SATA RAID5 controllers

[Matthias99]

Thought for once maybe I'd try to leverage AT instead of just answering questions.

I'm looking at building an HTPC, and I'd like it to have a large amount of reasonably fast (since it will be acting as a media and file server to several other machines over the network as well as doing TiVo duty and possibly also being a web/FTP server ) and redundant storage. I have a bunch of parts already, and mostly what I'm still looking at is the storage subsystem. I've narrowed it down (I think, unless someone has a better option) to these two SATA RAID5 controllers:

Highpoint RocketRAID 1640

Promise FastTrak S150 SX4

And with either controller most likely equipped with four Samsung SP1614C 160GB 7200RPM FDB-motor hard drives, for 480GB of usable storage in a RAID5 configuration (I'm planning forwards for being able to capture HDTV here, plus using this as a web/FTP server and for backing up my other machines).

I'm leaning towards the Promise card, even though it costs more, since it benched better in this THG RAID5 article, which is the only place I could find both of them compared head-to-head. The Highpoint card also has two negative reviews on Newegg, whereas the Promise card has none (not a big enough sample size to really be relevant, but still a little worrying). Has anybody used either of these cards, either just as SATA controllers or for RAID5?

 

[Jeff7]

I've not used those particular cards - only the PATA couterpart, Promise's SX4000. Quite a nice RAID 5 card. It, and the S150 do some of the parity processing on the card, which the Highpoint thing might not do, which explains why it's so much cheaper.
Note that the S150 also needs a stick of PC100/133 RAM. I used ECC RAM in mine; I figure that if the storage array has redundancy and error checking, the buffer should also have error checking. I got a used stick of 128MB on the forums; think it was less than $25 shipped.


Ok, the review confirms my suspicions:
"Only in the Winbench application benchmark did we see the RocketRAID 1640 fall behind as a result of its lack of XOR processor."

So the parity calculations will eat up CPU cycles, whereas the S150 does a majority of the work in its onboard processor.

 

[WalkingDead]

I had look into this also.

The Highpoint card is a pure software raid and it was originally designed for IDE raid so it uses bridges chips to convert each channel to SATA. It also lacks the advance functions of Raid expension and Raid level migration. Since it's a software raid, it's slow, high cpu usage and any driver corrouption will destory the raid.

The Promise card is basically their older SX4000 IDE card with SATA bridge chips on each channel. It does support Raid expension and Raid level migration. It has some annoying driver issues that Promise is slow to fix. It's also very picky on the system harhwares, especially the motherboard. Although it's a true hardware raid card, it's onboard processor is rather weak and the system CPU still has to do much of the XOR works.

A better deal for you should be the LSI Logic Megaraid 150-4 card. It's a native SATA card and it uses a much more powerful Intel RISE processor for XOR works plus 64mb ECC memory buildin. The software & support good too. Yes, it's more expensive but not much more. The Promise card w/ 64mb ECC will goes $200-$210. The LSI card goes for $230-$240.

Anyways, Tom's Hardware has 2 articles on mid-level SATA raid 5 cards. Both the promis and the LSI cards were in the articles. Go check it out.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: WalkingDead
I had look into this also.

The Highpoint card is a pure software raid and it was originally designed for IDE raid so it uses bridges chips to convert each channel to SATA. It also lacks the advance functions of Raid expension and Raid level migration. Since it's a software raid, it's slow, high cpu usage and any driver corrouption will destory the raid.

OK. So the Highpoint's definitely out. I'll be using enough CPU time as it is doing video encoding/filtering; I don't need software RAID bogging it down even further.

The Promise card is basically their older SX4000 IDE card with SATA bridge chips on each channel. It does support Raid expension and Raid level migration. It has some annoying driver issues that Promise is slow to fix.

Any chance you could elaborate on these 'issues'? I've seen a couple things indicating that (at least in the past) the Promise cards did not work well on VIA chipsets, which is sort of problematic because I had planned to recycle a KT133A motherboard I have lying around here. If this is still true, then it will be easier for me to buy a different RAID card than to get a new MB/CPU/RAM.

It's also very picky on the system harhwares, especially the motherboard.

It's odd, because some articles mention this, and others don't. I wonder if maybe newer drivers/firmware have addressed some of this on the SX150? Most articles on the SX4000 are a few years old, and I've only found a handful on the S150.

Although it's a true hardware raid card, it's onboard processor is rather weak and the system CPU still has to do much of the XOR works.

Although the SX4000 did seem to have slightly higher CPU utilization than a couple of other RAID cards in one review I found (most don't mention CPU usage at all!), I find it difficult to believe it's because the CPU is "do[ing] much of the XOR work". Somehow I don't think they would write drivers that have half of the XOR calculations being done on the card and half off the card.

A better deal for you should be the LSI Logic Megaraid 150-4 card. It's a native SATA card and it uses a much more powerful Intel RISE processor for XOR works plus 64mb ECC memory buildin. The software & support good too. Yes, it's more expensive but not much more. The Promise card w/ 64mb ECC will goes $200-$210. The LSI card goes for $230-$240.

I did see this card, but I had originally thought it was a PCI-X card based on the description at Newegg (after more research, it *does* support PCI-X, but is backwards compatible to regular PCI). So I guess now I'm comparing the Promise to the LSI. It did seem in the THG benchmarks that the LSI had significantly lower transfer rates than the Promise card -- but I'm not sure how much that really matters at 80+MB/sec., since most of my data transfers will be bottlenecked by 100Mbps Ethernet anyway (no GbE yet, sadly).

Anyways, Tom's Hardware has 2 articles on mid-level SATA raid 5 cards. Both the promis and the LSI cards were in the articles. Go check it out.

I only found this article (which I had mentioned above); did they do another one?

 

[WalkingDead]

For issues regarding to the Promise card, just go do a search on the disscusion board at storagereview.com.

Both of those cards are kinda old and new version from Promise & LSI should come out later this year or early new year. That's what I'm waiting for.

 

[Vegito]

Tekram.. RAID 6


RAID 6 is essentially RAID 5 enhanced, such that two drives in the stripe set can fail because the distributed parity information has its own parity and is thus redundant.

 

[OMG1Penguin]

Originally posted by: forcesho
Tekram.. RAID 6


RAID 6 is essentially RAID 5 enhanced, such that two drives in the stripe set can fail because the distributed parity information has its own parity and is thus redundant.

RAID 6 has much more overhead, and I think he would be using SCSI if he was prepared to be spending this much.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: WalkingDead
For issues regarding to the Promise card, just go do a search on the disscusion board at storagereview.com.

Both of those cards are kinda old and new version from Promise & LSI should come out later this year or early new year. That's what I'm waiting for.

I did a number of searches on the forum over at storagereview, and while I turned up a number of interesting articles and several more reviews of the SX4000 and/or Promise S150, and a few people reporting various issues (apparently, putting two Promise controllers in one system at once doesn't work so well, and ASUS mobos *can't* disable their onboard Promise controller properly, it seems), I couldn't find *anything* on Promise's compatibility (or lack thereof) with VIA chipsets.

 

[Matthias99]

Another bump for this... anyone tried using the Promise SX4000 or S150 on a KT133A motherboard? Or do I get to be the guinea pig?