Inexpensive SATA HW raid controllers

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scoob8000

2[H]4U
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May 4, 2002
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Are there any decent, yet inexpensive hardware raid controllers for SATA drives out there?

I build a raid 0 setup with my onboard controller, but linux support sucks.

Looks like I'm going to have to spend well more then I hoped.

Got my eyes on the 3Ware 9650SE-2LP. I'd like to go 4 port, but don't have a PCIe 4x slot.

Feedback?
 
Do you have an 8x or 16x slot free? PCI-E is pretty compatible with each other, I have a 8x card in my 16x slot.
 
Nope, my board only has 3 PCIe 1x slots,1 16x, and 2 PCI. :(

Kinda wishing I bought that SLI board I was pining over after all! :)

I'm having second thoughts, I have two 250gb Seagates in a fakeRaid 0 with Windows on it, I really wanted to dual boot linux on there as well.

But for the price of a decent raid card ($180), I can buy a raptor and install linux on it by itself..
 
To be honest with you dont waste your money on cheap cards. Your not going to see a big improventment over onboard with a crappy lowend raid controller. Unless you had like a 680i or something that was really handicapped to start with. If you do upgrade boards and want to still do an aftermarket card save yourself a tone of heaches and stick with an intel chipset stay away from nvidia like the plague.
 
Thanks for the reply

When you say cheap cards, are you talking about the $20-40 cards on Newegg? From what I can tell the 3ware card I listed should be a safe bet, no? :)
 
To be honest pretty much anything under $300 for the big name cards is going to be software raid and still tax your cpu to run it. They still offer an okay advantage but they dont offer leaps and bounds you would see from a $300+ hardware raid card.Personally if i wasnt going to go hardware raid I wouldnt waste the money on raid card.
 
jrstang473 said:
To be honest pretty much anything under $300 for the big name cards is going to be software raid and still tax your cpu to run it. They still offer an okay advantage but they dont offer leaps and bounds you would see from a $300+ hardware raid card.Personally if i wasnt going to go hardware raid I wouldnt waste the money on raid card.
Click to expand...

well... the card he's talking about is definitely under 300, but it definitely has hardware raid :rolleyes:

3ware is also big name...

anyway... i'd probably say get another hard disk for your other OS... then you don't have to worry so much about boot loaders and all of that crap...

it all depends on how much its worth it to you... 200 bucks is a lot of dough to shell out for 2 ports... don't care how fast it is
 
$200 is a lot for 2 ports, I agree. I'm really having a tough time deciding.. And these results don't help.

Here's my fakeraid compared to my WD raptor..

Or does the faster random access times of the raptor kind of make up for the slower transfers?

hdtachraid.jpg
 
Raptors are all about the access time.

I agree with the other posters that you should just get a single drive for your other OS. It's not really worth it, and I agree with the one operating system per drive/array ritual.
 
Well you guys have convinced me. I already have the raptor, so it's getting the OS and I'll use one of my new 250's for data and sell off the extra or stick it in another PC..
 
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