Needing advice on RAID/Storage Options

[chrsharvick29]

I'm currently looking to upgrade my storage for the PC in my sig. I currently have a couple of older WD Black 2TB drives that I do not have in RAID but I'm running out of storage. I'm looking at using 4x WD Red 4TB drives in a RAID 10, but the market of RAID controller cards is fairly complex and I'm not sure which brand/card I need to go with.

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[westrock2000]

For a good quality card, look on ebay for used IBM or Dell models. There are tons of them because they come pre-installed in business computers and then the computers come off lease after 3 or 4 years and they get parted out.

Just make sure you get one that specifically supports greater then 2TB. Mostly the Dell H series, the PERC series will not. H310 is low cost one.

Is there a reason you want RAID10 and not 5 or 6? Raid 5 gives you more storage (3 out of 4 drives), RAID 6 will still use 2 out of 4, but you can take a failure in ANY 4. Where as RAID10 could go down if 2 of the same set fail.

This is on Windows right? If you're on Linux or Hackintosh there are other better choices. But WIndows you are limited to hardware.

 

[chrsharvick29]

I'll take a look at the ones you mentioned on ebay. Never would have thought about that.

Not set on RAID 10, but I do want to use the most reliable option. I'm not very familiar on all of the RAID arrays other than the general purpose.of speed and redundancy.

This will be used with Windows 7.

As far as something new, like a LSI card, what would be the recommendations? Also, I read there are compatibility problems with some RAID cards and motherboards. Should I need to be concerned with this or is it a non issue in most cases?

 

[terayon1515]

I strongly recommend Areca cards. Areca tunes their FW to handle consumer drives across many diverse brands.

Depends what your budget is, but a used 1880 or 1640, or 1882 (if you budget permits)
That way (even with a 2x SFF-8087 card) you can hook a SAS expander up and expand it in the future.

 

[chrsharvick29]

Thanks for the recommendations, terayon1515. I think those will be more than what I was looking to spend.

What are everyone's thoughts on the LSI MegaRAID SAS 9271-4i? They can be had for around $320, which is what my budget is ok for. Keep in mind that I'm not going to use more 4 drives and my real goal is to just provide some redundancy and maybe a bit of a speed hike from what I'm doing now.