Raid Card?

aggiestudd07

aggiestudd07

Gawd
Joined
Oct 1, 2006
Messages
528
Hey guys, I just got (2) 1tb seagate drives, bringing me up to 3 total. i want to run raid 5 dunno which raid card to get. I would prefer not to use onboard raid. i am looking for pci-e and hardware raid with good reliability, any suggestions?

i have been eyeballing the areca 1210, what do you think about that? i really dont want to spend $300 though, so the cheaper the better.
 
What drives do you have? If it's two more 7200.11 seagates like the one in your sig you'll need to be careful picking a controller due to combatibility issues. That said, RAID 5 really isn't worth the effort with three drives. You'd be better off picking up a fourth drive and running RAID 10 on a much cheaper controller or just using the drives as an offline backup if you don't have a backup and are thinking RAID will handle that.
 
I'll echo novadude's concern about RAID-5. RAID-5 is only justified if you need the absolute highest capacity per spindle. Increased throughput, especially with a small number of drives, is better served by RAID 10 or 0+1

With that said, I've had good luck with a HighPoint 2310. The Areca is probably better, but costs twice as much. FWIW, the HighPoint ran 24x7 in my dad's server with four 500GB drives in RAID-5 for over a year, then I switched to RAID-10, then moved to 4x 1.5TB drives. The 1.5TB Seagates have worked fine with it. This is of course my experience only.
 
novadude said:
What drives do you have? If it's two more 7200.11 seagates like the one in your sig you'll need to be careful picking a controller due to combatibility issues. That said, RAID 5 really isn't worth the effort with three drives. You'd be better off picking up a fourth drive and running RAID 10 on a much cheaper controller or just using the drives as an offline backup if you don't have a backup and are thinking RAID will handle that.
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i have 1 7200.11 and 2 7200.12. never had any issues with the 7200.11 that i have had for the last 8 months. i currently 4 drives isnt quite an option due to cost and the fact that i dont have enough 3.5 slots in my case to put it.

DougLite said:
I'll echo novadude's concern about RAID-5. RAID-5 is only justified if you need the absolute highest capacity per spindle. Increased throughput, especially with a small number of drives, is better served by RAID 10 or 0+1

With that said, I've had good luck with a HighPoint 2310. The Areca is probably better, but costs twice as much. FWIW, the HighPoint ran 24x7 in my dad's server with four 500GB drives in RAID-5 for over a year, then I switched to RAID-10, then moved to 4x 1.5TB drives. The 1.5TB Seagates have worked fine with it. This is of course my experience only.
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i originally looked at the 2310 b/c of the price factor, but then i guess i got a little spooked by some of the reviews. is it hardware or software raid?
 
aggiestudd07 said:
i have 1 7200.11 and 2 7200.12. never had any issues with the 7200.11 that i have had for the last 8 months. i currently 4 drives isnt quite an option due to cost and the fact that i dont have enough 3.5 slots in my case to put it.



i originally looked at the 2310 b/c of the price factor, but then i guess i got a little spooked by some of the reviews. is it hardware or software raid?
Click to expand...
It's a hardware one, but it's a Marvell chip rather than the Areca's Intel chip, and the 2310 doesn't have cache.

Fast. Reliable. Cheap - Pick 2. Choose, but choose wisely. I cannot make that decision for you. I can tell you that I'd rather have four drives in RAID-10 on the Highpoint than three drives in RAID-5 on the Areca.
 
DougLite said:
It's a hardware one, but it's a Marvell chip rather than the Areca's Intel chip, and the 2310 doesn't have cache.

Fast. Reliable. Cheap - Pick 2. Choose, but choose wisely. I cannot make that decision for you. I can tell you that I'd rather have four drives in RAID-10 on the Highpoint than three drives in RAID-5 on the Areca.
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ok, can you say which of the 3 choices the highpoint and areca are? i assume the highpoint is cheap and reliable?

why raid 10, why not raid 0+1? is there a performance/reliability/fault protection difference?
 
aggiestudd07 said:
ok, can you say which of the 3 choices the highpoint and areca are? i assume the highpoint is cheap and reliable?

why raid 10, why not raid 0+1? is there a performance/reliability/fault protection difference?
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The Areca is fast and reliable, the Highpoint is cheap and reliable.

The difference between RAID 10 and 0+1 is largely academic, but I'm encountering a mental block trying to explain it.

Have a look at this: http://aput.net/~jheiss/raid10/
 
aggiestudd07 said:
i have 1 7200.11 and 2 7200.12. never had any issues with the 7200.11 that i have had for the last 8 months. i currently 4 drives isnt quite an option due to cost and the fact that i dont have enough 3.5 slots in my case to put it.
Click to expand...

HDD's can have compatibility issues with RAID controllers which can cause the drives to be lost from the array and on top of that sometimes mixed drives like you have can cause some problems too. As for the money side, you're talking about dropping $300 on a controller here, so you can afford one more 1TB drive and a new case or in your situation probably just another 4-in-3 converter.
 
aggiestudd07 said:
can you post a link? are they affordable?
Click to expand...

The Enterprise stuff is competitive with others, but yes expensive. I just bought one of these for work. It is their mid card in terms of performance, 800mhz instead of 1.2ghz for their fastest. So far I am very happy with it.

I also have two of these at home, except mine are the PCI-X version. Been running for years with no trouble and fast enough to saturate gigE. Also very happy with these. In the future I hope that Supermicro releases decent open source drivers for their new pci-e nonraid SATA card, all the performance I need for archiving.
 
novadude said:
HDD's can have compatibility issues with RAID controllers which can cause the drives to be lost from the array and on top of that sometimes mixed drives like you have can cause some problems too. As for the money side, you're talking about dropping $300 on a controller here, so you can afford one more 1TB drive and a new case or in your situation probably just another 4-in-3 converter.
Click to expand...

i am asking about the raid card b/c i cant afford $300 on a card, which also implies that i cant afford another case or another hdd on top of that.

i will handle my finances seeing how i did not ask you for financial advice, you can help me out if you so choose for the specific question that i asked. otherwise my finances are absolutely none of your business and not to be discussed here or anywhere by anybody but myself.
 
longblock454 said:
The Enterprise stuff is competitive with others, but yes expensive. I just bought one of these for work. It is their mid card in terms of performance, 800mhz instead of 1.2ghz for their fastest. So far I am very happy with it.

I also have two of these at home, except mine are the PCI-X version. Been running for years with no trouble and fast enough to saturate gigE. Also very happy with these. In the future I hope that Supermicro releases decent open source drivers for their new pci-e nonraid SATA card, all the performance I need for archiving.
Click to expand...

i assume the 2310 and 2320 are pretty much the same but the 2320 just has 8 ports?

i might look into the 2310, but not immediately. i still have to figure out how i am gonna go about doing this, plus i have to also find a 1tb external to transfer all of my data to while i am building the array from my current drives.
 
wouldnt raid5 with 4 identical drives be better than raid10 with the same drives (performance & failure protection & disc space efficiency)?
 
aggiestudd07 said:
wouldnt raid5 with 4 identical drives be better than raid10 with the same drives (performance & failure protection & disc space efficiency)?
Click to expand...
Space efficiency: Yes.
Failure protection: No. A RAID-10 can survive two drive failures in certain scenarios, a RAID-5 array is toast if more than one drive fails in any scenario.
Performance/throughput: No, not in my experience with the Highpoint 2310. The Areca may handle RAID-5 better, but moving from RAID-5 to RAID-10 with four 500GB Seagate 7200.10 was a linear transfer boost of about 20MB/sec, according to HDTach.

As I said earlier, the only reason to use RAID-5 is if you need the absolute highest capacity per spindle.
 
longblock454 said:
4 identical drives, lets assume 1TB each:

Raid 5 = 3TB
Raid 10=2TB

Maybe I misunderstood what you meant?
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he meant raid 5 would be better for space efficiency since it offers 1 more tb than raid 10, however overall performance and failure tolerance is not as good as raid 10
 
aggiestudd07 said:
he meant raid 5 would be better for space efficiency since it offers 1 more tb than raid 10, however overall performance and failure tolerance is not as good as raid 10
Click to expand...

Yeah, I read it that way now, must have been having an aneurysm, my bad!
 
L S I is a brand of controller card. "LSI."
 
Adaptec 3085s (8 port external - I just looped some wires back in my case, personally) are cheap on Ebay. You should buy a battery for them for RAID-5, though, and that's kind of expensive. Also, the cables are like $40-50 for a 4 drive cable. It's still cheap for what it is though. The internal one is the 3805 but it's way more expensive on Ebay. I use it for RAID-10, not 5.
 
i have a 3805, though haven't set it up yet.
why is a battery necessary?
if i have a ups do i still "need" the battery?
 
Asposium said:
i have a 3805, though haven't set it up yet.
why is a battery necessary?
if i have a ups do i still "need" the battery?
Click to expand...

though i am obviously not an expert in this field, i do believe the backup battery is highly recommended even if you have a ups b/c what if your psu fails or some other catastrophic internal failure of that sort?
 
It's not just power outages you have to worry about with write-back cache. What if your computer crashes and shuts down? What if your 5 year old nephew comes in and thinks hitting power switches is fun?

Do yourself a favor and get a battery for your RAID card if you use write-back cache. And if you use RAID-5, do yourself a favor and use write-back cache.
 
dandragonrage said:
Adaptec 3085s (8 port external - I just looped some wires back in my case, personally) are cheap on Ebay. You should buy a battery for them for RAID-5, though, and that's kind of expensive. Also, the cables are like $40-50 for a 4 drive cable. It's still cheap for what it is though. The internal one is the 3805 but it's way more expensive on Ebay. I use it for RAID-10, not 5.
Click to expand...

dang, the card with the external ports is 1/2 the price of the internal card. are there any other differences?

also, b/w this thread and another thread titled "16 port Raid card", i am hearing to stay away from adaptec
 
dandragonrage said:
Do yourself a favor and get a battery for your RAID card if you use write-back cache. And if you use RAID-5, do yourself a favor and use write-back cache.
Click to expand...

IMO a UPS might be a better option. They are pretty cheap these days and can help protect against severe brown-outs as well. Most can be set to do a clean shutdown after the utility power has been off for X minutes.
 
longblock454 said:
IMO a UPS might be a better option. They are pretty cheap these days and can help protect against severe brown-outs as well. Most can be set to do a clean shutdown after the utility power has been off for X minutes.
Click to expand...

read my post #25 why i think just a ups is insufficient
 
aggiestudd07 said:
read my post #25 why i think just a ups is insufficient
Click to expand...

The battery "backup" on the RAID card only holds the memory of the card, doesn't complete the writes to the drives. If your PS fails, unless you have one sitting right there and you just happen to notice just when it dies, maybe!

Although the power required to maintain the memory is next to nothing I do wonder how much it helps when a hardware failure happens? Anyone with experience?
 
DougLite said:
Space efficiency: Yes.
Failure protection: No. A RAID-10 can survive two drive failures in certain scenarios, a RAID-5 array is toast if more than one drive fails in any scenario.
Performance/throughput: No, not in my experience with the Highpoint 2310. The Areca may handle RAID-5 better, but moving from RAID-5 to RAID-10 with four 500GB Seagate 7200.10 was a linear transfer boost of about 20MB/sec, according to HDTach.

As I said earlier, the only reason to use RAID-5 is if you need the absolute highest capacity per spindle.
Click to expand...

well, i think i am gonna give raid 10 a shot with the areca 1210 and see how it goes
 
when the areca gets here, is it best to install the card by itself before attaching the drives or just do it all at once?
 
LSI and raid10 for the win here too.
signature_distory.jpg
love it!
 
Depends on the model. The current cards can support 2TB, yes. All of the Areca cards listed here have 64-bit LBA for 2TB support, for example.
 
Perc 5 and 6.

I am thinking of getting the 6 since it has a bit more of a robust processor and does Raid 6, odd that Perc 5 does not since that processor is supposed to, no?
 
i am so excited i cannot help but post:i get the rest of my drives and areca card in tomorrow. too bad i wont be able to install any of it until the weekend after the 4th or July :mad:
 
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