I want to know what hardware is necessary for a typical RAID 10 configuration

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dustinhunt78

dustinhunt78

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I have a desktop PC that I finished building several months back that I want to incorporate RAID 10 into. In my "signature at the bottom of this post you can see my configuration. One thing in particular that I want to know is, "Do I need a RAID controller with an i7-4770k processor?" I read that the 4770k is RAID 10 compatible, but I do not know if that means that I do not need a RAID controller or not. I know that 4 drives are the minimum for RAID 10, but I know little more about the hardware requirements. I am fully aware what RAID 10's function is, but I have never set up RAID before and would greatly appreciate the input of someone who has had experience with RAID, particularly RAID 10. Thanks ya'll!
 
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Someone Somewhere

Someone Somewhere

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Actually, that board does support RAID. It's part of the chipset. 0, 1, 5, or 10.

You'd need to have all the drives plugged into the Intel (blue) SATA ports, set the SATA mode to RAID in the BIOS, then open the RAID config from there. It should be fairly obvious. Just make sure you don't have any data you need on the drives, and probably unplug all but the ones you intend to use for RAID. You don't want to wipe the wrong drive by accident.

EDIT: Ninja'd.
 
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dustinhunt78

dustinhunt78

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This sounds funny, but treat me like I'm a RAID idiot. LOL One thing to take into consideration......I truly do not care how much it costs, I want the best. I'm not rich, but if it's worth doing, it's worth buying the best. That said, what would be the absolute best, fastest, most reliable hardware configuration for setting up RAID 10. Before I do set it up, I will also be buying a Corsair 900d case, so I will have tons of room internally. If it is an internal setup it will be PCI of course, externally I will probably go with Thunderbolt. Should I go internally or externally? What is a solid RAID controller that you would recommend? When setting up RAID 10, does the system actually run off of the 4 hard disks in the RAID configuration or are they used for backup storage only and require a primary hard drive to run? These are some of the main questions that I have.

 
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dustinhunt78

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Alec Mowat

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Oh, it does. Didn't see that.

There's two SATA controllers, the 6 Port INTEL branded one contains the RAID controller, you'll need 4 matching drives. Pref WD RED, or 4 RAID compatible SSD's

You'll have to enable the RAID in the controller, than set up the disks as RAID 1-0, then install Windows to the new RAID.

Sometimes you need to install the RAID driver in the Windows setup, but that was not an issue in mycase.
 
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Alec Mowat

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For performance, the onboard RAID controller isn't that great. I actually get better performance (almost double) from two drives in a Windows software RAID than I did on my onboard hardware RAID.

A RAID controller has a dedicated processor and will max the output of the PCIe slot it's connected too. In this situation, you may need to install the driver if you want to install Windows onto the RAID controller disks.

Mind you.... a good RAID card isn't cheap.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103220
 
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dustinhunt78

dustinhunt78

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I have noticed that a good RAID controller isn't cheap. The one you have listed here is an 8 port controller. I should only need a 4 port controller for RAID 10, correct? I have noticed that there is a direct correlation to number of ports and price. Could you (or anyone else) recommend a 4 port (if 4 ports is indeed what I need for RAID 10) controller that is near the top of the line?

 
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dustinhunt78

dustinhunt78

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Thank you everyone. If anyone has any recommendation for top of the line or very near top of the line components I would be very grateful to hear them. I have studied this for some time, but much of what I know isn't that helpful because I am (or at least was before the posts here) very ignorant to what I actually need in terms of hardware to make up a good RAID system.
 
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Alec Mowat

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That's a lot of questions.

That said, what would be the absolute best, fastest, most reliable hardware configuration for setting up RAID 10

A dedicated PCI Express x16 RAID card will give the best performance, if you want operating system performance.

Should I go internally or externally?

If you want to go External, you could only do a storage drive and not an OS installation.

In this situation, I would actually recommend a 2 port NIC card and a NAS, like a QNAP TS-419P
http://www.qnap.com/en/?sn=822&c=1655&sc=1656&t=1660&n=6703

Directly connected both Network ports on the QNAP to the NIC on the system and set them to Teamed, that should give you 2x 1GB transfer speeds and a reliable, fast dedicated RAID-10.
The limiting factor for speed in this situation is the speed of the drives.

What is a solid RAID controller that you would recommend

I don't generally work with purchased RAID controllers. Depending on the situation, I'd actually recommend a storage server with a built in RAID card. It's easier to monitor and manage.
But Tom's has reviewed them in the past; http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sas-6gb-raid-controller,3028.html

When setting up RAID 10, does the system actually run off of the 4 hard disks in the RAID configuration or are they used for backup storage only and require a primary hard drive to run?

yes, it reads and writes to all four disks simultaneously
RAID 10 is for redundancy. You can drop two drives and maintain the structure.
The RAID5 with 4 drives would give you more available disk space but only allow for 1 disk failure.

Just to expand to the first part; you can install Windows on the RAID, if you are using the on board RAID controller.
If you are using a RAID card, you may need to install the RAID driver during the Windows installation first.
If you are using a NAS, you'll need to install Windows on the local system drive, than add the NAS.
If you just want it for storage, you can leave it as storage.

You can also use an SSD as a cache drive in some RAID controllers, which will boost read/write performance.
 
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Freakboi_pa

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Why are you looking at RAID 10? RAID 5, only requires 3 drives, it stripes and has parity for backup. You'd get good performance from this setup. I'd use the RAID built onto the motherboard, and see how it run, before shelling out money on an additional card. Just make sure you have up to date drivers, BIOS, and firmware from Intel.
 
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dustinhunt78

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Thank you so much. Having learned what I have learned, I think that I will go with the internal method so that I can run OS on it. That should give better performance due to RAID 0 part of RAID 10. And if I am correct, a 4 port PCI-e x16 controller is what I am looking for. I already
 
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dustinhunt78

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So how does RAID 5 compare/contrast to RAID 10? I assume that RAID 5 offers better performance, but RAID 10 offers better redundancy and protection. If you would be so kind, what is the determining factor in your preference to RAID 5 over RAID 10?
 
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Alec Mowat

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Just check the speeds on the RAID controllers. Some only perform at 6 Gbp/s, which is the same speed as normal HD. You want something that's 12.
 
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dustinhunt78

dustinhunt78

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In one of the posts up above someone recommended 12gb/s raid controller with 12gb/s ssd's. I thought that sounded a bit odd, as I already have a Samsung 840 Pro that is rated at the top of SSD's, and it's only 6gb/s. Seeing as that I am far more than satisfied with the Samsung 840 Pro, I think that I should stick to the 6gb/s RAID configuration to avoid what I see as a possible headache. LOL

 
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dustinhunt78

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Suppose you run your system on the 840 Pro, but have an external RAID solution simply for the purpose of redundancy?
 
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dustinhunt78

dustinhunt78

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If I went with the internal method and just used the RAID controller built in to my DZ87KLT-75k motherboard I could more than likely come out looking pretty good. All that I would actually need to buy is another 840 Pro SSD that way. I'm very happy with the overall speed of my system anyway. The 840 Pro is absolutely amazing! While more speed would be nice (it always is), my primary reason for wanting to set up a RAID configuration is for redundancy. Does that sound like a good idea to you?
 
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Freakboi_pa

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If it were me, I'd set the 840's up as RAID 0 for speed, running only my OS and some programs on it. Storage would be on standard magnetic drives, with back up's done every month or so, depending on how much the data changes.
I use my 3 SSD's for OS, programs, and SOME games. Steam is just to large for SSD's at this time.
 
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