PCIe Raid 5 cards?

[eggrole1]

I just built a new rig with an ASUS A8N sli deluxe as the mobo. I have been looking into getting a cheapish raid 5 card for a few months, but now I realized that I cant find any PCIe ones. This would be used for a home file server (basically movies, music, etc)

Oh and I would like 8 SATA ports (SATA II/NCQ support would be nice, but not needed)

I would like to keep the cost to 300USD or less. Any suggestions?

If there aren't any that would fill this spot, I guess I could just use one in a standard PCI slot, performance isn't a huge issue for me.

I was looking at the Broadcom 4852 in a PCI slot, but it is a little pricey and I would lose performance on an old PCI slot... http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816125005

 

[imported_Kensai]

You can get them, but they're bloody hell expensive.

 

[uOpt]

Bump. Want to know, too.

Limiting that though a PCI 133/32 slot would be a waste.

You could always get a Typan K8WE which has PCIe for video cards and PCI-X for the other slots. That'll take care of this problem but opens the can of worms with Opteron and registered RAM.

 

[eggrole1]

Originally posted by: MartinCracauer
Bump. Want to know, too.

Limiting that though a PCI 133/32 slot would be a waste.

You could always get a Typan K8WE which has PCIe for video cards and PCI-X for the other slots. That'll take care of this problem but opens the can of worms with Opteron and registered RAM.

Yeah more I think about it the 4852 would go to waste as you say on a PCI slot...

I already got the Asus mobo and everything esle for the rig, so I dont want to replace anything. Any suggestions on what I could get in terms of a standard PCI raid 5 card? I hear these mentioned in other threads:

highpoint rocketraid 1820a
http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816115020

ANy thoughts? It would still waste some of its potential not having PCIx, but it is only ~200USD

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Dunno about the price, but check these guys out: http://www.areca.com.tw/ -- they have both PCIe and PCI-X cards.

 

[uOpt]

Actually it might barely be sufficient to have that in a PCI slot if you do RAID-5 with three disks.

You mainboard has gigabit ethernet off the PCI bus, so they don't share bandwidth. You only share with sound of the major devices.

if you have three good harddrives, then you get a raw speed of approximately 3x 50 MB/sec = 150 MB/sec which is more than the 132 MB PCI has.

However, if your controller is doing RAID-5 then it munches with the raw disks on its own and just delivers the end result over the PCI bus. I don't think you'll see more than 50-100 MB/sec reading out of a three disk RAID-5, probably less depending on CPU power in the controller, and then PCI is sufficient. And writing is obviously not at all a problem.

 

[eggrole1]

Originally posted by: BikeDude
Dunno about the price, but check these guys out: http://www.areca.com.tw/ -- they have both PCIe and PCI-X cards.

I glanced at this and it seems pretty nice, too bad the 8 port one is about 700+USD...


@MartinCracauer

The highpoint looks to be pretty decent, but I can't find it if has online expansion. This is pretty important as I willl start with 3 HDDs and expand as needed. This would translate into a new HDD about every 3 months; there is no way I would want to back up hundreds of gigs every 3 months to something like DVD. I am not really worried about performance at this point. I think the 133 PCI slot will be ample since I will be the only one using it, and it won't ever be under continuous heavy requests. At most maybe transfering a DVD backup at any given time. Write speeds are a non-issue.


I am still looking for suggestions on something to put in a standard PCI slot that has:
8 sata ports
online expansion
under 300USD

 

[uOpt]

Hm, what OS and filesystem are you using?

You realize that extending the raw device does not neccessarily mean you can extend the filesystem?

 

[Green Man]

I don't think its realistic to expect online expansion capability fo under $300. You are looking at something like a 3ware escalade 9000 series which is likely to run you twice that.

I could be wrong...good luck in your search.

 

[eggrole1]

Newegg has that BC i linked in my first post for 370, and a http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816116028 (3ware 9500s) for 430. I know the BC does what I want, I just figured maybe I could get something a little cheaper that wasnt PCI-X. I will probably just get the BC for 370 and take the performance hit of using it in a PCI slot. In the future maybe I can piece together a rig to dedicate to being a fileserver and get PCI-X. Either way, the upfront cost savings of online expansion far outweigh the performance loss to me. I really don't wanna have to shell out for 8 250GB HDDs all at once lol.

@MartinCracauer
Im running Windows Server 2003 NTFS