Raid Card Reccomendation

[Tmt97]

I'm not the most knowledgeable when it comes to shopping for raid cards, so I could use some recommendations. My plan is to put 4 4TB hard drives in raid 5, and I have a spare 16x PCI-e slot for the card. Thanks in advance!

[Electronics Wizardy]

Do you have spare sata ports on your board? Id just use those and software raid here.

 

Id probabl also go with fewer bigger drives if you can, so 2x12tb drives is my pick.

[mariushm]

Most controllers with be pci-e x8 or pci-e x4, because there's no need for more lanes to handle 4 hard drives - as their sata their maximum speed would be 560 MB/s (in reality around 2-300 MB/s) which is a bit over half a pci-e lane's bandwidth...

 

But you can put such cards into a pci-e x16 slot. 

 

Also, be aware that while you physically have a pci-e x16 slot, it may not have 16 pci-e lanes in it. 

 

 

[Tmt97]

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you have spare sata ports on your board? Id just use those and software raid here.

 

Id probabl also go with fewer bigger drives if you can, so 2x12tb drives is my pick.

Unfortunately no, I don't have enough sata ports on this board. As far as the drive size goes, I'm using 2.5" drives due to space constraints in this project, and I don't believe there's a 12tb 2.5" hard drive.

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

Most controllers with be pci-e x8 or pci-e x4, because there's no need for more lanes to handle 4 hard drives - as their sata their maximum speed would be 560 MB/s (in reality around 2-300 MB/s) which is a bit over half a pci-e lane's bandwidth...

 

But you can put such cards into a pci-e x16 slot. 

 

Also, be aware that while you physically have a pci-e x16 slot, it may not have 16 pci-e lanes in it. 

 

 

I was just stating the slot I have free on my motherboard is a pci-e x16 to clarify that it's not a limiting factor on what raid card I can install. I'm not trying to max out pci-e x16 bandwidth by any means lol

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 hours ago, Tmt97 said:

Unfortunately no, I don't have enough sata ports on this board. As far as the drive size goes, I'm using 2.5" drives due to space constraints in this project, and I don't believe there's a 12tb 2.5" hard drive.

Those large 2.5in hdds are all smr and will have horrible performance in raid, Id just get a usb 12tb external hdd here.