RAID controller Recommendations

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Dakkon426

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Apr 29, 2007
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I'm looking to purchase a raid controller for use with 5 2TB drives I'm looking something that has has at least 256 MB cache and pci-xpress interface. so far i have looked at the HighPoint RocketRAID 4320 and the PERC 5i but the 4320 seems to not like 2tb drive and the 5i doesn't appear to have very many features. any input would be great.
 
I would recommed an Areca controller. I purchased and areca 1230 off ebay(dealer) about 4 months ago for $350 and it had 1GB cache. It is PCIE. It has 12 SATA2 ports. I initially created raid5 using four WD 2TB green drives. This past week I added another four 2TB green drives (same as the ones I had before). I set the TLER to 7 seconds. I did an online expansion, it took about 26 hours total and I now have and array with 12.7TB of usable space. My read speed exceed 340MB/s sustained. I couldn't be happier.
 
i woiuld explore going with a 9260-8i or one of the other flavors of 6gb/s controllers available now. by this time next year almost all drives will have a 6 gb/s interface, and you will be left with old tech.
 
Dakkon426 said:
I'd like to be around $300-400 range but i can go up to about $500
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I would go with Intel RS2BL080 (it's a copy of LSI 9260-8i). Intel card is around $440, LSI around $500. I would go with cheapest one. Both are new cards.Both are PCI-E 2.0 8 with 512MB of cache.

Check newegg or provantage....
 
I run a dell perc 6i, couldn't be more happy with it.

Doing a raid 5 with 4x seagate 1.5tb's

Best part is it's cheap
 
Areca 1680

Theres no advantage to SAS2 unless you have SSDs
 
nitrobass24 said:
Areca 1680

Theres no advantage to SAS2 unless you have SSDs
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What?!?! It is new, therefore it MUST be better, even for mechanical disks. Sure, mechanical disks can't sequential read more than half that, even at the outer edges of the disk, but at the rate of mechanical disk speed increase SATA2/ SAS 6.0gpps is going to be limiting drives that come out 4-7 years from now.

SSD wise, the need for 6.0gbps is already here. Big difference between the needs of flash and the needs of spindle disks at this point.
 
pjkenned said:
What?!?! It is new, therefore it MUST be better, even for mechanical disks. Sure, mechanical disks can't sequential read more than half that, even at the outer edges of the disk, but at the rate of mechanical disk speed increase SATA2/ SAS 6.0gpps is going to be limiting drives that come out 4-7 years from now.

SSD wise, the need for 6.0gbps is already here. Big difference between the needs of flash and the needs of spindle disks at this point.
Click to expand...

Im willing to bet that numbers on a 5 disk R5 with 5x WD1tb Blacks benches the same on both the 1680i and 9260-8i.

Yea SAS2 is better than SAS.
But if you cannot utilize it then whats the point?

Yea you can reach a throughput ceiling on the 1680 around 800MB/s and you can go higher on the 9260, but again whats the point? Do you have 10gbps ethernet, or Fiber network?

Are drives in 4-7 years going to be able to utilize it....yea sure, but in 4-7yrs are you going to be using this controller? Chances are the answer will be No.

From someone who has used both cards, I would pick the Areca over the LSI/3ware because the RAID mgt. software is SO much better.
Unless you have an SSD array i just dont see the point in getting the LSI at this time.
It has potential to be faster in certain setups vs the Areca, but that does not necessarily make it the better card for every situation.

Just my 2cents :)
 
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