any cheap raid5 sata pci cards?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
I

InlineFour

Banned
Nov 1, 2005
3,194
0
0
i just bought 3 x 160gb sata drives from the compusa black friday sale. there was a very long line, but i managed to get what i wanted. :) so are there any cheap raid5 sata pci cards? i'll most likely get a used one on ebay. one models do you recomend?
 
Jeff7

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
20
81
I don't think you'll want to go cheap on a RAID 5 card. RAID 5 involves on the fly parity calculations. If you get a cheap card, it'll probably offload the parity calculations to the CPU, which will 1) slow down write operations considerably, and 2) keep the CPU busy working with the hard drives, instead of doing more useful things.

I personally like Promise cards - I run an SX4000 with my 4 PATA drives, and it is quite speedy (95-100MB/sec sustained read speeds), with very low CPU utilization. It has a small processor on the board that is specifically dedicated to doing the parity calculations.
They make a model for SATA hard drives; Newegg has the version with integrated buffer memory.
My SX4000 came without any buffer memory, which is required - getting it without integrated memory was cheaper. I got a stick of ECC 128MB PC100 RAM on the forums for about $20, and it works fine.
 
Fullmetal Chocobo

Fullmetal Chocobo

Moderator<br>Distributed Computing
Moderator
May 13, 2003
13,704
7
81
Out of curiosity, what do you consider to be cheap for a RAID 5 SATA controller?
 
Jeff7

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
20
81
I think for that price, you're going to get a RAID card that uses the CPU for parity calculations, which will probably make you hate RAID 5. ;)

Doing RAID 5 properly isn't exactly cheap.
 
Jeff7

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
20
81
Yes, the S150 SX4 should be a fine card, and it has a "XOR" assist processor on it. I don't know what XOR is, but it has to do with parity calculations. Summary: Yes, this card will have low CPU utilization.

Read the description on eBay carefully - there are two SX4's:
SX4 and SX4-M.
The only difference is that the -M model has 64MB of buffer memory right there on the card. You can add extra if you want to, but it's not required.

If you get the standard version, you'll need to add a stick of PC100 RAM (I prefer ECC, for the increased data integrity), in order for the card to work. I bought my 128MB stick on the forums for around $20, and it's worked just fine.
 
S

ST4RCUTTER

Platinum Member
Feb 13, 2001
2,841
0
0
InlineFour,

I've been looking into a similar setup for some time now. Your best bet IMO would be to go with one of the Promise or 3ware PCI cards. They take most of the load off the CPU and host a slew of features to monitor the array, notify you of problems or rebuild the array. The things you want just so you get warm fuzzies at night and you're thinking about your data. The best prices seem to be on Ebay. Used cards can fetch under $100...it's all up to your level of comfort.

Happy RAIDing!
 
I

InlineFour

Banned
Nov 1, 2005
3,194
0
0
from the look of the pics, the sx4 has one upgradable ram slot, and the description says the max memory is 256mb. so i can just buy a 256mb pc100 ecc ram?
 
T

t3h l337 n3wb

Platinum Member
Apr 22, 2005
2,698
0
76
Meh, I'm using the ONBOARD Silicon Imaging RAID controller on my Neo4 Platinum, and my CPU usage idles at about 5%. It's still very fast to me. Oh well, I'm not really a speed freak, coming from a crappy POS Celeron...
 
Jeff7

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
20
81
Originally posted by: t3h l337 n3wb
Meh, I'm using the ONBOARD Silicon Imaging RAID controller on my Neo4 Platinum, and my CPU usage idles at about 5%. It's still very fast to me. Oh well, I'm not really a speed freak, coming from a crappy POS Celeron...
Click to expand...

RAID 5?


InlineFour - yes, a 256MB PC100 DIMM will do just fine. You don't necessarily need ECC, however, I will recommend it, as it does try to prevent errors, which is a good thing. :)
 
R

RaiderJ

Diamond Member
Apr 29, 2001
7,582
1
76
A cheap RAID card that uses the CPU for parity stuff - would a PIII 550 work for this? Assuming that was all I used the machine for was a RAIDed storage drive?
 
S

SnoMunke

Senior member
Sep 26, 2002
446
0
0
Unless you are running these drives in a multi-user environment, RAID 5 is not a good choice. RAID 10 is the best (if you can afford it); otherwise just using RAID 1 is good (although with 3 drives this is not really an option I guess). If you insist on using RAID 5, just use a software RAID 5 solution instead of dedicated hardware (card w/ processor, RAM, etc.). For everyday desktop usage (including video encoding, gaming, blah, blah, blah), you will see little difference between software RAID 5 and hardware RAID 5. Your CPU will more than adequately do the job for parity calculations. The parity calculations only become an issue when you have 10, 20, 30+ drives...not 3.

If you don't have onboard SATA ports (Silicon Image 3112/4 or NVIDIA), then buy a cheap SATA controller card (most are Silicon Image 3114) and run software RAID 5.

If you don't mind losing the space, I would buy another drive and run RAID 10...by far the best RAID solution for the single user.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom