Cheap hardware RAID built in on motherboard

[siewcu]

Hello

Recently my NAS, Zyxel NSA310, died. I want to build something since QNAP or Synology aren't cheap and I want to do it myself. I thought about going for mini-ITX board, but I'm looking for something with built-in hardware RAID controller. I've found Intel DH57JG and DH67CF, they're not expensive and, according to Intel, they support RAID. Also I've found that H*7 supports RAID(and it's main difference between these and H*5), so I assume that this has hardware controller. Is it a good way to go? 4 SATA ports should be enough, because I want to go for 4x500 GB(or maybe 4x1TB) in RAID 10. As boot drive some cheap pciex to m.2 adapter, CPU with lowest TDP and passive cooled PSU to get this as quiet as possible. What do you think about it?

[Firewrath9]

I'm pretty sure those are all virtual/software raid.

To get hardware raid, you'd need a dedicated raid card like a H310 in IT mode

[Jarsky]

The likes of IntelRST and similar on consumer boards are faux raid, they arent generally the most reliable, especially for anything involving parity as they have no nvram or battery. 

Get a proper RAID card like a 9260-8i or something. 

[beersykins]

In slight disagreement with those above me, rolling a 'fully software' RAID like mdadm is much more portable between systems.

 

11 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

you'd need a dedicated raid card like a H310 in IT mode

y u no H7x0p ?

[Windows7ge]

I second Jarsky. If you want Hardware RAID it's a component you don't want to cheap-out on. Really if you're on a budget your goal is perfectly viable with Software RAID. Windows has Storage Spaces. Linux has File Systems like ZFS & BTRFS.

[Jarsky]

2 hours ago, beersykins said:

In slight disagreement with those above me, rolling a 'fully software' RAID like mdadm is much more portable between systems.

 

recommending software raid has nothing to do with our comments, our comments are in regards to onboard/embedded RAID, in particular Intel RST which is on Intel boards. 

I happily recommend mdadm , zfs, etc....but he specifically was asking about hardware raid. 

[beersykins]

13 hours ago, Jarsky said:

.but he specifically was asking about hardware raid. 

Sure, I was trying to offer up a solution that doesn't cost him additional dollars as it's obvious that the purchasing decision merely consists of him reading that 'its better' somewhere without any technical justifications.  

[siewcu]

So it doesn't make any sense. Buying external RAID controller is not an option for me, due to its price - it'll cost more than PC with 4x1TB new HDDs. I consider this topic as finished... If it doesn't work then it doesn't work

[Jarsky]

2 hours ago, siewcu said:

So it doesn't make any sense. Buying external RAID controller is not an option for me, due to its price - it'll cost more than PC with 4x1TB new HDDs. I consider this topic as finished... If it doesn't work then it doesn't work

 

$27 is more expensive than your setup, and unaffordable? https://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-M5015-LSI-Megaraid-9260-8i-SATA-SAS-Controller-RAID-BAT1S1P-battery/292464076501

[siewcu]

Are you sure that this'll work? To be honest I was checking only local suppliers, 10x price of the one that you've sent... Also I don't trust chinese boards like this - if it fails data recovery will be possible, but I'm afraid that this could damage my drives and that's huge problem.

[GDRRiley]

1 hour ago, siewcu said:

Are you sure that this'll work? To be honest I was checking only local suppliers, 10x price of the one that you've sent... Also I don't trust chinese boards like this - if it fails data recovery will be possible, but I'm afraid that this could damage my drives and that's huge problem.

just plug the drives in a run raid in the OS

those do work I'd ive bought and received working raid cards from china before.

[Jarsky]

3 hours ago, siewcu said:

Are you sure that this'll work? To be honest I was checking only local suppliers, 10x price of the one that you've sent... Also I don't trust chinese boards like this - if it fails data recovery will be possible, but I'm afraid that this could damage my drives and that's huge problem.

 

They arent 'chinese boards', this one in particular is a OEM version from IBM of the LSI 9260. These mostly just get removed from old OEM servers from IBM, HP, Dell, etc...where they werent worth being refurbished e.g dead mainboards.