Recommended S-ATA controllers

[PikeyPriest]

I plan to run dual 72 Gb raptors in raid 0, but i am not sure what is the best controller to use. My MB is an ASUS P4T533-C and therefore predates the MB's with SATA so my only option is a controller card. BUT i have been hearing very negative things about the limits of the PCI bus, but would the 33 Mhz really limit the raid speed or will it still be much faster than my single 7200 RPM maxtor 40 gb drive?

Also, what are the best Raid 0 Dual channel cards? IS any format better for Raid 0 (Fat 32 or the new WinXP supported format [sorry forgot the name]). Any recommendations on cluster size..etc are welcome. I was thinking 8/8 or 16/16, but am open to suggestions.

Thanks for any help you can give
Nick

 

[sjonnie]

Get something like the Highpoint 1520, works fine. A single 74GB raptor is much faster than a 40GB, putting two in RAID0 should improve your continuous read / write performance, which I guess is really important for you if you're spending $600 on the upgrade. The bog standard PCI bus maxes out somewhere around 100MB/s which probably what a pair of WD740GDs will do in RAID0. RAID is not affected by the way you format the disk altough there is very little point setting the cluster size smaller than the stripe size, which in your case should be 128K.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/myanandtech.html?member=114979" target="_new">My PCs</A>

 

[jammydodger]

I would advise against getting any card based on the silicon Image 3112a controller I had problems with it and so did a few other ppl on the forumn. You might want to consider getting a new motherboard. Any p4 board with the ICH5r has SATA RAID built into the southbridge so you dont have the problem of saturating the PCI bus.

P4c 2.6@3.25
512Mb PC4000
2x120Gb 7200.7 in RAID0
Waterchill KT12-L30
Abit AI7
Radeon 9800Pro