Recommend a controller?

[TeeJayHoward]

SATA or SAS
PCIe or PCI-X
8-ports +
SATA-II prefered
Hot-Swap required
Individual drive LED pins prefered
RAID-5 prefered
Windows XP compatibility required
Debian compatibility prefered

Recommendations?

 

[xonik]

3Ware 9550SX-8LP
Areca AR-1120/-1220

GamePC has reviews of all of these controllers, and a nice comparison chart if you'd like to explore other options.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=9550sx4lp&page=2

 

[gerbiaNem]

Xbox360?

 

[unhappy_mage]

I wouldn't trust GamePC's results as far as I could throw them. I'd stick with the Areca card; 3ware has historically had the best support for Linux, but Areca has a guy writing the driver into the linux kernel, and it's GPL. This is approximately eight hundred times better than the binary-only layer other manufacturers use. 3ware is also in the kernel, but the performance/price is lacking. The Areca 1220 or 1120 are about $100 more than the 3ware, but they kick its butt in terms of performance.

If you plan to use the same controller on both Linux and Windows, you may end up with a back-and-forth sharing fat32 partition. That's yucky. If you haven't considered setting up a seperate file-server machine, now is the time to do so.

 

[xonik]

But do you doubt the data shown in their comparison chart? It's useful for first-glance evaluation of the playing field.

 

[unhappy_mage]

I don't doubt their ability to copy the statistics from the 3ware website, but I wouldn't trust their ability to benchmark it. Why in the world are *all* the lines wavy? I can see one adapter acting oddly like that, but all of them? I'll stick with my trusty tweakers review for now

 

[AreEss]

That depends.

Do you want a RAID controller, or do you want the latest attempt at one?
Let's throw out benchmarks. RAID is about reliability. Testing the Arecas and 3Wares, well, the only reason I offer any 3Ware is because I can get same-day replacement parts.

If you want serious RAID, forget the bargainbin fad-shop. You want an LSI Logic Ultra320-series or 150-series. If you're going SAS, you're going external enclosure, FC-AL connect, and Qlogic. If you want it to work, no questions asked, no problems, then LSI or FC-AL and Qlogic.

Both have beyond superb support for every OS out there. And I do mean every. Including Solaris x86.

 

[TeeJayHoward]

If you're going SAS, you're going external enclosure, FC-AL connect, and Qlogic. If you want it to work, no questions asked, no problems, then LSI or FC-AL and Qlogic.

Actually, the only reason I would chose an SAS controller is because it works with SATA drives. I've got two internal enclosures for SATA drives, and the SAS controller would hook to them. Fibre Channel drives... Heh. Wish I could afford it. Don't need it, though.

I suppose I should have been more specific. I'm gonna connect a couple 320GB SATA drives together, and I want something that's reliable, a bit redundant, and will support the little features of my enclosures, such as the independant drive leds. (Enclosure is the Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B) I'm sick of buying cheap crap that doesn't work as advertised, and willing to pay a little bit more for something decent. Performance is not too important, as I'm only going to be streaming video from it (DVD .ISOs and anime .AVIs). All data will also be backed up to DVD-Rs.

What I'm looking for isn't so much a RAID controller as an 8-port SATA controller with some nice features and decent support. RAID-5 would be nice, but it's not necessary, as all data can be easily restored from my DVD backups. Unfortunately, all controllers over 2 ports seem to be RAID, so... Well, hell. I'm not going to complain about extra features.

On another note - Why aren't there many 4x or even 1x PCIe SATA controllers?

Cheap option - Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 (But I've not heard anything good about HighPoint)

Expensive option - Areca ARC-1220 (But who can afford it? )

 

[unhappy_mage]

Even cheaper option (what I got, actually): Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8. Support in the kernel is supposedly on the way (in linux 2.6.15) and hopefully it'll work then. It's only $110 online, though, so it's half the price of its nearest competitor. It's a plain sata card (no raid support), sata-300, no ncq that I know of, *no hotswap* (but how do you plan to use it?) and LED connectors for everything. 8 ports for $110 isn't too bad.

 

[cnick79]

Anyone have any low cost ( sub $200 ) RAID-5 options for 4 SATA drives? I'm in the hunt and I'm hungry like the wolf.

 

[unhappy_mage]

Just over $200, the Highpoint 1820a. That's 8 ports but it leaves room for expansion later (you'll need it ). The 1810 is 4 ports and $172; I'd get the -20.

 

[TeeJayHoward]

Even cheaper option (what I got, actually): Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8. Support in the kernel is supposedly on the way (in linux 2.6.15) and hopefully it'll work then. It's only $110 online, though, so it's half the price of its nearest competitor. It's a plain sata card (no raid support), sata-300, no ncq that I know of, *no hotswap* (but how do you plan to use it?) and LED connectors for everything. 8 ports for $110 isn't too bad.

That's really not bad at all. And a supermico card connecting to a supermicro enclosure in a supermicro case...

My question, though, is... No hotswap support? I thought it was built in to the SATA specification? And I plan on using it via my 3-bay/5-drive enclosure. You said you have one of these? If so, could you test the ability to hotswap for me?

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but hotswap is the ability to remove a drive and insert another drive without turning off the machine, correct? Or just to reinsert the same drive?

 

[unhappy_mage]

That's really not bad at all. And a supermico card connecting to a supermicro enclosure in a supermicro case...

My question, though, is... No hotswap support? I thought it was built in to the SATA specification? And I plan on using it via my 3-bay/5-drive enclosure. You said you have one of these? If so, could you test the ability to hotswap for me?

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but hotswap is the ability to remove a drive and insert another drive without turning off the machine, correct? Or just to reinsert the same drive?

note; my shift key has stopped working. again. curse you vmware. hence the bad punctuation, etc thru this post. if it doesn't make sense think shift.

i have one of the cards, but not 9yet0 a hotswap enclosure. is it okay to just unplug a disk with the normal sata cable/ i believe hotswap includes swapping the drive for another with the machine on, but os support for this varies. you'll have to 'unmount' the drive somehow, so the os doesn't try to write to it and recieve a rude surprise.

i'm still working on a problem with option roms on this card; apparently it takes a relatively large amount of space, and won't initialize 9on my machine anyways0 when any other controllers are loaded. i've emailed supermicro about this to see if they can make a bios that doesn't take up so much space. i'll also be testing with a few other machines to see whether it's a card issue or a board issue.