Which RAID card for velociraptors?

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mhaskell

[H]ard|Gawd
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I have two 300gb Velociraptors and an ASUS P5K deluxe. Looking to run the drives in RAID 0 ( I use engineering programs with 1-5gb size files). I have had no luck with setting up RAID 0 using the onboard controller (system is less stable) and would like to use an add in card for the best performance.

I have a free PCI-E slot as well.

Any links or experience?
 
mhaskell said:
I have had no luck with setting up RAID 0 using the onboard controller (system is less stable) and would like to use an add in card for the best performance.
Click to expand...

The onboard RAID controller on your mobo (Intel ICH9R) is actually pretty good and should give you close to the sort of performance as you'd get from a dedicated RAID card (plus it means you won't be tying up a PCIe slot). Can you explain more about the stability problems you're experiencing and exactly how you tried to set up the RAID using the onboard controller (presumably you're trying with the ICH9R rather than JMicron controller?)?

If you feel you need to go for a dedicated card could you give us an idea of your budget?
 
amp88 said:
The onboard RAID controller on your mobo (Intel ICH9R) is actually pretty good and should give you close to the sort of performance as you'd get from a dedicated RAID card
Click to expand...

^This. RAID0 involves pretty much 0 processing overhead. What sort of problems are you having with the onboard controller?
 
I would use the ICH9R to be honest.

Make sure you have the proper drivers installed.
 
I agree - use ICH9R if possible.

I have a P5Q Deluxe with ICH10R and Asus Drive Xpert. I've benchmarked both of those in Raid0 as well as two low end PCI-e cards, a PCI card, and a HighPoint 3210 PCI-e x4 card. From best to worst (used a pair of both 7200.11/w 32mb and a pair of WD640gb AALS (blacks):

ICH10R
HighPoint 3210
Low-end PCI-e
Asus Drive Xpert
PCI

The HighPoint card was just shy of the ICH10R performance, both at or above 200 MB/s with the WD blacks. The low-end PCI-e cards (one silicion image, one jmicron) topped out significantly lower at about 150 MB/s. Asus Drive Xpert topped out at about 130 MB/s.

IMHO, as a result of the above, although a dedicated raid card is not necessary for good Raid0 performance and Raid0 does not have CPU overhead, for whatever reason, the low-end $20-ish cards don't cut it. It would be a shame to put Velociraptors on the card the op refered to:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132008

I did have to jump through some hoops to use the HighPoint card with my ICH10R in Raid mode - had to "shut off" via a bios flash the HighPoints desire to allow only its drives to be boot drives. My research seemed to indicate this is not an uncommmon problem with many brands/makes of cards and some folks think it is a motherboard incompatibility and give up trying to use the card with onboard raid at the same time.

Edited to add: OP - if you end up going to a card for the Velociraptors and are limited to PCI-e x1, I'd recommend this card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115029
 
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