I need a Hardware RAID controller for 8 drives

J

Jacez44

Limp Gawd
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May 9, 2007
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I have 8 1TB drives. I want to set them up in a RAID 5 array, but my motherboard doesn't support that many. So, I need to get a RAID controller, unless I want to use Windows-applied software RAID. But I really can't afford something incredibly expensive.

I need help.
 
I personally like areca but high point offers a significantly cheaper very fast with good disk compatabillity (iop341) based controller:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115056

Edit: Atually that one probably won't have good disk compatability as its the iop348 one I was thinking of this card (the 3520):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115046&cm_re=3520-_-16-115-046-_-Product
http://www.provantage.com/highpoint-technologies-rocketraid3520~7HPTI01X.htm

I know at one point newegg was selling these for *CHEAP* but at this price you might as well buy a more expensive card.
 
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Not my personal favorite card but you could get a perc i/5 off ebay for around $100. You won't get a new true hardware based 8 port controller for cheaper than $350 or so.
 
SAS is the same as SATA.

I can turn a SAS port into 4-5 SATA ports with a SAS Break out cable. They range from 20-40$
 
But how would that work - would it see it as 5 separate SATA drives so that I can RAID them?
 
Jacez44 said:
But how would that work - would it see it as 5 separate SATA drives so that I can RAID them?
Click to expand...

Yes it would see each drive as a separate drive or you can raid them into 1 drive.

1 sas card with 2 connectors can connect 8-10 SATA drives.

We have some enterprise SAS cards here at work with 8 SAS ports. Gotta love servers humming away with 36+ drives
 
You can get a dell Perc5 on ebay for around $100
Its PCI express and has two SAS connectors.

SAS controllers can run both SAS and SATA drives when using the correct cables or backplane.
 
Alright, well the Perc 5/i seems nice, but I am not getting it for two reasons.

One, I have 16 SATA connectors between my two computers, which support RAID 5.

Two, I can't justify using this over onboard when RAID 5 will be costing me two whole drives on both arrays.

Now, if I had a 16+ controller, I would consider it, but the prices are absolutely insane. The only price/connector ratio that seems appealing to me is 24 for 750$.

That 36 drive controller sounds amazing, though. I can only imagine what it would be like to have 36 2TB drives and have 72TB of storage "in" a single case. But, that would cost about as much as an entire computer, and I'm barely using 5TB at the moment. I'll have to put a 36-drive RAID 5 somewhere near my dream of owning a 1Gbps Upload connection and four 12-core CPU's.
 
since that others were out of his range... and the one oyu posted was double the cost. i doubt it. lol

I am also in the market for a reliable 8 port raid 5 card with easy expandability.

i.e. start with 3 drives and add more later :)

Shawn
 
I use this card with a RAID 5 and a RAID 1 simultaneously: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115026

It's very cheap but that's because it's not true hardware RAID. I haven't had any speed problems with it though, it can easily saturate gigabit ethernet for writes and reads and that's all I really need it for.

I am now looking into building a new raid though and will probably look into a true hardware raid card along with 1.5TB+ drives.
 
given any thought to building a dedicated machine and using ZFS, either via solaris or via freebsd? Then SMB and/or NFS or iSCSI?
 
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