Should i go with bios raid or buy a RAID card

[Khav]

My new build will have 2x2 TB HDD (Raid 1) and 2x512  GB SSD (RAID 1) . This build is going to be my workstation so reliability is very important for me .

 

My motherboard wi ASUS Sabertooth Z97 MARK1

[Firearm2112]

 and 2x512 MB SSD (RAID 1) . 

 

A 512MB SSD? Where do you even find that? Or is that a typo...

[NeatSquidYT]

I'd go for a RAID card for the SSD's, plus if you have SSD's, don't waste them in RAID 1, put them in RAID 0.

[virtualTune]

what's your budget? RAID cards don't come cheap. 

[virtualTune]

I'd go for a RAID card for the SSD's, plus if you have SSD's, don't waste them in RAID 1, put them in RAID 0.

that defeats the point of RAID 1 entirely though. If his data is important RAID 0 id the unsafest route! 

[NeatSquidYT]

that defeats the point of RAID 1 entirely though. If his data is important RAID 0 id the unsafest route!

But RAID 1 SSD's is a waste.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Sort of depends on your budget. Good RAID cards are not cheap. 

 

 

But RAID 1 SSD's is a waste.

No it isn't. Reliability is his primary concern, so RAID1 makes sense. 

[dizmo]

I'd go for a RAID card for the SSD's, plus if you have SSD's, don't waste them in RAID 1, put them in RAID 0.

The onboard drivers support TRIM, cards generally do not.

 

But RAID 1 SSD's is a waste.

Not for what he wants...he wants to mirror the data. RAID0 doesn't do that.

[Khav]

A 512MB SSD? Where do you even find that? Or is that a typo...

I fixed the typo 

@NeatSquidYT @Oshino Shinobu

Yes...i want raid 1 for reliability ...raid 0 is a no for me

 

@Oshino Shinobu

Is a raid card more reliable than motherboard raid to justify its cost considering that the sabertooth is a very good mobo in my opinion

[Spannerhands]

My new build will have 2x2 TB HDD (Raid 1) and 2x512 MB SSD (RAID 1) . This build is going to be my workstation so reliability is very important for me .

 

My motherboard wi ASUS Sabertooth Z97 MARK1

 

Do not raid 2 large SSD's in Raid 1, you are actually increasing your change of failure.... The OS system, paging files, scratch disk files and programs files will be righting constantly to the SSD's giving you a large possibility of Silent Data Corruption especially if you don't use ecc (Error-correcting code memory) ram... 

[Khav]

@Spannerhands

 

Its going to be my workstation , not a server ....will it still increase my chances of a Silent Data Corruption

[kerberos]

Raid card are most reliable but more expensive. If I remember correctly, Linus showed one with a battery on it, so if your computer shuts down or loses power you'd still be able to recover your data. Plus, you have some sort of boost cache for fast write.

I would still recommand using raid 0 for ssd and keep your important data on a backup storage and on your raid 1 HDDs.

[Khav]

@kerberos

 

The reason why i want raid 1 for ssd as well in that in case one ssd fails(i had 2 hdd fails in the past so i think i have a shitty luck) , i won't lose anything ...even os reinstall is a pain 

[ManWithBeard1990]

My preference for RAID is using a filesystem with that functionality built in. That way you can be sure your data is recoverable even if your mobo or raid card breaks. In Windows this would mean just making a software RAID-set. In Linux you have more options: you could use LVM which goes underneath the filesystem as as software RAID, or use a filesystem that can do RAID all by itself, like ZFS or BTRFS.

[virtualTune]

While you really don't wanna do RAID 0, you should stick to HDDs for RAID setups that writes the data to two or more drives. Why do you even feel the need for using SSDs? 

[Spannerhands]

@Spannerhands

 

Its going to be my workstation , not a server ....will it still increase my chances of a Silent Data Corruption

 

Does not matter if it's a server, workstation or gaming machine, Raid without eec ram has an even higher risk of silent data corruption, the bigger the array the bigger the chance of something getting written wrong, problem also is that errors can go over both drives making raid 1 pointless... 

 

Best way with windows 8.1

use a small drive for OS only, Windows storage spaces to manage the other drives (single parity setting is raid 1)... that way if OS fails just use a backup or re-install it picks up the storage pool and your fine, you can even stick the drives in any other windows machine and they just get picked up again... no need to worry about raid card or bios raid bullshit, compatibility! make life easy : -) 

[Spannerhands]

Forgot to mention is you use any form of raid as UPS is a must!

[Khav]

My preference for RAID is using a filesystem with that functionality built in. That way you can be sure your data is recoverable even if your mobo or raid card breaks. In Windows this would mean just making a software RAID-set. In Linux you have more options: you could use LVM which goes underneath the filesystem as as software RAID, or use a filesystem that can do RAID all by itself, like ZFS or BTRFS.

I will use dual OS (Windows 7 and some linux distros) so software isn't an option 

 

Forgot to mention is you use any form of raid as UPS is a must!

Which one you recommand ...a cheap but reliable one preferably

[Khav]

Does not matter if it's a server, workstation or gaming machine, Raid without eec ram has an even higher risk of silent data corruption, the bigger the array the bigger the chance of something getting written wrong, problem also is that errors can go over both drives making raid 1 pointless... 

 

Best way with windows 8.1

use a small drive for OS only, Windows storage spaces to manage the other drives (single parity setting is raid 1)... that way if OS fails just use a backup or re-install it picks up the storage pool and your fine, you can even stick the drives in any other windows machine and they just get picked up again... no need to worry about raid card or bios raid bullshit, compatibility! make life easy : -) 

I will use dual OS (Windows 7 and some linux distros) so software isn't an option 

[Blade of Grass]

Do not raid 2 large SSD's in Raid 1, you are actually increasing your change of failure.... The OS system, paging files, scratch disk files and programs files will be righting constantly to the SSD's giving you a large possibility of Silent Data Corruption especially if you don't use ecc (Error-correcting code memory) ram...

Using RAID 1 does not increase the possibility of SDC. Drives in RAID 1 have the same probability of SDC as a singular drive does.

[Keystone Nyan Cat]

While I have not run any setup of RAID with a dedicated RAID card, I have been running a RAID 0 setup with my motherboard since over 2 years now and it's still rock solid. Based on my own experience, I would recommend setting up 2 separate RAID arrays using the BIOS and getting a UPS if you don't already having one to minimize the chances of data corruption/ loss when there is bad power. If you are worried about scalability, I've attached a screenshot with my drives performance with and without RAID 0.

 

PS- You haven't mentioned which drives are you planning on putting in RAID 0. If you do play on going for a RAID card, make sure that both the drives and the card have some sort of error recovery (for WD, it's TLER, and for Seagate, it's ERC). If the card does not support error recovering, it's not that much worth it since you aren't exactly getting much more had you gone for the motherboard route to begin with.

 

I hope this helps!

[wpirobotbuilder]

My new build will have 2x2 TB HDD (Raid 1) and 2x512  GB SSD (RAID 1) . This build is going to be my workstation so reliability is very important for me .

 

My motherboard wi ASUS Sabertooth Z97 MARK1

I recommend onboard RAID, unless you're willing to upgrade your motherboard to the ASUS Z97-WS. Consumer motherboards are not validated (in general) when it comes to RAID cards and NICs, which have strict hardware compatibility requirements. I believe the Z97 WS is validated with certain cards, you should contact ASUS customer support.

 

You might find that the RAID card doesn't work properly in your motherboard, at which point you've wasted hundreds on the card. Your on-board SATA controller will do the job just fine.

[asquirrel]

My new build will have 2x2 TB HDD (Raid 1) and 2x512  GB SSD (RAID 1) . This build is going to be my workstation so reliability is very important for me .

 

My motherboard wi ASUS Sabertooth Z97 MARK1

 

An excellent question. I started with 2x1TB hard drives using Mobo RAID1 several years ago. It took me a while to figure out that my PC was blue-screening due to an overly aggressive overclock (~200mhz). Every bluescreen caused the RAID set to re-verify all the data within (re-read 1TB of data, at drive speed, and ensure both mirrors match. Took about 3-4 hours.)

 

I got so sick of that 3-4 hour window in which my PC was...technically usable, but horrifically slow, that I got a physical RAID card. As part of the research into a card, I learned this basic rule: If your card doesn't have the option for a Battery Backup Unit it is very likely NOT an actual RAID offload card, and is more likely an expensive HBA with software RAID essentially identical to what your mobo does.

 

I got a 3ware 9650SE (prior to them being bought by LSI) and the BBU for it. Having the BBU allows me to enable the write cache, which uses some/all of the 256MB of on-board RAM to quick-acknowledge writes before they actually get flushed to disk. This means that lots of small writes don't bog my system down like they did with software raid (java installs with many small JAR files go very fast now ).

 

Also, because of the BBU, every time I blue screened I no longer need to re-verify the RAID set, as all pending writes were buffered in RAM until next boot. The battery on my card lasts around a week IIRC. The battery test takes 24 hours, and I wanna say it shows something like 170 hours of lifetime in a failure scenario (so maybe 2 weeks...either way).

 

The final bonus to a physical RAID card was that I saw a *large* performance gain. Using mobo raid I only got about 75MB/s sustained read speed. Using hardware RAID I saw about 130MB/s. Write speed was also improved, but I don't remember the numbers exactly.

 

There are, however, downsides to using a RAID card:

1. The data is written in the RAID card's format. If the card ever dies, you either need that exact card, or one that uses a compatible low-level format. Information on compatibility is hard to find. When using software raid, if the RAID set is broken for any reason the drives do not have a special low-level formatting and therefore behave as independent disks, utterly ignorant that they were ever part of a RAID set.
2. Cost: A good card + BBU will run you $500-600. You don't *have* to get the BBU, but you throw away a HUGE bonus (the write cache) without the BBU.
3. You can't be a dipshit and putz with the settings like a dunce. You can and may blow all your data away while trying out a new feature. Read the documentation first, THEN experiment!

There *might* be some RAID cards which defy point 1. I've never tried with my own RAID card as I...don't have any backups (shame on me) and don't want to risk mah dataz!

 

Oh, I forgot to mention I did eventually get a second pair of 1TB hard drives. I plan to eventually buy a 4TB hard drive, back up all my data, and create a single RAID-10 array with the 4 drives instead of the current pair of RAID 1 pools.

 

I hope this helps, feel free to ask more questions.