Highpoint Raid 5 or nVidia Raid 5

[salje99p]

Hello all,

I've got his old machine that I thought I'd convert into a file server that would be running raid 5. Since the motherboard on that machine doesn't sport any raid at all I would need to buy a raid 5 card, and I've been looking at the Highpoint RocketRAID 1640. That card will cost me the same as if I would buy a new CPU and mother board sporting onboard Raid 5. So which is better from a performance and reliability standpoint? Going with Highpoint's RocketRAID or nVidia's nforce 430 or 5xx?

Cheers

 

[dragonsprayer]

after doing some research on that card it looks kinda of buggy

 

[chunkymonster]

The Highpoint RocketRAID 1640 does not support RAID5, but the RocketRAID 1740 does. Another controller to look at around the same price range is the PROMISE FastTrak TX4310.

I'm currently using a Highpoint 2310 as a cheap RAID5 solution and have used Promise as well as 3Ware in the past. I would recommend a dedicated controller card over mobo RAID anyday. Keep in mind tho, there aren't too many SATA PCI controller cards available anymore unless you snag one used as they have mostly switch over to PCI-express. Also remember that PCI-X controller cards are compatible with PCI slots. A good used controller card would be something like a 3ware 8500 or 3Ware 8506 or even a 3ware 9500s.

Good luck!

 

[TeraMedia]

If your MB and/or RAID card fail with a card-based config, you can use another of the same type of card, on any other computer. If your MB fails and you have MB-based RAID, you will probably need to replace it with the exact same MB and I'm not even sure that will work.

 

[baddad]

Try this card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115030
I've used a highpoint raid 5 card in my game server running linux with no problem.

 

[salje99p]

Thanks for that guys. Looks like I'll be going with RocketRAID 1740 (even though 1640 actually do support RAID 5). Prices here in New Zealand seem to be almost double those on Newegg.com. That's a shame. I'd like some cheap stuff...

 

[salje99p]

Oh, just one more thought. As I said before, this machine will be used as a file server. Will an Athlon XP 2000+ be sufficient to handle the RAID array? It'll just be this one RAID card with 4 HDDs.

 

[dragonsprayer]

Any feedback on this system would be apprciated - which raid card should we use?


well we were going to run highpoint with raid6 and 8 drives - 4 TB

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115031

Since the sandman said in a previous thread, that raid6 is difficult to configure we decided to go raid5. Since all the other cards are not vista compatible we are kind of out of optitions.

This htpc 8) systems is:

koolance large Lian Li 12 hdd 1000 watt series single pumper
mobo: evga a1 680i all water cooled v-reg, nb sb, cpu
cpu: qx6700 3.4-3.8ghz
hdd array 1: 8 x samsung 500 gb drives in raid5 or raid6 off pci-x card
hdd array 2: 2 x raptors 150gb in raid0 running off the sb raid
ram: muskin 3-4-3-11 ddr1000
gpu: evga 8800gtx oc, water cooled

os: vista ultimate using media plug-in to the media center to load manage and load movies
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this is being build as a htpc, video storage, dvd ripper - also streaming 3 xboxes with it.
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The question is:
which raid card??? first it was highpoint then we changed to LSI logic now i think we are going with acera. the sanman said raid6 was difficult to configure and we are not network engineers
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any feedback on this set is apprecated!!! Thx! :lol: