cheap RAID 5 controller?

[ECM]

Does anybody have a cheap (<US$100) RAID 5 controller they can
recommend? If not that cheap, how cheap can I go?

Thanks for any info!
Peace!
ECM

 

[Bennett Price]

Does anybody have a cheap (<US$100) RAID 5 controller they can
recommend? If not that cheap, how cheap can I go?

Thanks for any info!
Peace!
ECM

You have to determine, first, whether you want SCSI RAID or SATA RAID.
Then you have to determine how many drives will be in the RAID array.

 

[S.Heenan]

Does anybody have a cheap (<US$100) RAID 5 controller they can
recommend? If not that cheap, how cheap can I go?

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=16-115-002&depa=1
IDE

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=16-115-010&depa=1
S-ATA

 

[ECM]

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=16-115-002&depa=1
IDE

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=16-115-010&depa=1
S-ATA

Thanks! I didn't see this one when I was looking at newegg before -
it's just the kind of thing I was thinking of. Do you have any
experience with it? I've not owned any HighPoint products - any good
or bad reports out there?

Peace!
ECM

 

[ECM]

You have to determine, first, whether you want SCSI RAID or SATA RAID.
Then you have to determine how many drives will be in the RAID array.

Sorry, I'm interested in an IDE RAID card to use a three 160GB drives
I've aquired over the last few months. I want the speed AND the
security.... sounds like 0+1, doesn't it? But I'm hoping a card would
be cheaper than another 160GB drive (maybe.... Samsung's 7200RPM 160GB
drive was on sale at Newegg for ~US$90 recently).

Peace!
ECM

 

[kony]

Thanks! I didn't see this one when I was looking at newegg before -
it's just the kind of thing I was thinking of. Do you have any
experience with it? I've not owned any HighPoint products - any good
or bad reports out there?

That is one of the best software PATA RAID cards, but a bit more
expensive than some. The cheapest would be,
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=15-104-214&depa=1
which uses Silicon Image 0680 chipset. I have a couple of those
and they work fine, but slightly slower than the Highpoint or
Promise chipset based cards, and the array setup is a bit crude,
line-text driven instead of an ASCII graphical interface. That's
not really a problem but it does make the setup look less
polished.

 

[*Vanguard*]

ECM said in news:[email protected]:

Does anybody have a cheap (<US$100) RAID 5 controller they can
recommend? If not that cheap, how cheap can I go?

Thanks for any info!
Peace!
ECM

I haven't checked for this post, but in the past I visited
www.tomshardware.com for several RAID reviews. My recollection (but not
verified today) is that the Highpoint is slower than Promise for the
writes but faster than Promise on the reads. You'll have to read the
tests to verify. They all seem to have slightly different sweet spots.

 

[ECM]

That is one of the best software PATA RAID cards, but a bit more
expensive than some. The cheapest would be,
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=15-104-214&depa=1
which uses Silicon Image 0680 chipset. I have a couple of those
and they work fine, but slightly slower than the Highpoint or
Promise chipset based cards, and the array setup is a bit crude,
line-text driven instead of an ASCII graphical interface. That's
not really a problem but it does make the setup look less
polished.

Thanks for the reply!
I came across this one in my search - but I have PATA RAID 0, 1, and
0+1 on my MB (a gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro). I was thinking of PAID 5
because, apparently, it gives you the speed of striping with recovery
info stored on one volume rather than two, like 0+1 but with one less
drive.

If the HighPoint is a "software" RAID card, it may not fit my needs -
I need to keep the CPU unloaded as much as possible because it's for a
video editing/encoding workstation. I'll have to poke around at the
manufacturer's website some more.

While I have the attention of the RAID crowd, another question for
you: does RAID 5 require identical drives, ie, from the same
manufacturer, same model, etc? According to a source at work, it
does..... If so, then my previous question is moot; I have 3
different brands..... all 160GB, all 7200RPM, all 2MB cache, similar
latencies, but different manufacturers.

Thanks for all the info!
Peace!
ECM

 

[kony]

Thanks for the reply!
I came across this one in my search - but I have PATA RAID 0, 1, and
0+1 on my MB (a gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro). I was thinking of PAID 5
because, apparently, it gives you the speed of striping with recovery
info stored on one volume rather than two, like 0+1 but with one less
drive.

RAID5 causes a performance hit on writes, but you didn't mention
what level of performance is actually needed. If it's only a
two-stage process, with the source and destination both
compressed, the drive performance may be secondary to CPU
performance, that the drives aren't the bottleneck.

If the HighPoint is a "software" RAID card, it may not fit my needs -
I need to keep the CPU unloaded as much as possible because it's for a
video editing/encoding workstation. I'll have to poke around at the
manufacturer's website some more.

Hardware RAID cards are multiple times more expensive. Some
people find acceptable performance from having source and
destinaton files on two different drives or arrays, not both on
same array. If you're working with uncompressed video then you
might consider a RAID0 for uncompressed files, a temporary
holding area while working on them. If you still needed
redundancy then you could have a second array as RAID1 but would
need a 4th drive.

While I have the attention of the RAID crowd, another question for
you: does RAID 5 require identical drives, ie, from the same
manufacturer, same model, etc? According to a source at work, it
does..... If so, then my previous question is moot; I have 3
different brands..... all 160GB, all 7200RPM, all 2MB cache, similar
latencies, but different manufacturers.

Often I hear people claim drives need be identical but I don't
recall any situations where they actually MUST be identical.
With drives of vastly different size there would be wasted space
on the larger drives but AFAIK, you can use your 3 non-identical
drives. I could be wrong though, ask the manufacturer of any
card you consider.

 

[Toshi1873]

Thanks for the reply!
I came across this one in my search - but I have PATA RAID 0, 1, and
0+1 on my MB (a gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro). I was thinking of PAID 5
because, apparently, it gives you the speed of striping with recovery
info stored on one volume rather than two, like 0+1 but with one less
drive.

RAID5 is generally not for speed, especially with the
cheaper RAID cards. The usual reason for using RAID5 is
to gain capacity (e.g. 300GB x 5) at a minimal cost.
Personally, I think that unless you're putting 6+ drives
into the RAID5 array, it's not really worth it. (Or if
you absolutely need a volume size that is larger then
existing hard drives.)

If the HighPoint is a "software" RAID card, it may not fit my needs -
I need to keep the CPU unloaded as much as possible because it's for a
video editing/encoding workstation. I'll have to poke around at the
manufacturer's website some more.

Personally, I'd suggest doing (2) drives as RAID1 and
use the 3rd drive as a scratch drive. Keep the O/S and
programs and configuration on the RAID1. Use the
scratch disk for captures and temp space.

While I have the attention of the RAID crowd, another question for
you: does RAID 5 require identical drives, ie, from the same
manufacturer, same model, etc? According to a source at work, it
does..... If so, then my previous question is moot; I have 3
different brands..... all 160GB, all 7200RPM, all 2MB cache, similar
latencies, but different manufacturers.

You don't have to use identical drives... size of the
array will be based off of the smallest drive that you
use. Whether you get better performance if all of the
drives have identical timings is a "religious" issue and
you'll never get a definitive answer. (Or you'll get an
answer that only matters if your data needs exact match
those of the person who did the benchmarking.)

 

[ECM]

RAID5 is generally not for speed, especially with the
cheaper RAID cards. The usual reason for using RAID5 is
to gain capacity (e.g. 300GB x 5) at a minimal cost.
Personally, I think that unless you're putting 6+ drives
into the RAID5 array, it's not really worth it. (Or if
you absolutely need a volume size that is larger then
existing hard drives.)


Personally, I'd suggest doing (2) drives as RAID1 and
use the 3rd drive as a scratch drive. Keep the O/S and
programs and configuration on the RAID1. Use the
scratch disk for captures and temp space.

***SNIP***

Yeah, I'm starting to think you're right. RAID 5 is not quite the
solution I thought it was - I was thinking more like RAID 3 or 4 - but
boocoo $$$$ for that. Thanks to *Vanguard* for pointing me to the
excellent articles on Tom's Hardware.

So, I'm going to use my built in 0/1 RAID controller; I'll put
important stuff on a couple of 160GB drives that I'll mirror with
Ghost or something and then use a couple of 100 and 120 GB drives I
have in RAID 0 on the built in IT 8212.

Anyways, thanks for the info!
Peace!
ECM