Please help me choose a RAID controller

Pixel Eater

Pixel Eater

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 25, 2006
Messages
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I've never dealt with RAID controllers before. I understand they have the advantage of allowing you to easily upgrade your system without reassigning arrays. What other reasons are there for using them? I couldn't believe some controllers cost $500.

In my pending configuration, I would like to have 4 500GB Barracudas in pairs of RAID 0, and two WD 150GB Raptors in RAID 0. I may even wish to add more drives in the future. My question is what would be the optimal setup for this.

Any awesome RAID controllers for 6 to 8 drives that don't cost a fortune?
 
Areca 1230 or 1231 would probably work out for you really well or even the 1220, should be able to get the 30s for around 600$ and the 20 for 300-400$. 30's have 12 drives and 20 allows 8 drives. For the preformance and features i think they're very cheap. If you're worried about money you can hack win xp pro to do raid in software which is probably better than most raid cards that don't a dedicated processor or memory.
 
The Areca cards are overkill for raid 0. A Highpoint card will do the striping in software, but striping is really cheap to do in software.
 
Doesn't software raid have distinct disadvantages, including working the CPU?

Is this HighPoint RocketRaid 2300 software based? Is it good?

If I can't get a controller now, how much trouble would it be to rebuild a hardware raid from my mobo (Asus P5W DH Dlx) to a card later?
 
Only with raid 5 is the CPU usage really an issue. For raid 0 it's a simple offset calculation, and if done properly (it is, as far as I can tell, on that Highpoint card and others in the series) it won't kill the system waiting on the I/O to be issued. Instead, the calculation happens and the I/O is issued, and then when it finishes it reports to the CPU that it's done putting stuff into memory. This fixes the ridiculous CPU load associated with older software raid designs.

Several people on [H] have the 2320, which is a larger version of that card. Perhaps some of them will stop by and comment on their experiences with the card.

The 2300 has only four ports. Don't you want six or eight? Why do you want three raid 0 sets? What is this machine for and what are the three arrays for?
 
I'm using the HighPoint 2300 with 4x500gig WD's in a RAID 1+0 and I've never had a problem. Software is good and they had vista drivers right away. I'd recommend it.
 
So, would you guys say there's NO perceivable load on the CPU with that card?

This is just my personal computer. I need about 2 TB and am running my OS's off the Raptors for fun. I figured I'd do the Barracudas in pairs to reduce the chance of failure.

As for the 2300, it's all I can afford right now. I ordered one. I'm getting the 'cuda's later. Do you guys think I could rebuild the mobo based array if I returned the card and got the bigger one later?
 
Pixel Eater said:
If I can't get a controller now, how much trouble would it be to rebuild a hardware raid from my mobo (Asus P5W DH Dlx) to a card later?
Click to expand...

Both the 2300 and the controller on your Asus motherboard are software raid solutions.

Pixel Eater said:
So, would you guys say there's NO perceivable load on the CPU with that card?
Click to expand...
How do you define ``perceivable''. Of course there will be some CPU load. There's some CPU load when you are running Winamp. There is even some CPU load when you just read a file from the HDD.

Of course, since I do not own the card, nor know what you are doing with your system, it is hard for me to say whether this software RAID implementation is adequate for your needs. That said, for most home user's needs, doing RAID-0,1,10 or 0+1 in software should be perfectly adequate.

Pixel Eater said:
As for the 2300, it's all I can afford right now. I ordered one. I'm getting the 'cuda's later. Do you guys think I could rebuild the mobo based array if I returned the card and got the bigger one later?
Click to expand...
I am not sure what you mean by that. I would say that it may be possible, but unlikely that the Intel ICH8r and the Highpoint RAID controller use the same metadata format. As such I would consider it unlikely that you can simply plug the drives into the other controller and have a functional array.
 
Sorry. In asking about a perceivable load, I meant, compared to a hardware RAID, will this drag my CPU down very much? I'd really like to go hardware if so.

I was also asking if anyone knew if I'd be able to open up the 2300 and rebuild the array in a manner that wouldn't erase the data from the lCH8r array.
 
Pixel Eater said:
Sorry. In asking about a perceivable load, I meant, compared to a hardware RAID, will this drag my CPU down very much? I'd really like to go hardware if so.

I was also asking if anyone knew if I'd be able to open up the 2300 and rebuild the array in a manner that wouldn't erase the data from the lCH8r array.
Click to expand...

If you are only running RAID-0, 1, 10 or 0+1, no. If you are running RAID-5 ``maybe''.
 
Yeah, I notice no slow down or load on my computer, I'm running an AMD x2 4200. I noticed no difference in load in XP or Vista.
 
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