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Which Raid Card is the Best?

B

Billz

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 5, 2005
Messages
200
Hi guys,
This is my first time posting on here. I have a Gateway P4 1.4ghz (I think) 256meg pc with a WD 20 and a WD 200 hard drives, and a cd-rom drive and a cdrw drive. I hav been looking for a Raid card for awhile, and would like to know which one is the best for under $100. I want to stick with IDE drives right now, but in the future I may want to go with Sata drives. I really want a Raid card that can support up to 8 drives and do RAID 0, 1, 5. I need one that won't max out the cpu either. Does anyone have any good suggestions?

Thanks,
Billz
 
Under $100 8 ports, both SATA and IDE and supports Hardware RAID 5?

No such animal.

==>Lazn
 
Id ask what type of RAID do you want? And why?

a Parity array isn't something Id discourage, having run a 6 channel myself for a few years
and a performance array is something you might actually need, but there is alot of misinformation about RAID
and we sort of want to see if why you want it meshes with reality. ;)

especially since you just said "RAID"

there are caveats and alternatives to both and they might be better suited to your needs
 
A basic 8 port card SATA will be like $150, one that wouldnt support RAID5. Quality 8-port (SATA) hardware RAID 5 cards cost $400+, A decent software raid-5 card (SATA 8 port) will run like $250 (eg Highpoint Rocketraid). Cards with both SATA and IDE run go for $10-50, but they only have 1 or 2x SATA ports, and 1x IDE. A basic 4x IDE controller card will run $60-90, the 90 dollar one supporting RAID-5, however the lower end ones are 4x IDE, but only support 4 devices. What I would do is get a 4-port SATA card, or a basic 8-port sata card, load linux up onto the computer, and setup a software raid. Use your IDE drives on the computer's IDE controller, and additional SATA drives on the sata card. the 1.4Ghz CPU should easily be sufficient for running a software raid, unless you're having a lot of heavy writing to the array, or a large number of users accessing it, which is unlikely for a home file server. Also, when you use a RAID card (hardware or software) to set up a RAID5 array, and the card dies, data on the array is lost unless you can acquire the same model card with the same BIOS. If controller or computer dies with software raid through linux, you get another equivalent controller, plug the drives into it in another machine with Linux, and you can still read the array.
 
As a man on a horse once said...

"Ya cain't get thar from here"

-Larry

Billz said:
Hi guys,
This is my first time posting on here. I have a Gateway P4 1.4ghz (I think) 256meg pc with a WD 20 and a WD 200 hard drives, and a cd-rom drive and a cdrw drive. I hav been looking for a Raid card for awhile, and would like to know which one is the best for under $100. I want to stick with IDE drives right now, but in the future I may want to go with Sata drives. I really want a Raid card that can support up to 8 drives and do RAID 0, 1, 5. I need one that won't max out the cpu either. Does anyone have any good suggestions?

Thanks,
Billz
Click to expand...
 
HI, I basically have alot of files to store and not alot of money. I get the hard drives on sale from office max when their avalible. So I'd defanatly want IDE. I would like the capacity to expand to 6 drives or more. And I would also like them to be in one logical drive.
Thanks,
Billz
 
In your case I would look to pickup a Promise SX6000 used somewhere. Then look to get a SATA one in the future when you are ready for SATA drives. Failing that, I am not sure what you can find that would fit your needs and budget.

==>Lazn
 
If you need to go the route of IDE drives, this might work. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816115021. Up to 8 drives. Raid5 - not hardware raid5 though, doesnt matter for storage. The next cheapest IDE pci card that supports up to 8 drives is a Promise Card, that doesnt do RAID5 - meaning you'd have to go the route of linux and software raid. For storage, you could do JBOD to utilise all your storage, but then if a drive goes out, you lose the data on it. Raid5 is your best bet, but keep in mind that all your hdds need to be the same capacity for RAID5.
 
Lazn_Work said:
In your case I would look to pickup a Promise SX6000 used somewhere. Then look to get a SATA one in the future when you are ready for SATA drives. Failing that, I am not sure what you can find that would fit your needs and budget.

==>Lazn
Click to expand...

Id second a large multi-channel parity card, do to the added storage efficiency youd get populating 6 ot more channels, (total GBs of the number of drives minus one HDD, w\ matched HDD, which youd want)
I own an SX6000 and the other two things that recommend it are a dedicated RISC processor for XOR calculation and up to 128MB SDRAM (PC133) cache (ECC or unbuffered) the software management utility is OK if basic.

There are also the 3ware Escalades with upto 12 Channels in IDE
and well all things come to those who wait :p

(latest toy somewherre on the order of a +98% discount)


just a few returns
http://cgi.ebay.com/3Ware-3W-6800-E...ryZ39968QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/3Ware-Escalade-...ryZ39968QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/3Ware-Escalade-...ryZ41994QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


make sure you get 32bit 33MHz compaitibility if you plan on using a typical mobo
need to research that 12 port linked, looks like its 64 bit 66MHz but possibly backward compatible to 32\33
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
I really don't need raid 5, but i would definatly want raid 1, or 0.
thanks,
Billz
 
I didn't _really_ need it either, but after running 10 years with single, non-redundant drives in my home server and being DAMNED lucky, I'm glad I did it.

I have some piece-of-mind now.

The controller is the big hit. The drives are really nothing since they can be used anywhere.

A good TRUE hardware-parity RAID-5 controller will cost you $450 and up though.

-Larry


Billz said:
I really don't need raid 5, but i would definatly want raid 1, or 0.
thanks,
Billz
Click to expand...
 
You may not NEED raid 5, but it can't hurt. That is especially true if you're worried about
not losing files.

I picked up a couple of drives about a year ago to use the raid controller on my MB.
Had everything set up in a nice RAID 0 config, and tons of space. about 4 months later
one my drives started giving the click of death noise intermintently. By the time I got a
chance to replace it, it had completely died/froze/stuck. Wouldn't come up for anyhing.
Being that it was RAID 0 I was about to lose evertything on there, about 350 megs.
Luckily I read a few articles on "last ditch efforts" to revive a dead drive. I did just about
evertying but beat it with a hammer, though the 3 foot drop to hard surface wan't too gentle
either. I was finally able to mount it ONCE.
Needless to say I spent the remainder of the night burning the important irreplacable files
over to DVD, and let the rest fall by the wayside. I can always reinstall apps... After
I backed up, I decided to reboot, to see if it would come back up. Nope. Dead!
Tried for about half an hour just for fun to make it come back to life with no luck.
Thankfully, I was able to recover my stuff.

Drive was replaced the next day, and all has been well since. Raid 0 is nice for seeing
one really big drive, but if you lose one, you've lost all hope. Since you're on a budget, I
doubt you'll be buying a large tape backup system to archive the array. Raid 5 can save you the headaches and pain I went through.

good luck
-Jeff
 
Billz said:
I really don't need raid 5, but i would definatly want raid 1, or 0.
thanks,
Billz
Click to expand...

RAID 1 (Mirror) 50% efficiency
RAID 0 (Stripe) performance space that you couldnt possibly employ that much of
you need storage space not performance space RAID 0 is out
the potential for data loss increases with each drive added to the stripe,
loose one drive its all gone

at this point Id ask why you need such a large single volume
it can likely be done without hardware RAID and possibly with just mounting volumes as folders in NTFS

RAID 5 offers redundancy and for a single user employing a card with both a decent cache and dedicated XOR engine nearly the same performance as any other "storage" drive
(not a performance like say a Raptor), but more importantly it has the best efficiency increasing with the number of drives in the array

minimum number of drives is 3
3 x 100GB = 200 GB
4 x 100GB = 300 GB
6 x 100GB = 500 GB
8 x 100GB = 700 GB
12 x 100GB = 1100GB

you can put a bullet through one drive and still be OK as long as you don't loose a second drive before the rebuild is complete
 
Since I only have IDE drives and my computer motherboard only supports up to 4 drives, I need some way to add more drives.

Thanks,
Billz
 
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