On-board RAID0 vs. PCI RAID card

[ColBlip]

System is Asus a78vx, with 2 SATA drives in the mail to be installed as
RAID0. Question - on this board, would it be best to install in the existing
on-board SATA RAID Promise controller connections or install a separate
PCI/RAID controller card and use it?

Thanks.

ColBlip.
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)

 

[Dee]

System is Asus a78vx, with 2 SATA drives in the mail to be installed as
RAID0. Question - on this board, would it be best to install in the existing
on-board SATA RAID Promise controller connections or install a separate
PCI/RAID controller card and use it?

Thanks.

ColBlip.
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)

I would use the on-board controller. Is you model stated correctly - A78VX?

 

[Colonel Blip]

Hello, Dee!
You wrote on Mon, 14 Mar 2005 09:43:30 -0500:

D> ColBlip wrote:

D> I would use the on-board controller. Is you model stated correctly -
D> A78VX?

Whoops - maybe A7V8X better.

Thanks.

Colonel Blip.
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)

 

[Dee]

Hello, Dee!
You wrote on Mon, 14 Mar 2005 09:43:30 -0500:

D> ColBlip wrote:

D> I would use the on-board controller. Is your model stated correctly -
D> A78VX?

Whoops - maybe A7V8X better.

Thanks.

Colonel Blip.
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)

I would still go with the on-board controller.


Dee...

 

[dg]

One thing I noticed is that none of the on board SATA raid controllers seem
to have any cache while many PCI cards have 64MB or 128MB of cache. Cache
can make a big difference, certainly depending on what kind of usage it
sees. I might go with a high end controller. But the truth is you may not
even notice a difference with a better card.

--Dan

 

[old man]

I used the onboard raid -A7N8X DL rev2 - in mirror config.
The raid utility allways reported everything in sync. One hd failed, booted
to the mirror and *all* data/files that had been written in the last three
months was missing. Fortunately I had other backups.
Asus Tech were unable to offer any explanation, other than mentioning a
similar data loss / corruption with an earlier bios.

 

[Mercury]

On board controller often run through faster channels (IE not the PCI bus)
so can give better IO performance theoretically while leaving bandiwdth on
the PCI bus so operations such as recording DVD's, tape backups etc run
smoother.

Bottom line is it depends on what you are doing. A caching raid controller
could give vastly superior performance with some applications EG DBMS.

I suggest googling for reviews with your intended use at hand and make a
more informed decision.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

On board controller often run through faster channels (IE not the PCI bus)

Nonsense. Only MB-Chipset integrated controllers don't (necessarily)
run on PCI buses or run on wider or higher speed PCI buses.

 

[Tim]

This is what you said:

"Nonsense. Only MB-Chipset integrated controllers don't (necessarily)
run on PCI buses or run on wider or higher speed PCI buses"

Hmmmm. You should have written

"Nonsense: Only MB-Chipset integrated controllers don't (necessarily)
run on PCI buses or run on wider or higher speed PCI buses"