Intel Z68 (particularly ASUS P8Z68-M Pro): How is onboard RAID 5 performance?

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Johnyblaze

Limp Gawd
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It appears to be very difficult to find reviews where there is mention of the onboard RAID 5 performance of an Intel Z68 based motherboard. I was wondering if anyone had any feedback on RAID 5 performance numbers on the Intel Z68 boards, or knew of a review that had some info. Thanks for any help!
 
What operating system and CPU are you planning on installing on this system, and how much RAM? How many drives are you planning in the RAID? Are you planning on using the RAID5 as your system drive or just as a data drive? If you are going to do Linux, I would suggest going Raid6 instead, some extra $$$ now and you have double redundancy.
 
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mwroobel said:
What operating system and CPU are you planning on installing on this system, and how much RAM? How many drives are you planning in the RAID? Are you planning on using the RAID5 as your system drive or just as a data drive? If you are going to do Linux, I would suggest going Raid6 instead, some extra $$$ now and you have double redundancy.
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Win 7. 8 GB ram. Core i3-2100. At least 4 drives in the array. Still undecided as to whether or not ill be using the array as a boot volume or simply a data volume. RAID 6 is unnecessary for my application. The ability to have one failed disk is enough redundancy for my setup.
 
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Johnyblaze said:
Win 7. 8 GB ram. Core i3-2100. Still undecided as to whether or not ill be using the array as a boot volume or simply a data volume.
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Well, say a 4 drive system will give you decent sequential read performance, decent sequential write performance but lackluster to horrible random I/O performance, especially writes. Unless you are on a tight budget and can only do say 4 drives, I would strongly suggest NOT using the software RAID5 as your OS array (especially if you are on windows).
 
mwroobel said:
Well, say a 4 drive system will give you decent sequential read performance, decent sequential write performance but lackluster random I/O performance, especially writes. Unless you are on a tight budget and can only do say 4 drives, I would strongly suggest NOT using the software RAID5 as your OS array (especially if you are on windows).
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I haven't really messed around with software RAID in some time, as I do have an Areca ARC-1231ML-2G I can use. I just wanted to try to avoid using it if the motherboard was at least partially up to the task. I appreciate the feedback.

As I suspected but hoped against, it seems that the motherboards are still not up to par on delivering decent RAID 5 performance. Does anyone else have any feedback they care to share?
 
Johnyblaze said:
I haven't really messed around with software RAID in some time, as I do have an Areca ARC-1231ML-2G I can use. I just wanted to try to avoid using it if the motherboard was at least partially up to the task. I appreciate the feedback.

As I suspected but hoped against, it seems that the motherboards are still not up to par on delivering decent RAID 5 performance. Does anyone else have any feedback they care to share?
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Well, unfortunately up to the task is a very relative term. It depends on what you consider acceptable. Since you have a 1231ML, I would wholly suggest using that. Just don't put it in the PCIe16 slot closest to the CPU, the ASUS boards (especially the P6T series) don't like that.
 
mwroobel said:
Well, unfortunately up to the task is a very relative term. It depends on what you consider acceptable. Since you have a 1231ML, I would wholly suggest using that. Just don't put it in the PCIe16 slot closest to the CPU, the ASUS boards (especially the P6T series) don't like that.
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Curios as to what problems you've seen/heard of when using the x16 slot closest to the CPU? Not that big a deal since I can use the lower slot as I believe the card only requires x4 anyway.
 
It's not software RAID, it's semi-hardware RAID, and here is the problem. When the computer wants to read or write something, the data has to make a lot of back and forth between drives, controller, CPU, RAM, hampering performance. This will never change (but semi-hardware RAID might disappear, if advanced FS like ZFS gain traction, also killing hardware RAID).
 
Well, I have built systems with Areca controllers and current ASUS boards with the P6T, P6T Deluxe, Rampage Formula and P8Z68 Deluxe paired with 1231ML, 1880 series and 1680 series controllers. When I use the slot closest to the CPU I have had problems ranging from not coming out of standard and deep sleep, out of option rom space if the video card does not init first (slot order) and even the card being ignored 2 out of 5 boots.
 
Maybe I'll check out ZFS and FreeNAS. They sound like a promising solution for my needs as well. Thanks for the feedback.
 
What I'm postulating is that in, say, ten years, "any OS" will have a ZFS like FS, so, no need for RAID.
 
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