RAID Options!

[skeeder]

Thanks to massive downloading, and the expansion of DVD rips no longer being "beautiful" at 1gb, and now the average HDDVD rip is...BIG...I need a good RAID setup and figured RAID5 would be logical. Now I have the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe board with an onboard raid controller. That raid controller I've never gotten to see anything that I hook up to it. Wondering what most people use here. RAID cards? onboard? What do you recommend for a good basic raid 5 setup?

 

[Tolyngee]

Although 750GB SATA drives are only $200 now, if you want IDE, cheapest I know of is to get a used 7500-8 3ware card off of Ebay (was just $25/$45 less than a month ago on a dutch auction...), and get some 300GB IDE drives for ~$60... You could quickly have a 2TB raid-5 array going for ~$500...

 

[skeeder]

I prefer sata

I have 4 onboard ports that are SATA II.

Anyone else with the same board got these working?

 

[Tolyngee]

I prefer sata

I have 4 onboard ports that are SATA II.

Anyone else with the same board got these working?

Me... But since you are having trouble using the on-board, I thought I would suggest the cheapest alternative...

And I wouldn't recommend the a8n-sli deluxe on-board for raid-5....

 

[piako]

Since you have a PCI 4x slot you could get a RAID card for that slot.
RocketRaid 2320 (8-port), 4x slot, $230
RocketRaid 2310 (4-port), 4x slot, $140
RocketRaid 2300 (4-port), 1x slot, $110

I would go with the 2300 and get 4 of whatever you want and do raid 5 on your 1x. Although I'm finding I like raid 1 better.

 

[drizzt81]

I have a linux software RAID-5 array spanning both controllers on the A8N-SLI deluxe.

 

[skeeder]

I've used linux alot, but this is my main gaming machine...so linux is a no go.

What makes you like RAID 1 better?

 

[piako]

What makes you like RAID 1 better?

Less BS. Lower cost of ownership. Only thing I didn't like about raid 5 is the slow write speeds and higher total loss possibility with more disks. Quieter. Less power. Less space. Raid 1 I'm liking a lot more. I moved from 6x250 raid 10 to 2x750 raid 1. I figure in the future I'll be adding in groups of two for raid 1. Plus for your boot OS raid 5 write speeds would be kinda gay. If anything look into that flash boot/os for your boot and use some kind of raid5x3 or raid 1x2 for storage/backup. When you start getting over 4-5 disks in a raid 5 my data is too valuable to chance the failure, imo.

 

[Trepidati0n]

There are quite a few people who use RAID5 and variants for the correct reasons which is to give some degree of data integrity and operational capability in the event that you lose a drive for a reduced cost. However...your data is still not "backed up" and they/I know it.

 

[Dan_D]

I've used linux alot, but this is my main gaming machine...so linux is a no go.

What makes you like RAID 1 better?

Better redundancy.

Since you have a PCI 4x slot you could get a RAID card for that slot.
RocketRaid 2320 (8-port), 4x slot, $230
RocketRaid 2310 (4-port), 4x slot, $140
RocketRaid 2300 (4-port), 1x slot, $110

I would go with the 2300 and get 4 of whatever you want and do raid 5 on your 1x. Although I'm finding I like raid 1 better.

There is no reason to go with any of those cards. In the end they aren't any faster or better than the onboard controllers. The key here is to figure out why he can't use the onboard RAID controllers, not slap a bandaid on it with more hardware the original poster doesn't need.

Me... But since you are having trouble using the on-board, I thought I would suggest the cheapest alternative...

And I wouldn't recommend the a8n-sli deluxe on-board for raid-5....

Again, that problem can be solved assuming the controller still works. There is no need to buy hardware if he has perfectly good controllers onboard. The only reason you would want to do that is if you were interested in purchasing a much higher end controller for the performance reasons.

Thanks to massive downloading, and the expansion of DVD rips no longer being "beautiful" at 1gb, and now the average HDDVD rip is...BIG...I need a good RAID setup and figured RAID5 would be logical. Now I have the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe board with an onboard raid controller. That raid controller I've never gotten to see anything that I hook up to it. Wondering what most people use here. RAID cards? onboard? What do you recommend for a good basic raid 5 setup?

Most use onboard controllers. I don't because I prefer a RAID controller with a dedicated IO processor onboard. Plus I like some of the additional features and the option to move the controller to another computer with ease to recover my data should the need arise.

Next question is why doesn't your RAID work?

Have you enabled RAID in the BIOS? Have you setup all the correct ports for RAID? Have you gone into the RAID BIOS (Usually F-10 for NVRAID controllers) and created the array?

Next, are you installing Windows on the array? If so, did you hook up the floppy and get/create a RAID driver installation floppy? Are you pressing F6 once the Windows Setup begins when prompted?

 

[unhappy_mage]

There is no reason to go with any of those cards. In the end they aren't any faster or better than the onboard controllers.
...
Plus I like some of the additional features and the option to move the controller to another computer with ease to recover my data should the need arise.

These two statements don't add up to me. Could you expound on this a bit?

 

[Dan_D]

These two statements don't add up to me. Could you expound on this a bit?

The cheaper controllers listed above aren't going to be much if any faster than onboard controllers.

In some cases the higher end controllers have some nicer features like online capacity expansion that the onboard controllers do not. Plus, it's easier to move a controller card and drives to another machine to access them. If your board dies and you are running NVRAID and the only thing avaiable to you is Intel Matrix RAID, the configurations won't be compatible.

 

[unhappy_mage]

The cheaper controllers listed above aren't going to be much if any faster than onboard controllers.

In some cases the higher end controllers have some nicer features like online capacity expansion that the onboard controllers do not. Plus, it's easier to move a controller card and drives to another machine to access them. If your board dies and you are running NVRAID and the only thing avaiable to you is Intel Matrix RAID, the configurations won't be compatible.

The Highpoint controllers linked above do capacity expansion and will let you move from one system to another. They may not have the speed benefits of, say, an Areca card, but they're half as expensive or less. In my opinion, they're a good compromise between the dirt-cheap onboard controllers and a high-end (read: expensive) LSI or 3ware or Areca card. Don't get me wrong - if you've got the money for a better card, it might be worth buying it. But for more budget-constrained systems, the Highpoint cards are a perfectly valid choice.

 

[skeeder]

Next question is why doesn't your RAID work?

Have you enabled RAID in the BIOS? Have you setup all the correct ports for RAID? Have you gone into the RAID BIOS (Usually F-10 for NVRAID controllers) and created the array?

Next, are you installing Windows on the array? If so, did you hook up the floppy and get/create a RAID driver installation floppy? Are you pressing F6 once the Windows Setup begins when prompted?

The way the A8N is configured there are 4 SATA I connectors and 4 SATA II connectors (NVRAID) any drive I hook up to the SATA II connectors it says its an invalid RAID drive and won't boot.

I'm not trying to boot off the raid part...it just won't let me use it. I'll try again with NVRAID disabled and the SATA controller enabled.

 

[drizzt81]

The way the A8N is configured there are 4 SATA I connectors and 4 SATA II connectors (NVRAID) any drive I hook up to the SATA II connectors it says its an invalid RAID drive and won't boot.

I'm not trying to boot off the raid part...it just won't let me use it. I'll try again with NVRAID disabled and the SATA controller enabled.

May I ask what port your boot drive is using?

 

[skeeder]

its using the black ports that are SATA I, my boot drive is my 74GB raptor.

 

[Madwand]

From the online specs., the NV RAID version on this board doesn't support RAID 5, and the SI 3114 is on the PCI bus. So the on-board RAID 5 choice doesn't look like a good one here.

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=375&l1=3&l2=15&l3=148&l4=0

You can try it, but the odds are very high that write performance would be very poor. (Although this is not the case with every on-board RAID 5 implementation, at least for sequential writes.)

RAID 0+1 might be a decent option if you're willing to take the storage inefficiency. Going for drives with low $/GB can help.

In any case, keeping your boot drive separate from the array is a good idea.