Buying a hardwar e RAID controller

[jeorge_kabbi]

i have this motherboard http://www.msi.com/product/mb/790FX-GD70.html and 2 SSD 128GB hard drives connected to the motherboard in RAID0 used as a C drive. i have another i TB hard drive used for data.

my problem : linux and many other boot disks does not "see" the hard drive because it is a "software raid" thus a driver is needed.

my proposed solution : buy a 4-port sata3 hardware RAID controller (i think its also known as thick raid) so that:

1- i can connect my 2 drives and have the option to expand that to 4 drives in the future (rebuilding the raid needed i know).

2-the sata 3 will be backward compatible with sata2 (both front and back ends) so i can use the same RAID controller in my next computer.
3- it will work with "anything" without any drivers. in other words the motherboard will think that it is simply a single hard drive is connected to it.

my question is :
is #1 ,#2 and #3 mentioned above true ? and if so shall i get your kind advise regarding what controller i could buy (budget around 400 USD)

thank you 😀

 

[bigi]

3ware/LSI are very good and well supported in linux/winodws and other OSes.

 

[jeorge_kabbi]

3ware/LSI are very good and well supported in linux/winodws and other OSes.

thank you

does the "thick raid" controller need any support from the OS ? i thought it act like a hard drive by itself. right ?

 

[ncalipari]

are you sure linux doesn't see the disks are boot? It sounds more like a windows issue

are you using MDADM?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mdadm

Have you though about booting from USB? (slower... but much cheaper)

Be sure to buy controller which support boot... many cheaper ones doesn't have this feature.