Pci Sata Raid Card

[Bunny]

Here's the weird part - My system is currently plenty for me, but I wanna mirror my storage drives (currently 2 x 1.5TB near full disks without proper backup).

So I want a RAID card that is HW based (no or little cpu overhead) and pref has a bit of cache on board. My big problem is that I only have x1 PCIE or standard 32bit PCI slots to play with.

Any ideas (Card needs to do 4 drives RAID1 of 2TBx2 each).

performance is not a big requirement, as the PCI Bus is fine (the cache and HW controller will handle all the work anyways). The main bit is being able to migrate the array to another machine should this one faild (thus having a HW card rather than on board or softraid).

[luckybob]

a raid with TWO drives is only going to be a MIRROR. meaning that you will need to clear off the drives and you will only have 1.5tb of storage space.

raid 6 is the "safest" with a minimum of 4 drives. raid 5 requires a minimum of 3.

A dedicated raid card is practically required for anything except 0 and 1. The vast majority of which are going to be pci-e 4x or 8x. or 133/64bit pci.

These cards are NOT cheap. typically running $300 EASY. Dell makes a sas raid card that I use for my WD blacks but it needs an 8x slot. I'm actually going to be in the market of selling it soon.

[Bunny]

thanks bob.

I am well versed in raid configs, and am only asking if anyone knows of a pci card to drive 4 sata disks in two mirrors. (with 4 new 2TB disks).

Promise and adaptec used to make these (before the advent of PCIE, and I am certain they will have made PCI 32bit entry level ones (as they make x4 PCIE ones now).

otherwise Ill have to get a new motherboard (which is something that I dont really need) and put an LSI or Adaptec in.

thanks

[Fr0sty]

or network attached storage wich could be a viable storage option...

[Bunny]

yeh I used to have a little NAS box (two infact), but I have grown weary of multiple humming little black boxes all over the place.

I have a spare machine I am slowly building (as time/money permits), to take the role of a backup server (will run zfs most likely with a bunch of 1TB disks and keep rsync'd backups of the main arrays across the network when the PC is idle).

I would like to have my main storage local to my main PC as then I know thats the only box that has to be up and running when I need something.

[Fr0sty]

oki


32bit pci raid card http://www.promise.com/product/produ...product_id=165


but i dont know if it will allow for multi tb raid array

[Bunny]

Thanks Frosty.

I think (with more googling done) and no real contenders that Ill have to bite the bullet and get a newer mobo and one of these ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/3ware-9650SE...f=pd_rhf_p_t_4 )

That means I can run the two 2TB mirrors in my main box and I can use the 'old' mobo in the spare machine with five or six cheapy 1TB units in a ZFS raid for a backup.

[luckybob]

Originally Posted by Fr0sty

oki


32bit pci raid card http://www.promise.com/product/produ...product_id=165


but i dont know if it will allow for multi tb raid array

thats a fake-raid card. Its only really good for 0/1.

[Fr0sty]

Serial ATA 3Gb/s Ports for support of up to 4 drives
RAID 0/1/5/10 and JBOD
PCI 32-Bit / 66 MHz
Native Command Queuing
SATA Tagged Command Queuing
Large LBA support for drives above 137GB
Disk Activity LED Headers
Combine with the SuperSwap 1100 or SuperSwap 4100 for an advanced internal storage system
Now supports Web Based Promise Array Manager (WebPAM)

so if its a fake raid why are they stating up to raid 10 and jbod.. jbod is basicly the method to use such a card for nas right ???? so if its fake its false advertising and i doubt a big company like that would make such an obvious mistake

but 4 drives is kinda small to actually support higher than raid 5 right??? so conflicting things indeed

[luckybob]

fake raid means that its just a regular adapter, but with a "raid" bios/software. meaning that the software does the work on your cpu and transfers the results to the drives.

its not FALSE just misleading.

[davidhammock200]

Originally Posted by CostaBunny

Here's the weird part - My system is currently plenty for me, but I wanna mirror my storage drives (currently 2 x 1.5TB near full disks without proper backup).

So I want a RAID card that is HW based (no or little cpu overhead) and pref has a bit of cache on board. My big problem is that I only have x1 PCIE or standard 32bit PCI slots to play with.

Any ideas (Card needs to do 4 drives RAID1 of 2TBx2 each).

performance is not a big requirement, as the PCI Bus is fine (the cache and HW controller will handle all the work anyways). The main bit is being able to migrate the array to another machine should this one faild (thus having a HW card rather than on board or softraid).

Well it seems you understand the situation, far better than most, so you already know that NAS is by far your best solution.

However if access time & transfer rates are unimportant & still living with the facts of software RAID, you will at least be able to move the array without problems as long as the OS is basically the same. Moving from Win anything to Unix probably will not work, but moving from Win 7 to XP should work.

Here are 3 RAID controllers, 2 of them are PCI-E 1X, the other is PCI 2.0.

Personally I would go NAS or build another system with proper PCI-E slots.

Best Wishes,
Dave

[Bunny]

Thanks guys - plenty of nudging for me to think on.

Over the weekend Ive put a lot of time into my goals for file storage and it seems I am going to build a NAS after all.

I have a LianLi case (That is small, and will hold 6 hard disks), an Asus P5Q mobo and cooler. I will now go looking for the cheapest Core2Duo CPU, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 400watt (branded) PSU and a el-cheapo PCI or PCIe vid card. I think FreeNAS will do what I need if I add 5 1TB low power hard disks at it.

Now if anyone wishes to donate parts (or slap me for being cheeky and recommend somewhere to get em really cheap in the UK)....

Additional Comment:

UPDATE: Thread for build log created http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...d.php?t=332432

[PommieB]

Actually the promise card has it's own raid engine and software, not controlled by the motherboard. Might be cheap raid but it is done by the card.