RAID using Intel ICH8R (onboard)

[technology-sponge]

Sorry if these seem like dumb/repetitive questions - I haven't really kept up with PC tech for the past year and a half, and so have forgotten most things/unaware of new developments.

Currently have a GA-965P-DQ6 rev1 with 3x 250GB disks in RAID0 using the intel chipset.

Can I create a second RAID array using 2x 1TB disks on the intel controller? (Have not bought the disks yet) ie, have 3 disks in RAID0 + 2 disks in RAID1 on the same controller?

Is there a limitation to the size of the RAID volume? It will be RAID0 so the max volume should be around ~1TB.

My motherboard also has a JMicron (GBSATA2) controller with 2 ports, but I prefer not to use it after hearing all the BSOD/Driver issue horror stories and the lower performance as it's attached to the PCIe bus, not directly to the (south?)bridge.

Any help is much appreciated.

(Asked a similar question in a local forum, but I got told told to buy the disks and "suck it" so figured I'd come back to TH forums after 1.5 years of inactivity )

 

[specialk90]

No you cannot. Your board only has 4 ports out of 6 that can be used for Raid. I know as I have a few boards with the same ICH8R chipset and have Raid on all of them.
Btw, did you know that you can setup a 2nd Raid array on your current 3 drives? If you are wanting data safety, which is what I deduce from your wanting Raid 1(and I commend you for being smart), you could add a 4th 250GB drive and run the OS/Apps on a Raid 0 array and create a Raid 10 array for storage. Or get those 2 1TB drives and do a Raid 0 & a Raid 1 and use the 250s for backup.

 

[technology-sponge]

Damn. Looks like I'll have to fork out for a PCIe card with RAID. Really hate JMicron chips

I need the 2x1TB drives mainly for sheer storage capacity of rarely modified files, while the 3x250's are already in a matrix raid - 60GB volume 32kb RAID0 for the OS and 690GB 128kb RAID0 which I use as a fast scratch disk for video/audio editing, virtual machines etc.

(Speaking of redundancy, the 60GB partition gets ghosted, and the 690GB partition files synchronised to an external 750GB drive)

Thanks for your suggestion though.

 

[specialk90]

Sorry to burst your bubble(not that I really want to), but you are so lucky as to have a Gigabyte motherboard which is not compatible with most hardware raid cards. I don't know the exact reason, but I have seen numerous people using all different brands of raid cards and not having any luck. There might be a few cards that will work but I vividly remember why I chose ASUS boards for my Raid needs.

You might be able to get away with using a PCI-Express "x1" raid card. There is a conflict using the 2nd x4/16 lane.

 

[technology-sponge]

Hmmm... I was looking at something like this: http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=210_385&products_id=5961

PCIe x1 card. Not exactly a Adaptec/3Ware/Highpoint RAID card, but probably good enough for my needs.

I guess my other option is to get a external RAID DAS box... I can only find 2 models for sale locally though - Vantec and Thecus. The Vantec has atrocious RAID1 performance and the Thecus has some issue where hard disks are limtied to 500GB.

 

[geofelt]

Are you really getting something from raid?

The value of raid-1 for protecting data is that you can recover from a hard drive failure quickly.
It is for servers that can't afford any down time.
Recovery from a hard drive failure is just moments.
Fortunately hard drives do not fail often.
Mean time to failure is claimed to be on the order of 1,000,000 hours.(100 years)
Raid-1 does not protect you from other types of losses such as viruses,
software errors,raid controller failure, operator error, or fire...etc.
For that, you need EXTERNAL backup.
If you have external backup, and can afford some recovery time, then you don't need raid-1.

There is generally no real world(vs. synthetic transfer rate benchmarks) performance advantage to raid of any kind.
Go to www.storagereview.com at this link: http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=SingleDriveVsRaid0
There are some specific applications that will benefit, but
gaming is not one of them. Even if you have an application which reads one input file sequentially, and writes
it out, you will perform about as well by putting the input on one drive, and the output on the other.

 

[specialk90]

Geofelt....please don't make these ridiculous statements about Raid not having any real world performance benefit. Most people aren't secluded to playing games - they are using their computers for real work.

Back to the Real world.

Don't ever get Thecus for DAS or NAS. I have tried their DAS with raid 1 and the drives got WAY too hot.
What about syncing them up with 1 internal and 1 external like you already do?

 

[technology-sponge]

geofelt:

I can assure you, yes. It shaves about 3-4 minutes off boot time, and is a miracle when running two or more virtual machines in parallel, working with large files (iso, rar, zip etc) and for editing 20GB a/v files. I have had several drives fail on me, and having replaced more than 100+ drives while doing desktop repairs a few years ago, losing 500GB+ data is NOT fun.



specialk90:

I think I'll buy the drives now (well when the shops reopen after the public holidays), and if RAID doesn't work out using ICH8R/Jmicron/Cheapo $20 PCIe card, I'll leave it as two separate hard disks and sync.