Recommend PCI/PCI-E RAID card for Sata2

Ghost$nipa

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 27, 2004
Messages
227
I am looking to make a nice file back up server and want to look into Raid cards.

$100.00 is budget..

I am looking for something that is reliable and proven.

Will have 4x160 GB Sata

Just back wide variety of data.

I have used Raid 0 1 and 5

I prefer Raid 5...

I am sure there are people that have used Raid cards with dependable performance. OS will be XP.
 
does not exist...
well, maybe a software card, but just do a Linux raid with Samba. works better and is cheaper. plus you'll learn something new.
 
Are you looking for a hardware RAID or software RAID card? And what interface does it have to be? PCI? PCI-E? PCI-X?
 
I meant to say PCI or PCI-X that small micro connector on the motherboard.

Software or Hardware....doesn't matter to me.
 
I meant to say PCI or PCI-X that small micro connector on the motherboard.

What smal micro-connector are you talking about? Are you talking about PCI-E x1? And what motherboard will you be using?
 
I meant to say PCI or PCI-X that small micro connector on the motherboard.

Software or Hardware....doesn't matter to me.

The small micro connector is either a pci-e 1x slot or an AMR slot. If we are talking about the micro slot on the mobo in your sig it is pci-e 1x. Also that mobo already has support for 4 drives in raid. For $100 you are really not going to find a new hardware raid card. Mostly you will just find stuff at the same level as your integrated. You should be able to find a reliable software raid card for that amount. One of the low end Rocketraid cards perhaps.
 
Okay thank you...

My hardware for this RAId set up will be on the following

Asus P5B
2 GB DDR
4x160GB Sata2
1x120GB = Os install

I don't want to use my Abit motherboard for the RAID card since it is used for SLi already and onboard RAID 0 for games.
 
Would be the Pentium D 820

The video card is 7600GT

Actually the computer is just hooked up to network cable and that it. I log onto it using remote and access the files through network on windows. I wasn't sure if the computer would function without a video card.
 
I wasn't sure if the computer would function without a video card.
Many motherboards don't boot at all unless a video card is installed.

Do note that you will see high CPU usage since that Highpoint card does not have a XOR processor necessary for a true hardware RAID setup.
 
I would use a PCI video card and put a RAID card in your PCI-E 16x slot. If you don't have one, you can pick up an ancient one off eBay for probably under $10 shipped. My dual Xeon server only had an 8mb ATI Rage (integrated), so you don't need anything special. Current one has a PCI-E 1x Matrox card, but those aren't cheap, so just stick with a PCI video card. As for RAID cards, you can pick up a PERC 5/i (8 port hardware RAID card) on eBay for about $100. Just be sure to cover up pins 5 and 6 so it works in your board.
 
If you want to get into RAID 5, look for some Areca / LSI / Perc5i cards. Most of them can be had for under $200 on ebay.
 
If you want to get into RAID 5, look for some Areca / LSI / Perc5i cards. Most of them can be had for under $200 on ebay.

I second the Perc 5/i here. I got the entire kit (Card + BBU + cables) for under $200 shipped. Now, I know that's out of your budget, but it is hardware RAID and does allow up to 8 drives, so you're not limited if you want to upgrade in the future.
 
I have used the hotpoint card in a VERY small server which was basically a windows share for a point of sale application and for what was needed in this application (data integrity and reasonable file access speed under WinXP) it was fine. It gets you no-nonsense bootability for a RAID 1 setup with windows. As stated above, no XOR engine onboard, so it's not super fast and it does put some load on the host. I tested drive failures numerous times and the host OS chugged right along after the failure. After the failures I re-inserted the bad drive and I was able to rebuild the array every time.

For what was needed for this situation it was a good card. I would carefully examine the limitations of such a card in other scenarios, and if I was running Linux I would certainly use software raid as it's much faster than most of the RAID drivers for windows.
 
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