Recommend low-to-mid range RAID cards???

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homerjelly

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 20, 2006
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Looking for a RAID card that is below $100 (either 2 port OR a 4 port) and I pretty much know squat about who's good and who's generic crap.

I have 4 HDs (all SATA 3Gbps) and I want to either do:

A) RAID 0 with 2 on the RAID card Only
RAID 1 with 2 on the ICH9R chipset OR on the RAID card
(RAID 0 set for installed Apps, Games, OS)
(RAID 1 set for Storage and place for automated backups of RAID 0 set)
OR

B) RAID 10 with all 4 on the RAID card
(Backup, Storage, Apps, everything!)

My motherboard has ICH9R chipset, so the performance has to be better that the chipset.

So I have 4 questions:
1) Any Suggestions for cards below $100?
2) Any Suggestions for cards in $50 area OR below?

3) Is RAID setup A a better choice than B?
4) If the controller for a RAID 1 setup fails, can I simply take the HD and plug it in a normal SATA controller to retrieve the data?

Any help or resources on this would be good! Thanks!
 
You can get an ok adaptec card for around 120 ish that will do raid 10 and isn't that bad for the price.
 
swatbat said:
You can get an ok adaptec card for around 120 ish that will do raid 10 and isn't that bad for the price.
Click to expand...

Any specific model? Instead of RAID 10, would it be able to handle 2 separate arrays?
Like a RAID 1 and a separate RAID 0?
 
homerjelly said:
Any specific model? Instead of RAID 10, would it be able to handle 2 separate arrays?
Like a RAID 1 and a separate RAID 0?
Click to expand...

Yes they will but I wouldn't run a raid 0 personaly.

What slot do you need a raid card for? PCI, PCI-E 1x, 4x,, PCI-X?

I just put a 1420 in my companies new mail server(we do it consulting and didn't really need anything to powerful) running a raid 10 and it seems to be doing well so far. In your case you would prob need a 1430 which is a pci-express card(4x slot) if your board has a 4x or higher spare slot on it.
 
swatbat said:
Yes they will but I wouldn't run a raid 0 personaly.

What slot do you need a raid card for? PCI, PCI-E 1x, 4x,, PCI-X?

I just put a 1420 in my companies new mail server(we do it consulting and didn't really need anything to powerful) running a raid 10 and it seems to be doing well so far. In your case you would prob need a 1430 which is a pci-express card(4x slot) if your board has a 4x or higher spare slot on it.
Click to expand...

Cool, sounds about what I need. And yes it's PCI Express I need (x1 or x4 is fine).

Well I don't mind the risk of RAID 0 as long as I setup a automated imaging of the drives to the RAID 1 set.

I'm going on the assumption that a RAID 0 is faster than a RAID 10 setup.
Also in RAID 10, all 4 drives are "tied" together.

Whilst if I have a separate RAID 1, the backup/data drives are separate from the "working" drives in the RAID 0.

Does this make sense?
 
homerjelly said:
Cool, sounds about what I need. And yes it's PCI Express I need (x1 or x4 is fine).

Well I don't mind the risk of RAID 0 as long as I setup a automated imaging of the drives to the RAID 1 set.

I'm going on the assumption that a RAID 0 is faster than a RAID 10 setup.
Also in RAID 10, all 4 drives are "tied" together.

Whilst if I have a separate RAID 1, the backup/data drives are separate from the "working" drives in the RAID 0.

Does this make sense?
Click to expand...

For desktop use I don't think you would notice the difference. Also if you want to do a backup don't put it to internal drives.

With a raid 10 you will prob average around 100 megs a second transfer rate vs the 60 or so you would see with a single drive. Can't answer the question of what a raid 0 would do as I don't use them. Burst rates on the raid10 would be a lot better.
 
swatbat said:
For desktop use I don't think you would notice the difference. Also if you want to do a backup don't put it to internal drives.

With a raid 10 you will prob average around 100 megs a second transfer rate vs the 60 or so you would see with a single drive. Can't answer the question of what a raid 0 would do as I don't use them. Burst rates on the raid10 would be a lot better.
Click to expand...

Ah okay, then. The internal drives are for frequent automated backups.
I have an external drive for manual/less frequent backups.

Plus if it's possible, I want to sync the internal HD backup data on the storage drive on another comp I have (for redundancy).

Thanks for the info!
 
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