the eSATA and the optical drive on the mobo in IDE mode (Btw would there be any benefit to having the optical drive in AHCI instead?)

Earlier I told you guys that I was getting 12,000 IOPS on a 512 random access test with HDTune on the Corsair F120s, well turns out that was capping too because with the LSI card, I am getting these results without the card in any raid:
c3880212f784401d842956b4edf24299

I don't think I am going to get my double result but its still going to improve a lot in a raid. I also need to update the firmware on the F120 (it is 2 versions behind) and also need to align the drive.

Secondly just to note, according to HDTune NCQ is enabled on every single one of the drives (and TRIM on all the SSDs of course).

I will need to play around with some things now still because I still need to decide where I am going to keep my P128s and install windows on them or if the HDDs will suffice in a raid.
 
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