Need help with Raid Card for 4 SSD

Which Raid card brand? (please state model)

  • Adaptec

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • Areca

    Votes: 5 45.5%

  • Highpoint

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Other

    Votes: 5 45.5%
  • Total voters
    11
T

Transporter_GW

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 9, 2006
Messages
288
Hi,

I am going to be running 4 x Corsair X256 SSD drives in Raid 0, i wanted some input on what raid card to get?
I will be running Windows 7 X64.
 
I was thinking of using the Areca ARC-1680IX-8 or maybe the Adaptec 5805. Any input on these or suggestions?
 
Transporter_GW said:
I was thinking of using the Areca ARC-1680IX-8 or maybe the Adaptec 5805. Any input on these or suggestions?
Click to expand...

I would not get the Adaptec, they suck.

The Areca is a good card, but quite a bit more expensive. What all are you looking for in a card?
The Areca will prob be slower with those four drives because it is SAS3gbs and the LSI is 6gbs.

If you are just doing a RAID0 there is no point on spending a bunch of money on a controller that has a IOP chip.
 
nitrobass24 said:
I would not get the Adaptec, they suck.

The Areca is a good card, but quite a bit more expensive. What all are you looking for in a card?
The Areca will prob be slower with those four drives because it is SAS3gbs and the LSI is 6gbs.

If you are just doing a RAID0 there is no point on spending a bunch of money on a controller that has a IOP chip.
Click to expand...

no stated usage scenario on this one? raid-0 or 10, i'd say LSI based SAS5/iR for 4 drives. SAS6/iR if you want the option to go to 8 (10 with expander). If you need RAID-5, then I'd say Perc5/i is a good place to start, or Perc6/i. If you need higher performance, then I'd start looking at some of the beefier controllers. Above the ones I've mentioned though, your cost will considerably increase.
 
I've never seen a Perc 5/i do much more than 800MB/s, which I think is because it uses a bridge to the PCIe bus (can't remember the exact reason).

And although Adaptec controllers "suck" I have no problem mixing and matching 3xxx series and 5xxx series in the same system. Earlier today I had a total of four Adaptec cards in the new system and had no problem migrating Raid 6 arrays by just swapping the SFF connectors. For whatever reason they just work with everything I use.

If you are going raid 0, just get a nice PCIe x8 card and you'll be fine bandwidth wise. Raid 0 doesn't require parity calculations.
 
I decided to get the LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i based on the performance reviews i seen. I will do my own test on it and post some numbers in the coming week.
 
That is also a great card.
It is built on them same architecture but provides additional RAID support.
 
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