what's the difference between onboard RAID and an add-on card

[avi85]

how can it be that $60 mobos have built in raid, but decent raid cards are at least $100?

 

[1N0V471V]

The difference between onboard RAID and an add-on card is that one is onboard and one is an add-on card

Seriously though, the performance difference of 4 drives in RAID between onboard and add-on is huge. There is no contest.

Add on will win everytime.

The add-on has more bandwidth and uses less processor cycles.

 

[avi85]

Originally posted by: 1N0V471V
The difference between onboard RAID and an add-on card is that one is onboard and one is an add-on card

Seriously though, the performance difference of 4 drives in RAID between onboard and add-on is huge. There is no contest.

Add on will win everytime.

The add-on has more bandwidth and uses less processor cycles.

so assuming that this is on a dual core comp which basically has the second core for background tasks (onboard sound, onboard ethernet, onboard raid, antivirus, firewall, P2P programs, messenger programs and all the other crap that runs in the background) will it make a difference to me?

 

[Ika]

An add-on card won't really make a difference if you're doing 2-drive RAID-0/1.

 

[Blain]

I've always been curious why high-end custom builders like VoodooPC used add in cards over onboard RAID controllers.

 

[Aluvus]

Originally posted by: avi85
how can it be that $60 mobos have built in raid, but decent raid cards are at least $100?

The qualifier "decent".

 

[stevf]

if you really need RAID, you really need a real controller card and it is not going to be cheap either. but that applies to businesses with the need for uptime. Without knowing your usage, cant really tell you whether on board raid is good enough and if you would notice a difference.

 

[avi85]

Originally posted by: stevf
if you really need RAID, you really need a real controller card and it is not going to be cheap either. but that applies to businesses with the need for uptime. Without knowing your usage, cant really tell you whether on board raid is good enough and if you would notice a difference.

basically wondering how much of a performance increase I would notice if I added another WD2500KS (250GB, 7200RPM, 16MB) and ran them in RAID 0 off the mobo

 

[corkyg]

I recently broke a pin on my mobo's SATA/RAID header #2 - so a 2 drive array was no longer possible.

I disabled the on-board ports and put in an add-on PCI card - and it works great. No noticeable difference at all in applications or overall performance.

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: avi85

Originally posted by: stevf
if you really need RAID, you really need a real controller card and it is not going to be cheap either. but that applies to businesses with the need for uptime. Without knowing your usage, cant really tell you whether on board raid is good enough and if you would notice a difference.

basically wondering how much of a performance increase I would notice if I added another WD2500KS (250GB, 7200RPM, 16MB) and ran them in RAID 0 off the mobo

Somewhere between tiny and none. Oh you'll get faster boot times, a second shaved off your BF2 load times but that's about it.

 

[1N0V471V]

Onboard RAID is only bad with 4 hard drives... otherwise it works great

 

[avi85]

if I understand correctly, each group of 2 ports is 1 channel. so is it better to have the 2 RAID 0 drives on seperate channels?

 

[corkyg]

Depends on what you are after. SATA drives always have to be on separate channels - there is no Master/Slave relationship. If you want to RAID 2 drives - you basically have two choices. RAID 0 (Striping) and RAID 1 (Mirroring.)

RAID 0 spreads the data equally over two drives, and doubles your capacity. RAID 1 duplicates the drives - the system sees one drive, but if one goes sbad,the other works and you lose nothing. With RAID 0, if EITHER drive failes, you lose everything.

Correct your understanding - each group of 2 ports can create one RAID array. Example, my current RAID PCI card has 4 ports. Port/channel 1 and 2 are my data RAID 1 array. Port/Channel 3 is connected to an external SATA drive - not RAIDed.

My boot drive is a single PATA/IDE drive - not RAIDed.

There are also SATA PCI cards with 4 ports that are not RAID cards. Each port is a separate channel, and can support a separate SATA drive.

 

[corsa]

It seems to me Raid isnt worth the hassle unless u are worried about HD failure.

 

[avi85]

Originally posted by: corsa
It seems to me Raid isnt worth the hassle unless u are worried about HD failure.

I'm actually interested in it for RAID 0 to increase my HD speed cause my biggest bottleneck right now is my HD

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: avi85
I'm actually interested in it for RAID 0 to increase my HD speed cause my biggest bottleneck right now is my HD

If that's your main reason, you will not notice much real world improvement in application speed. If speed is what you crave, go to 10K RPM drives.

The main performance gain for a 2 drive RAID 0 array is a doubling of storage capacity.