Controller 1: Adaptec AHA-2410SA
The first controller we used for our benchmarks was the Adaptec AHA-2410SA , which was provided by Western Digital with the RAID edition hard drives. Two Silicon Image SATA chips take care of two hard drives each, and an Intel RISC processor deals with parity calculation for RAID 5 redundant arrays. The card also comes with 64 MB cache memory.
We already reviewed this controller when we took a look at SATA backplanes six months ago. We already know that the Adaptec device was never designed for maximum data transfer performance, but rather for compatibility and good I/O performance. As a result, we decided to use a second controller for throughput benchmarks.
Controller 2: Areca ARC-1120
Back in December 2004, we took a close look at the Taiwanese manufacturer Areca's ARC-1120 - one of the few devices supporting double redundancy RAID 6 arrays. In contrast to the Adaptec device, this is an eight-channel device and allows for much higher bandwidth.
