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Need bootable RAID card for SSD (SATAIII)

S

skypine27

Gawd
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
734
Any recommendations?

I'm using a SATA 2 mobo (see sig) and am replacing my 2x Corsair P128 Raid0 with 2x Crucial M4 512's.

I would like the 512's to be able to run at SATAIII speeds so I need a Raid Card for this.

Anything from newegg would be fine.

THanks for any info.
 
If you have an Intel system its best to use the motherboard ports for RAID 0 even though you loose SATA III. That is unless you purchase the $400+ LSI SAS card with fastpath. All current cheap SATA cards will perform worse than Intel SATA II ports in random operations (the reason you get a SSD in the first place).


I believe this is the cheapest such card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118106

+

Faspath SSD optimization:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118150

+

8087 forward breakout cable:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116098
 
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Didnt realize there was also another option to buy a small part called "Fast Path".

Can that be added later? Or would it mandate a reinstall of the OS (I will be using this setup for the boot)?

And is that part (149$) even worthwhile on a 2 SSD Raid0?
 
Didnt realize there was also another option to buy a small part called "Fast Path".
Click to expand...
Did you miss the post right below your first one?

Fastpath is a MUST have if you want to get the performance numbers that everyone is quoting.

The 9260 series takes that little chip add-on and it can be installed at any time. You'll probably have to change a setting in the card's RAID set-up to take full advantage of your drives.

I do without the BBU on mine because I have a double conversion UPS that lets me shut-down in a timely manner and also do a WHS and Acronis back-up every week.

You've bought quality components and I wish you good luck! :)
 
Thanks for the advice. And yup, I did miss that the fast path was an add on part.

Thx guys.
 
Update:

The card finally arrived (I live overseas so its kind of a pain to buy things online and have my friend in the States ship it to me) and it will NOT work in my motherboard.

I run an Asus Rampage II Extreme. Now asus says I have:
3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 support at x16, x8, x8, or dual x16 speed
2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 ( the PCIEx1_1 (black) is compatible with audio slot)
1 x PCI 2.2



The only slots the card physically fits in are the 3 x PCIe 2.0 x 16's (2 blues and a white) and they only support graphics cards. The Raid card is never "recognized" either in the boot up stage (where you should be able to access the cards BIOS) or in the Windows environment.

From the MegaRAID's manual:
"This controller is a PCI Express x8 card and it can operate in x8 or x16 slots. However, some PCIe slots only support PCIe graphics cards; if a RAID controller is installed, the card will not function"

This appears to be the case for my mobo. Confirmed from my mobo manual: "This motherboard has three PC Express 2.0 x 16 slots the support PCI Express x16 2.0 graphics cards"

Any suggestions on a decent gaming mobo that has a PCIe x8 or x16 that will recognize a non graphics card device? Its hard to find mobo that has PCIe x8 slots, and why would you want one when x8 or x16 devices fit in a x16 slot. And its hard to confirm just from reading the specs if the x16 slots are only for graphics cards, like with my mobo
 
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skypine27 said:
Update:

The card finally arrived (I live overseas so its kind of a pain to buy things online and have my friend in the States ship it to me) and it will NOT work in my motherboard.

I run an Asus Rampage II Extreme. Now asus says I have:
3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 support at x16, x8, x8, or dual x16 speed
2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 ( the PCIEx1_1 (black) is compatible with audio slot)
1 x PCI 2.2



The only slots the card physically fits in are the 3 x PCIe 2.0 x 16's (2 blues and a white) and they only support graphics cards. The Raid card is never "recognized" either in the boot up stage (where you should be able to access the cards BIOS) or in the Windows environment.

From the MegaRAID's manual:
"This controller is a PCI Express x8 card and it can operate in x8 or x16 slots. However, some PCIe slots only support PCIe graphics cards; if a RAID controller is installed, the card will not function"

This appears to be the case for my mobo. Confirmed from my mobo manual: "This motherboard has three PC Express 2.0 x 16 slots the support PCI Express x16 2.0 graphics cards"

Any suggestions on a decent gaming mobo that has a PCIe x8 or x16 that will recognize a non graphics card device? Its hard to find mobo that has PCIe x8 slots, and why would you want one when x8 or x16 devices fit in a x16 slot. And its hard to confirm just from reading the specs if the x16 slots are only for graphics cards, like with my mobo
Click to expand...

Funny, I went through this same #&%show with my Rampage III. Bought a 9240, realized you don't get fastpath without paying out the nose.

I ended up selling everything and buying something that natively supported SATA III (Look below)

Going to be tougher to find something that takes 4 SATA III ports, at least all intel ports.
 
I see you have the Sabertooth X79. I have 2 problems:

1. My CPU still has useful life left in it for hardcore gaming and medium video encoding. My 6 core i980x running at 4.0-4.2ghz doesn't get bogged down with anything yet. So I I'm stuck shopping for a Socket 1366 mobo that has a 'useful' (for the raid card purpose) PCIe slot.

2. I have 6 sata drives (2 SSD, 1 Velo Raptor, and 3 WD Green) and that fills up all my SATA ports. I now have a SATA blue ray DVD burner and to use it I have to open the case, and swap the Velo Raptors SATA plug with the DVD burner. So a purpose (other than supposedly being wicked fast) for this MegaRaid card was to free up some sata ports on the mobo.

I guess I'm SOL for now. Can't do anything until I feel like building an entirely new system with a CPU ?
 
skypine27 said:
...

I guess I'm SOL for now. Can't do anything until I feel like building an entirely new system with a CPU ?
Click to expand...

I just upgraded from a Q9550 on a P5Q Deluxe to my sig (570k on an Asrock pro4-m). I ran a Crucial C300 as my boot drive for almost nine months on a Sata II port on the P5Q Deluxe and ran a Samsung 830 for about three months on it too until I upgraded. The difference running the Samsung 830 on an Intel Sata III port vs. on the Sata II on the P5Q Deluxe is only noticeable in a few areas, but for the most part the experience is the same.

Sure, the 830 benches much better on the Sata III port, but the cpu performance improvement, having USB 3.0, having more RAM to run more VMs ar once are all much more noticeable than the interface the SSD is on. imho, even for a good Sata III SSD, the difference between Sata II and Sata III right now is "meh". No doubt one day there will be a big advantage to having that bandwidth, but right now (imho) an SSD on Sata III vs Sata II is almost as unimportant as a spinner on Sata II vs. Sata I.

As far as your blu-ray optical drive, I did not want to use up a good motherboard port for optical, so I'm running an IDE DVD optical and a sata blu-ray optical off a: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0314614

newegg carries a similiar Rosewill branded one, and monoprice has very inexpensive silicon image based cards that I've had good luck with.

edited to add: for an optical, a PCI based card will be fine too if that helps your options.
 
I broke down and went with the cheap option.

I am not in the modo to build a new ground up system (i.e. new mobo and CPU) and its simply a larger waste of money since my current build is able to play anything I throw at it and handles video encoding fine. But, I still have 6 SATA HDs, and 1 SATA DVD burner. I need 7 SATA ports.

I went with the cheap option and bought the dinky, HighPoint PCIe 2 (1x) with 2 SATA III ports on it. I'm just going to plug my DVD drive into that and use all 6 mobo ports for my current hard drive setup.

I think that will last until games start coming out that I can't play. I can still swap out the GTX 580 for a 680 or 690 to eek out the last bit of life from my X58 platform.

Thx for all the input guys.

Update:

More money and a serious bored streak lead me to break my above promise and I ordered an Asus P6T6 WS mobo. I can't believe newegg still stocks that thing!!!

http://www.asus.com.au/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1366/P6T6_WS_Revolution/#specifications

I've heard various 'rumors' on forums from guys who claim they are able to run LSI Raid cards with this mobo (Hell, it has SIX PCIe 2.0 x 16 slots....)

I'll let ya know sometime in July when I get around to testing it.
 
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