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RAID5 future compatibility

L3773R5a

I'm tossing up on creating a RAID5 array with my current board Gigabyte GA890FXA-UD5.

My question is: if I make this array my storage array with three 1TB seagate drives and for some reason my motherboard fails, will an intel board which will most likely replace it (had some bad experiences with this AMD rig) be able to detect that array?

I've read that the arrays are controller dependant and that one chipset may not even detect another RAID array but i have also read that it is no issue.

Some clarification/personal experience/any help would be greatly appreciated.

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You need a RAID card for a proper RAID 5 configuration, onboard raid 5 is usually really slow.

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onboard raid 5 is usually really slow.

not necessarily. writes may be slow, depending on your cpu, since this will be used for parity calculations

raid5 on intel matrix raid seems fairly well established, but there is no guarantee that they won't break compatibiliy since they've done it before. The only reason I see that this will change is due to a change in the metadata standard, but in that case they would hopefully have some backwards compatibility.

EDIT: I misread that. going from an AMD to an Intel board won't work. It's a different raid standard

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My question is: if I make this array my storage array with three 1TB seagate drives and for some reason my motherboard fails' date=' will an intel board which will most likely replace it (had some bad experiences with this AMD rig) be able to detect that array?[/quote']No. Assuming you create the RAID volumes in the storage controller's BIOS and not within your OS, an Intel board will not be able to see the RAID volumes created on your AMD board.
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Ok cool thanks everyone.

The next logical question is then: know of any good raid cards that will do RAID5 for three drives that is relatively inexpensive?

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"Good raid cards", and "inexpensive" do not really go well together. HighPoint's RocketRAID cards are your only option in the "cheap" category, but some quick research will show you that they are cheap for a reason. If you want to get a really good hardware RAID controller on, eBay can save you a lot of money. Look for LSI, Adaptec, or Areca but as always, do some research and make sure the card supports RAID5/6 and actually performs well.

Another option is to get a NAS (Synology or similar) that supports RAID5/6 or build your own second machine dedicated to storage (FreeNAS is great for beginners; check it out!). If you are running Windows I wouldn't recommend using the built-in software RAID5 functionality; it is not that great.

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i realise that good raid cards aren't inexpensive.. that's why i said relatively inexpensive haha ;)

Thanks for the help. I have a software raid in windows setup (performance is excellent for me 85% of the time i am getting much better speeds that i did using my onboard raid from AMD).

I think i am going to have a look at a hardware raid card. Raid 5 isn't a must i suppose because i backup my storage to a nas drive, however it'd just be for convenience if a drive fails (so i don't have to copy it all across again). Also for extra security as the nas drive is configured in a RAID0.

I live in australia and i haven't been able to find many raid cards however i have found a few from a local supplier. Any thoughts? It seems like a solid card to me with 3 yrs warranty.

http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_...&rsn1=4&rsn3=8

This one i can source from ebay for about $100 cheaper (and i think it is the better one anyway).

http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/storagecomponents/Pages/MegaRAIDSAS9240-4i.aspx

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Software raid5 is terrible on writes(in some cases slower than a single drive, no matter how powerful the CPU is), and hardware RAID is expensive. I ended up going with ZFS on my ubuntu server box. It's been very nice to work with; both reads and writes max out gigabit with 4 2TB WD Reds, and are much faster locally.

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Software raid5 is terrible on writes(in some cases slower than a single drive, no matter how powerful the CPU is), and hardware RAID is expensive. I ended up going with ZFS on my ubuntu server box. It's been very nice to work with; both reads and writes max out gigabit with 4 2TB WD Reds, and are much faster locally.
ZFS is awesome! I hope you are using the ZFSonLinux port and not FUSE; ZFSonLinux is *so* much faster.
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I live in australia and i haven't been able to find many raid cards however i have found a few from a local supplier. Any thoughts? It seems like a solid card to me with 3 yrs warranty.

http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_...&rsn1=4&rsn3=8

This one i can source from ebay for about $100 cheaper (and i think it is the better one anyway).

http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/...AS9240-4i.aspx

I cannot comment on the first card you listed as I have never heard of it before, but LSI is definitely the top-dog when it comes to RAID cards. That said, the SAS9240-4i is meant to be a "Host Bus Adapter" more than a RAID card (which is why it is "cheap"); it lacks the on-board processing power to do the required RAID5 parity calculations so your write speeds will be terrible (~ < 70MB/s).

If you'd like to ovoid spending a ton on a expensive RAID card, I'd recommend getting a 4th disk and running RAID10. You will get WAY better performance than RAID5 on a cheap controller, still have a fair amount of data security, and won't need an expensive RAID card. The LSI card you have listed will handle a RAID10 with ease; you will get great performance.

If you choose to go RAID10 w/ the 9240-4i I highly recommend trying to get your hands on a IBM M1015 instead. It is a re-branded 9220-8i that you can get for a fraction of the cost; even cheaper on eBay. It will handle a simple RAID10 without any problems! Here is a great set of articles outlining the performance and features of the IBM M1015: http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serv...15-75-dollars/

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Software raid5 is terrible on writes(in some cases slower than a single drive, no matter how powerful the CPU is), and hardware RAID is expensive. I ended up going with ZFS on my ubuntu server box. It's been very nice to work with; both reads and writes max out gigabit with 4 2TB WD Reds, and are much faster locally.
Oh absolutely. It's just a matter of adding a repo, and then 5 or so commands later, I have a 6TB RAIDZ CIFS share.
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Software raid5 is terrible on writes(in some cases slower than a single drive, no matter how powerful the CPU is), and hardware RAID is expensive. I ended up going with ZFS on my ubuntu server box. It's been very nice to work with; both reads and writes max out gigabit with 4 2TB WD Reds, and are much faster locally.
Pssh, gotta compile from source! :P
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That said' date=' the SAS9240-4i is meant to be a "Host Bus Adapter" more than a RAID card (which is why it is "cheap"); it lacks the on-board processing power to do the required RAID5 parity calculations so your write speeds will be terrible (~ < 70MB/s). [/quote']

So does this Host Bus Adapter offload striping (RAID0) or mirroring (RAID1) to the cpu as well like a BIOS raid or is it just for RAID5? I was under the impression that a HBA was just a connection interface to PCIe for SAS drives. So i suppose this is a RAID enabled HBA.

I just had a though. I will only be using this with magnetic discs. That means i will be safe going with a SATAII 3Gb/s card as each drive @7200rpm won't be able to max that out anyway right?

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So does this Host Bus Adapter offload striping (RAID0) or mirroring (RAID1) to the cpu as well like a BIOS raid or is it just for RAID5? I was under the impression that a HBA was just a connection interface to PCIe for SAS drives. So i suppose this is a RAID enabled HBA.
That HBA that you linked, the M1015 that I mentioned, and the 9220-8i can all be flashed with multiple different modes. They are meant to be used as HBAs. An HBA simply presents raw drives to the OS and lets the OS deal with them, nothing more. By default, the 9220-8i, the M1015, and the 9240-4i/8i com flashed in RAID mode because a lot of people use them for RAID1, RAID0, and RAID10. Because they are meant to be HBAs, their on-board RAID processor is terribly slow. For simple mirroring and striping, its perfectly fine; no processing really needs to take place. For RAID5 however a lot of processing takes place.
I just had a though. I will only be using this with magnetic discs. That means i will be safe going with a SATAII 3Gb/s card as each drive @7200rpm won't be able to max that out anyway right?
Yes, a SATAII (or SAS) 3Gb/s card will work fine.
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I've tried a software raid 5 and they really start to show weakness under a heavy write load ( 5-8 kb/s)

Ebay, Ebay Ebay.... if your looking to save money. you can get a card from 1-2 generations ago for mega cheep, most are pulled from working servers, and were put up for auction (IRL), then posted on ebay. Even for newer non-used one you can get good prices on if you look around (saved about 170 + tax from retail on mine)

like what most people said, Sata 2 will be fine for hard drives, an LSI 8888 comes to mind, remember seeing those for 80-200 with all accessory , up to raid 6 i think....

however a good price card, that's put up for auction on ebay can get vary aggressive last minute, so make sure you know the bidding tricks.

this is looking real attractive if your quick, for now at least

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/ServeRAID-M5015-SAS-Raid-Card-LSI-9620-8i-w-Battery-and-Bracket-/221181682809?pt=US_Computer_Disk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item337f74a479

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I've tried a software raid 5 and they really start to show weakness under a heavy write load ( 5-8 kb/s)

wow, were you running a pentium 2 or something? otherwise it wasn't configured correctly.

I'm really not understanding why so many people on this forum seem to think software raid needs a good cpu. If you're running raid storage server, you simply don't unless you're running something else cpu intensive (SMB, FTP etc is NOT cpu intensive, neither are torrents/usenet if you configure it properly). how do you think all these nas boxes get away with running on an atom? As I've mentioned previously I run a crapppy AMD dual core with reads and writes well over gigabit speeds, so it really doesn't matter. What are you running that is chewing up all that cpu?

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however a good price card' date=' that's put up for auction on ebay can get vary aggressive last minute, so make sure you know the bidding tricks. this is looking real attractive if your quick, for now at least [url']http://www.ebay.ca/itm/ServeRAID-M5015-SAS-Raid-Card-LSI-9620-8i-w-Battery-and-Bracket-/221181682809?pt=US_Computer_Disk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item337f74a479

Wow that's a good price. So is that card essentially this http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/storagecomponents/Pages/MegaRAIDSAS9260-8i.aspx with a custom firmware and an extra heatsink. If that's the case they cost $500 brand new from ebay (the9260-8i)

As I've mentioned previously I run a crapppy AMD dual core with reads and writes well over gigabit speeds' date=' so it really doesn't matter. What are you running that is chewing up all that cpu?[/quote']

I'm assuming you're using linux as they removed RAID5 software option in windows 7. At the moment i'm running a software RAID0 in windows 7 and the results are.... varied.

Having showed you those benches though i am currently copying 343GB from my NAS (RAID0) to my pc software RAID0 drives (three 1TB hdd) at a constant speed of 94.7MB/s and it's about 85% done. It seemed that it took a while for windows to get it's shit together though because it was stuck at 10MB/s for a while.

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however a good price card' date=' that's put up for auction on ebay can get vary aggressive last minute, so make sure you know the bidding tricks. this is looking real attractive if your quick, for now at least http://www.ebay.ca/itm/ServeRAID-M50...item337f74a479
Wow that's a good price. So is that card essentially this http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/...AS9260-8i.aspx with a custom firmware and an extra heatsink. If that's the case they cost $500 brand new from ebay (the9260-8i)Yes. Similar to how the IBM M1015 is a re-branded 9220-8i, the IBM M5015 is a re-branded 9260-8i.
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I've tried a software raid 5 and they really start to show weakness under a heavy write load ( 5-8 kb/s)

wow, were you running a pentium 2 or something? otherwise it wasn't configured correctly.

I'm really not understanding why so many people on this forum seem to think software raid needs a good cpu. If you're running raid storage server, you simply don't unless you're running something else cpu intensive (SMB, FTP etc is NOT cpu intensive, neither are torrents/usenet if you configure it properly). how do you think all these nas boxes get away with running on an atom? As I've mentioned previously I run a crapppy AMD dual core with reads and writes well over gigabit speeds, so it really doesn't matter. What are you running that is chewing up all that cpu?

I agree, @mvk had something something set up wrong; you don't need that much computing power for software RAID. I responded you another one of your posts here in regards to why people tend to prefer higher-power (and/or pricier) CPUs: http://linustechtips.com/main/forum/storage-solutions/73558-home-storage-server?p=75051#post75051
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RAID 5 on the motherboard is still technically, "hardware" raid, just not "dedicated Hardware", since they run before the OS starts, set-up under a "low level" software (like a bios), then the OS, "high level" software, reads it as single disk.

"software" Raid runs after the OS starts( on top of the "low level"), and the OS/program read the two disk and then treats it as a single disk.

you don't "need" a powerful CPU (hence why i didn't mention it), cuz essentially it doesn't matter since (the one i tried) the software translation to actual hardware cycles is just so bad/not nearly as good as ,think of it as latency. (if you know anything about assembly language you know what i mean)

and when i say "heavy write load" i mean transfer that take longer then a few minute, was transferring 1.7TB from 2TB WD green over to 3x3TB seagate, started at 50mb/s but dropped after 50 seconds. remember it was a pseudo raid 5, not a 0,. tried over USB3 and SATA2, but same story, tried for ~20 mins before deciding it wasn't good enough for me, then went to ebay.

cpu was i5-3450S windows 8, storage spaces

so 8mb/s(soft) vs 100mb/s(hard 9260-8i) is essentially 92 seconds "IRL latency" difference,

anyways that just situation, opinion explained in more details, which is kinda beside the point here.

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excellent... so the 3ware branded LSI controllers, are they any good coz i heard that a while back 3ware was terrible (before they were bought by lsi). I'm just wondering if they're much better now

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