Raid Ports

[scottm350]

Hello,

This probably seems like a really stupid question but here goes...

I want to buy a RAID card for a 6 Drive NAS i'm building. What is the relationship between ports on the RAID card and number of drives I want to use. Do i need one port per drive? I want to use RAID 5 or 6.

Thanks

 

[Ubrales]

Welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums!

Yes! Each drive must be plugged into a SATA port that is governed by the RAID controller. Then you setup RAID using those ports. The RAID card manual will explain this, and also how to setup RAID.

 

[tokencode]

The answer is yes but it has nothing to do with the number. Each RAID Level has a miniumum number of drives, RAID 5 needs at least 3 drives, RAID 6 needs at least 4 drives, RAID 1 needs 2 drives, RAID 10 needs 4 drives.

For RAID 5 you need at least 3 available ports.
For RAID 6 I would not use less than 5 ports, if you use 4 drives in RAID 6, you might as well go RAID 10.


Hope this answers your question.