Differences between Silicon Image and Promise IDE RAID controller cards?

[Mears]

I need to get another raid controller and I was considering picking up a used ultra66 or ultra100 and modding it, but I noticed that Silicon Image based RAID controller cards sell for about $12 shipped on pricewatch. This is about how much it is going to cost me to go the mod route. Why are silicon image cards so cheap? I know some people around here use them. For comparison, the Fasttrak cards sell for just over $70 shipped.

 

[robcy]

The Silicon Image card is a software raid card, and the Fasttrack card is a hardware raid card. I do not know the specifics, but I would guess that the Silicon Image will off load the processing to the CPU, and the fasttrack will do the processing on board.

 

[Mears]

I'm pretty sure all the raid functionality for the fasttrak cards is handled by the driver.

 

[TerryMathews]

Originally posted by: MearsWhy are silicon image cards so cheap?

Because they are cheap. You get what you pay for, even with software RAID cards. For example, you can take an array - let's say for the sake of argument a 2 drive RAID 0 - created on a FastTrak 66 and move it to a SuperTrak SX6000 and it will boot right up. Conversely, you can create an array on that SuperTrak SX6000 and boot it on the FastTrak 66.

Only thing that doesn't work is unsupported RAID modes (IE RAID 5 on a FastTrak 66) - it gets detected as RAID 0+1, but the data isn't in a useful state.

Does Silicon Image support this sort of movement between HBAs? I doubt it, they would advertise it if they did. The only ones I know of that guarantee it are Promise and 3ware.

If you're just one-offing a system array for your home computer, it probably doesn't matter. If you're wanting to create a data array to last for a while, you might want to consider what you would do if your HBA died and an exact replacement was not readily available...