Best raid controller for under $200, or do I even need a seperate controller

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dstarfire

dstarfire

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Apr 19, 2011
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I'm looking to switch from my MB's onboard raid controller to a dedicated card. I tried a Highpoint 640L controller, but it spends far too long scanning for drives, which it does on every restart.

DETAILS:
I'm currently running a raid 5 array (on 3x identical WD 2tb drives) using my motherboard's onboard controller (the AMD SB850 chipset). I use this array primarily for storing media files, installers, and a first layer of backups.

I recently upgraded my system drive to a 500GB SSD, attached to the same onboard controller. I'd like to switch the onboard controller to AHCI mode so I can get full benefit from the SSD's speed.

QUESTIONS:
* What's the best raid controller I can get for <$200 that will fit in a x1 or x4 PCIe slot? (I know I'll have to settle for some sort of software-based controller at that price range)

* Will switching to a dedicated controller actually make a difference in the SSD's performance?

 
Solution
B
I doubt you'd notice the difference unless you're really hammering the SSD, if even then. Most situations don't have a visually obvious performance difference between even PCIe SSDs and SATA SSds stuck with old first or second gen SATA ports, let alone between say AHCI or IDE or RAID on the same SATA port. The only real performance improvement I see here is slightly lower CPU utilization if you get a good RAID card that does the CPU work on its own.
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blazorthon

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Sep 24, 2010
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I doubt you'd notice the difference unless you're really hammering the SSD, if even then. Most situations don't have a visually obvious performance difference between even PCIe SSDs and SATA SSds stuck with old first or second gen SATA ports, let alone between say AHCI or IDE or RAID on the same SATA port. The only real performance improvement I see here is slightly lower CPU utilization if you get a good RAID card that does the CPU work on its own.
 
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Solution
wildfire707

wildfire707

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Dec 29, 2011
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All of the RAID cards will normally spend quite some time verifying drive integrity on startup. I use a file server with a Highpoint RocketRAID 2640x4 controller card myself, and it takes about two minutes to check the 4 drive RAID 5 array that I use.

If this is really a startup speed problem, you may want to consider getting a NAS device and use it for storage. I have considered doing this myself, but the Synology DS214 Play and the Drobo were the only options that looked promising for my usage and they are both around $300. Synology has the best software available and Drobo supports RAIDing different sized drives (at a much slower speed, however).

You can use motherboard RAID, and it will not take forever to restart - but it will also be notoriously fragile. Software RAID solutions store the RAID parameters on the drives, so they can get ruined on a bad power event or if more than one drive has a CRC error. It is true that this can happen with hardware RAID as well, but it is much less likely.

If you want to get the full benefit of the SSD speed, you can just run it off the motherboard controller and leave the RAID array on your Highpoint card.

Good luck!
 
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dstarfire

dstarfire

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Yeah, that was an unpleasant surprise the first time I used raid mode (of the onboard controller). However, the Highpoint card takes much longer for the same process, almost as long as the OS portion of the boot process.
 
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mac_angel

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I have a Highpoint in one of my systems as well, looking to buy another for another server I have. Right now, I'm using on board RAID and it is incredibly slow, so I've been looking around to see what is best for the price range too. Again, at home server, don't need anything super fast, just faster than the 5-10MB/s transfer speed I'm getting on the on board.
Anyway, I'm not sure about your specific Highpoint controller, but there should be a way to change the settings about verifying integrity, setting cache, boot up, etc, in either the software or the little built in BIOS (usually asks you to hit CTRL-H after your computer posts to get in to it).
Even a software RAID on a controller card will be much, much faster than the on board RAID.

BTW. I think some failed to read that you wanted to us the RAID card for your RAID 5 and switch your SSD to the motherboard.
 
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