Which hardware RAID card for Video?

[dsc106]

I have up to 4 HDDs to use with RAID (I have hot swap cage on the front of my Lian Li). Currently I am plugged into my Asus R4E, which I believe has a RAID controller on it.

I am doing video editing in Windows.

Could I/Should I try using the onboard RAID?

Or consider a PCI-E hardware RAID card such as:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816117153

If I did that, do I just plug the 4 ports for the HDD hot swap cage into that card and setup a RAID 0+1, or a RAID 5? Perhaps using 2x4TB HDDs in RAID 0 and the other 2 4TB HDDs as the mirror? Or could I do a 2x2TBs in RAID 0 and a 3rd 4TB HDD as the mirror?

How much better performance would this give me VS just making a striped volume in Windows disk management, or using the onboard Asus R4E motherboard RAID?

 

[exdeath]

You're on the right track for a real RAID controller with the one you linked. That or the LSI 9260-4i. In other words not a $20 RAID card.

The biggest reason for using external RAID cards is that current systemboards/chipsets only have two of the desired Intel SATA6g ports and the secondary third party chip providing the other ports is usually crippled (PCIe 1x or something) or substandard in some way compared to if you had 4 Intel ports.

Haven't kept up with changes in the last year or two but the LSI 9260 and 4+ SSDs is like the best thing going for performance.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Have you been doing this before to know if you're seriously read / write limited? There's always a performance medium that you have to weigh. How important is high availability? How important is datastore size? How important is speed? What is your overall budget?

What is your workload like? Is it simply loading a bunch of video clips? Is there a lot of raw video that might indicate a need for high sequential read speeds? Or is this more of a "load into memory and forget" thing?

Knowing your workload allows us to give far more accurate storage suggestions