Need recommendation for a pci raid controller card

[mysts]

We are using Windows Xp sp3 with two 500gb sata harddrives

The Promise TX2300 was recommended but it appears to be kinda old and we were wondering if there might be something a litle more recent.

[The village idiot]

3ware makes really good hardware based RAID cards and the prices are not too bad. With only 2 drives do you care if it is hardware or software based? You are only running RAID 0 or RAID 1 with that number of drives so there should be little difference in performance just letting the OS handle the RAID functions.

FYI Avid used 3ware cards in their Lanshare devices (sudo RAID 0), I use another 3ware card in a different computer to do RAID 5 and it has never given me a problem and is pretty fast for RAID 5. Their new cards claim some amazing speeds with RAID 6 but I don't have the budget to experiment and find out.

[mysts]

Thanks for the quick reply
We looked at 3ware and found it to be a little beyond the budget. The system is several years old -p4 2.8. Hardware is the way we need to go. We need something simple to handle RAID 1 for protection rather than speed. Thanks anyway.

[The village idiot]

I would just let Windows handle it.

If you still want a card, look for an older 3ware 9500s-4lp which is PCI and SATA but older tech so it should be cheap. I've been running one of these for the last 4 years for the radio station file server at work. Oddly enough the price on these seems to be more than when I bought ours back then. If you are going to put in a RAID card I would probably go with 2 more drives and go RAID 5 or 6.

[mysts]

You saic I would just let Windows handle it.

What does that mean?[/list]

[budz]

Sabrent SBT-SRD4 Silicon Image RAID Native 4-Port SATA/150 PCI Card , $16.99
$8.00 Ground shipping.
That's the cheapest you're going to get for a PCI SATA CONTROLLER w/RAID.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SBT-SRD4&cat=CCD

[mysts]

Thanks budz,

We just ordered it

[budz]

^^^Your welx!

[redwudz]

If you are looking for inexpensive, maybe one of these Rosewill cards: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150410+50002177&QksAut...e=&srchInDesc=
I use several of them in my servers and they work well enough.

I would recommend a card with the Silicon Image chipset for good performance and compatibility. You will find a lot of SATA 1 (SATA 150) cards in the lower price range and I doubt you'll notice much if any difference to a SATA 2 card, so one way to save a few $$. I have a couple Adaptecs and some Promise cards and I'm surprised how much they go for these days. The card you use also depends on your MBs card slots. Older PCs use PCI, newer ones usually have PCI-E or PCI-X available.

Not sure why you want to use RAID. RAID 0 is especially problematic for boot drives if one drive dies. I gave up with it when I had to reinstall the OS and all my programs the second time. I lost everything on the drives twice. Most newer SATA 2 drives are more than fast enough for most video work except for RAW video capture and editing, and you would need more than RAID O or 1 for that.

If you really want to use RAID, I would advise at least RAID 1 or preferably RAID 5 or better. It will take a lot more than two drives, but you will also have a lot more dependability and still have good transfer speeds. Up to you. I just use a fast 150GB Raptor for boot and a bunch of WD Black 500GB drives and they are plenty fast enough for me.

[mysts]

thanks redwudz,

Your lectures are as usuall beneficial

[The village idiot]

I bet the above card is a software implementation of RAID, just like you can do with Windows. In Windows you take multiple empty drives and in administrative tools --> computer management --> drive management couple many drives into RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, and I think 50. The OS then moves the data around as needed to put it on the disks. I did this for a while on an emergency file server when I had a unit crash, stacked up 4 external SCSI drives and formed a RAID 5 array from the Windows 2000 OS. google if you need more info

As said using RAID 0 or 1 on a boot drive is not a good idea, RAID is for bulk storage or fast storage or protected storage (depending on the configuration).

[redwudz]

True, you can do RAID with most newer MBs. But the OP may not have enough spare SATA ports available. The X-1 cards are a nice option as not that many cards use the X-1 interface and it's usually open. And some MBs, such as Micro-ATX versions, may only have two PCI slots available.

A couple of my MBs have eight internal SATA connectors and I use them all. Three optical drives, three internal HDDs and two external eSATA connectors use them up.

I do use SATA PCI cards on two of my servers. Two of the Rosewill cards and two of the older Promise cards, all PCI as they are older MBs. They all work great. I won't even consider RAID anymore. Most of my older RAID systems were on SCSI, and those drives needed a bit of speed boost. With most newer SATA II drives and decent controllers, I just don't see the need any more.

I do have a SSD, which is as fast or faster than most RAID setups. But wasn't too very dependable in my applications and setup. Now I just use a 150GB Raptor drive for boot and it works great. I don't use or need RAID for anything.

[mysts]

A friend of mine built a small XP system for the express purpose of downloading old movies. He says he sleeps better now that he has two 1tb harddrives connected as RAID 1 which is also the C drive. He argues that because the C drive runs all the time why not use it for downloading purposes. It is true that the RAID card can lose both drives which is the same as losing evrything if it was on one drive. He says the odds are in his favor that only one drive will go bad so stick in a fresh drive rebuild and carry on. I kinda like that approach myself. Some protection is better than none at all.

[redwudz]

That's a viable point when using RAID 1. But you may have to rebuild the array on occasion if it crashes, but that shouldn't cause data loss. I prefer to just backup my boot drive to another drive with software and restore it if needed. I use Acronis True Image at present. No matter what setup you use, not really a good idea to use the boot drive for frequent access or video editing. The boot is accessed continually by the OS and that can slow most operations.

I normally use a small, fast, boot drive and add two or more large hard drives for video usage. You can use a large boot for long time archival storage, but not really advised for most other video operations. And a smaller boot drive is easier to defrag when needed.

[The village idiot]

A smaller boot drive also keeps you from clogging it up with junk for when you do decide to make a new restoration image. Problem is finding those smaller drives without having to buy SAS drives, the last computers I've configured with our contract sales place I always say a drive of at least 40GB and he always sends me something far larger because that where the best price can be had. I've started testing Clonezilla and so far it seems like a decent app to do some of this image/copy stuff. Need to set up a Linux server to use the network portions of the image creation and restoration.

[Ron B]

Silicone Image RAID/add-on SATA cards are inexpensive and pretty reliable; I've got a few of them. They are good for software RAID 0 setups for work drives like redwudz described; they are limited by the PCI bus speed. Also good with an SATA external port to use external drives without an enclosure. My experience is that a boot drive with a separate "work" or "capture" drive; RAID or single drive, is more efficient than writing and reading from the same drive.
Cloning/backup software like Acronis is all Linux based; this includes backup/cloning software from Seagate and Western Digital. It used to be bombproof; now it has major issues with Windows 7 and SATA drives. Not as dependable as it used to be; especially with more recent motherboards, hard drives and the aforementioned Windows 7.
Nowadays; RAID 1 is old school. RAID 5 and RAID 10 is what you want to shoot for. Recent mobos costing $200 or less have RAID 5 and RAID 10 built in.

[The village idiot]

RAID 10 is nothing special (RAID 1 + RAID 0) RAID 6 and after that probably 7 is the way to look. And again any board with more than 2 drive connections has RAID ability since almost all of them are driven with software.