Onboard RAID safe to use?

P

palmboy5

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
315
I am thinking of doing my first RAID setup (RAID 1) with two 1TB HDDs. I have read in several forums posts that have given me the impression that "RAID built into motherboards are just there to increase the feature set and aren't reliable. Get a RAID card."
Does this still hold true?
 
Its true, IMO, for RAID5 and maybe RAID1. For RAID0, it doesnt matter much.

BTW, this thread would be better in the Storage subforum. ;)
 
The problem is that in the case of a motherboard failure, you would have to get the same motherboard in order to access the array again. I don't think this is the case, but revisions may also screw the pooch as well. On the same lines, you cannot move the array from say one PC to another as it is bound to your mobo.

As far as reliability goes, if the motherboard is decent you should be fine but 1TB is a good hunk of data not to think about the future with.
 
With a raid 1 if you loose the raid controller generaly you can just hook up a single drive to a normal controller and get the data off it. This is unless the onboard raid controller does something weird with it. Also it is worth saying that onboard raid on a motherboard is generally software raid which is slower then a true hardware raid controller. For a raid 1 it shouldn't make much of a difference.
 
lol woops, I swear when I was looking for a more appropriate category, I didn't see the Storage one :X.

With a raid 1 if you loose the raid controller generaly you can just hook up a single drive to a normal controller and get the data off it. This is unless the onboard raid controller does something weird with it.
Click to expand...
Yes I thought this would be the case, where RAID 1 doesn't actually do any changes to the way data is written to the drives so I won't lose anything if any one device dies. But that "does something weird with it" part, that sounds difficult to find out and avoid before choosing a motherboard. How about for nForce and Intel-based chipsets?

Does RAID 1 have read speeds faster than for a single drive? For writing I don't think it can be faster, but for reading each drive can work on loading a different part of the same data, Does that happen?
 
I'm pretty certain Intel chipsets don't do anything weird for RAID1, but I'm not completely sure. I'd trust Intel RAID over NVIDIA RAID, hehe.

RAID0 is much faster than RAID1. RAID1 is slightly faster than a single drive for reading, but I doubt its noticeable. RAID0 is much faster than a single drive for both writing and reading. RAID0 is fastest for reading, fast for writing, but not as fast as RAID0, since it has to write parity bits. RAID0 has the least fault tolerance, while RAID5 has the best, as far as onboard solutions go. RAID5 is best with its own controller.
 
I don't care about speed, data reliability is all that matters to me for this setup. I was just wondering for that read speed question.

All transfers will be through a gigabit network to other PCs with no RAID setup so it won't matter, and also I have never seen a transfer through gigabit go beyond 37MB/s. Usually its about 24MB/s, its definitely not "gigabit" and not at the max of the hard drives either so I'm not sure whats up or if its normal, but that's a different topic.

So ignoring speed, should I use the onboard or a RAID card for RAID 1 (SATA)?
 
Onboard should be fine for RAID1. RAID1 simply minimizes downtime. RAID is NOT a backup solution. Its a mirror -- If your OS is corrupt, its corrupt on both drives. Virus? on both drives... etc. A good backup plan is needed regardless of the use of RAID.
 
I would say for raid 0, 1, or 0+1 in the home, you're fine. As for Raid 5, 1+0 or a server end setup, you want hardware raid, no question. Anything beyond 0 or 1 and sometimes 5 you'll need hardware anyways.
 
I use on-board raid (RAID-1) with a Gigabyte motherboard and Seagate 320GB drives. It has worked fine for more than a year or so. I reinstalled OS and flashed BIOS once, and RAID-1 started rebuilding after that (this takes about 1-2h depending on the amount of data). I thought it was reformatting the drive, but later found that everything was OK. There are two options on-board, I think I use Intel RAID.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top