NVIDIA nForce 430 RAID reliability?

[oDii]

Hey guys, recently picked up a 3000+ Venice, 512MB of generic RAM and a GA-K8N51GMF-9 (one of the 10 in the world that powers on correctly) and was just curious if anyone had any experience with how the chipset (nForce 430) does with RAID. I'm planning to get 4 ~250GB drives in RAID5 to act as a centralized storage machine for backups and general storage.

Many people have recommended that I get a separate PCI/PCI-e card and have citied sites that say integrated RAID is unreliable, which is not what I want the machine to be.

 

[AreEss]

Integrated chipset RAID requires corner cutting in integrity checking. nVidia is one of the worst as they cut more corners to increase performance. Both have severe negative impacts on reliability; checksums are far less frequent than dedicated checksumming simply because of the load on the chipset. There are also software issues with regards to BIOS, etcetera, which are more prevalent on chipset integrated controllers (remember; you update your chipset drivers, you update your BIOS, you're now altering your RAID even if it seems inconsequential.)

If your primary concern is reliability over speed, you absolutely need a dedicated controller card such as an Areca or an LSI. I would recommend LSI; you lack PCI-X and the Areca PCI-X controllers will not operate in a PCI32/33 slot where the LSI's will.

 

[oDii]

Thanks man - any word on PCI-e controllers? It would be nice to have something that I can a) not worry about becoming outdated if I upgrade the server (ie. no PCI slots) and possibly b) take advantage of burst speeds that PCI might not cover.

Keep in mind I'm in New Zealand and we get absolutely nothing decent here.

 

[drizzt81]

can you get a highpoint?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816115026

 

[general]

Some other things to think about for nV RAID (I currently use it) are that there is no guarantee that it will work when you change motherboards if you get a different motherboard. Say your motherboard dies, then you're stuck finding one of the 9 motherboards in the world that you mentioned that actually work. Upgrading to a new technology will be a roll of the dice. If you get a dedicated card, that can go from motherboard to motherboard. You can also do software RAID and you could chat with some people on here about the benefits.

 

[AreEss]

Thanks man - any word on PCI-e controllers? It would be nice to have something that I can a) not worry about becoming outdated if I upgrade the server (ie. no PCI slots) and possibly b) take advantage of burst speeds that PCI might not cover.

Keep in mind I'm in New Zealand and we get absolutely nothing decent here.

You'll be able to get the LSI's, but as far as PCIe, afraid your SOL unless you give up a graphics card.. You've only got a 1x physical on that board, and while I have no qualms about recommending Areca's PCIe parts, they don't fit in a 1x physical. IIRC it's an an 8x (might be a 4x.) It would work fine in the 16x slot of course.

 

[Dew]

You'll be able to get the LSI's, but as far as PCIe, afraid your SOL unless you give up a graphics card.. You've only got a 1x physical on that board, and while I have no qualms about recommending Areca's PCIe parts, they don't fit in a 1x physical. IIRC it's an an 8x (might be a 4x.) It would work fine in the 16x slot of course.

Something to note is that if there is room behind the slot, you can use a hot blade and cut off the back of the x1 slot.

 

[oDii]

Right, some movement on this front. The Server has been relegated to basic office duties after the old workhorse that was being used decided to expire. This does open up some doors for me as it seems that putting extra money to get the motherboard with SATA RAID was a bit of a waste if I'm not going to be using it. Looking around again, I'll likely head for the same CPU as running cool 'n quiet is an advantage (a 3800+ X2 is very tempting but the Highpoint is bloody expensive over here).

Any suggestions on motherboards? Gigabyte are preferred as I can get them at wholesale prices, but if another board did make up for the extra price with other features I'd consider it. It might also be good to note that I'll be running the array in Debian. I originally thought this wouldn't really matter as it'd show up as a large partition to any OS; but according to the NewEgg reviews the highpoint is perhaps not the best choice for Debian - can anyone confirm?

 

[Dew]

The Highpoint 2320 is a great choice for linux. The issue lies in the GUI. IIRC, the GUI uses RPM.

Distros used:
(February 06) Gentoo x64, Device driver compiled with ease. Could not get the GUI to work(RPM).
(March 06) FedoraCore5 64bit, Couldn't get driver to compile(before pre-compiled driver was released). Had a hell of a time geting the kernel sources to work.
(March to Present) FedoraCore4 32bit, Device driver is precompiled, GUI works flawlessly.

 

[oDii]

The Highpoint 2320 is a great choice for linux. The issue lies in the GUI. IIRC, the GUI uses RPM.

Distros used:
(February 06) Gentoo x64, Device driver compiled with ease. Could not get the GUI to work(RPM).
(March 06) FedoraCore5 64bit, Couldn't get driver to compile(before pre-compiled driver was released). Had a hell of a time geting the kernel sources to work.
(March to Present) FedoraCore4 32bit, Device driver is precompiled, GUI works flawlessly.

I'm actually seeing if the 2310 is available over here - I don't need 8 ports. Looks like driver support is decent too, hope everything works in Debian.

Anyone have any suggestions as to motherboards? I'll likely see if I can pick up one of the remaining 8 GA-K8N51GMF-9 that actually work (devil you know)...