Tom's Hardware > Forum > Storage > NAS/RAID & Technologies > Please recommend RAID 5 (hardware based) controller card...

Please recommend RAID 5 (hardware based) controller card...

Forum Storage : NAS/RAID & Technologies - Please recommend RAID 5 (hardware based) controller card...

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Rob00GT   06-23-2009 at 05:22:38 PM

I would like to add a RAID 5 controller card to my workstation, but I'm having trouble finding one that meets the following criteria:

* Hardware based RAID 5, the cpu will be busy doing workstation things and I don't want the drain of a host-based controller.
* At least 4 ports for SATA drives, if it matters drives will be Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda 11's.
* PCI Express format. (x4 or x8, doesn't matter which as my motherboard has an available x16 slot)
* Competitive price, it can't cost more than a new computer.

Can anyone recommend a "value" card that meets my needs? I really can't spend a thousand dollars on a card, if it comes to that I'll just build a dedicated file server.

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Bronze Storage badge sub mesa   06-24-2009 at 01:54:13 AM
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Well Areca ARC-1210 (4-port) or ARC-1220 (8-port) are decent choices. They have good features and have good (internal) RAID5 performance.

Cheaper would be using Hardware-Assisted controllers, which use your CPU only for the parity calculations, but otherwise process the RAID logic on its own processor. Such a controller is the Highpoint RR23xx series, such as RR2320. Both controllers mentioned have good driver support both for Windows and Linux/BSD.

Aside from this, if you are willing to setup a BSD or OpenSolaris system, you could enjoy using the ZFS filesystem with internal RAID-Z (enhanced RAID-5 with similar security features), using only the onboard chipset SATA connectors. New chipsets deliver 6 SATA ports, but with this kind of software RAID setup, you can easily add a non-RAID controller adding 2 more SATA ports to get total of 8 disks in one RAID5 array; if you wish. This route is cheaper since you don't have the cost of the Hardware RAID controller.

------------------------------ ...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
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Gatorbait   06-24-2009 at 04:30:36 PM
- 0 +

LSI has a few (Value line): http://lsi.com/storage_home/produc [...] index.html
[url=http://lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/internal_raid/megaraid_sas/value_line/index.html][/url]
3ware:http://www.3ware.com/3ware_home.htm
[url=http://www.3ware.com/3ware_home.htm][/url]

Just find one that you like and search for the best web price.

-Good luck,
-Gatorbait

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