Raid Controller

[Schmarvin]

I'm looking for a simple, affordable RAID controller. I'd like to add up to four more hard-drives. Note, that I asked affordable, looking for under $100. This isn't for anything major, just a local home server. And cooling is not an issue either.

I'm looking at either raid 1 or 5. Probably more towards raid 5 though. At the moment, I have 4 1TB drives + 1 120GB SSD (Boot Drive). I have no more SATA ports on my board as well, hence why I need a raid card. Any suggestions?

[Padunkadunk]

If you're looking for a card that'll handle raid 5, I think you're going to have to spend more than $100. If you're going to buy a cheap raid card, why not just use software raid? Does your mobo support it?

[Schmarvin]

Is does support it, the downside, like I said, is I only have 6 SATA ports on the motherboard. 5 go to hard drives, the last is to an optical drive.

[algoat]

You could probably get something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115114&Tpk=N82E16816115114

It only has Raid 1 and 0 but like suggested above you could use software raid. Or you can plug your existing drives into this and use your motherboard's raid with the new drives. Remember that this card requires a pci express x4 slot.

[Atlantisman]

You're best bet is to buy a Perc 5i or Perc6 off ebay, make sure to get the backup battery unit with it, otherwise raid 5 will be risky.

 

Another option is to get an IBM 1015 off ebay and get the raid 5 feature unlock unit/backup battery.

 

Both of those cards are very common on ebay and can be had for usually around 100$(with the backup battery it may be over 100$, but get the battery, you will thank me later). They are so cheap because they are pulled from data centers and surplus'd as they're not needed.

 

You don't really have an option for something brand new from newegg or amazon, all the half decent raid cards are 300+, and for raid 5 you do need a decent raid card.

[wpirobotbuilder]

I'm looking for a simple, affordable RAID controller. I'd like to add up to four more hard-drives. Note, that I asked affordable, looking for under $100. This isn't for anything major, just a local home server. And cooling is not an issue either.

I'm looking at either raid 1 or 5. Probably more towards raid 5 though. At the moment, I have 4 1TB drives + 1 120GB SSD (Boot Drive). I have no more SATA ports on my board as well, hence why I need a raid card. Any suggestions?

Why not your motherboard RAID? You can get 6 drives on that?

 

Unfortunately you're out of luck as far as PCI-E RAID cards go. There really aren't any RAID cards with RAID 5 under $300 USD.

[MikkoP]

RAID cards are expensive. If you have a low budget, you could buy a HBA card and use software RAID. This kind of card increases your SATA port count, if you need more.

[Schmarvin]

You could probably get something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115114&Tpk=N82E16816115114

It only has Raid 1 and 0 but like suggested above you could use software raid. Or you can plug your existing drives into this and use your motherboard's raid with the new drives. Remember that this card requires a pci express x4 slot.

 

I've had a Highpoint card in the past, piece of crab. They sent me a replacement that half-worked. Thank you for the suggestion though.

 

You're best bet is to buy a Perc 5i or Perc6 off ebay, make sure to get the backup battery unit with it, otherwise raid 5 will be risky.

 

Another option is to get an IBM 1015 off ebay and get the raid 5 feature unlock unit/backup battery.

 

Both of those cards are very common on ebay and can be had for usually around 100$(with the backup battery it may be over 100$, but get the battery, you will thank me later). They are so cheap because they are pulled from data centers and surplus'd as they're not needed.

 

You don't really have an option for something brand new from newegg or amazon, all the half decent raid cards are 300+, and for raid 5 you do need a decent raid card.

 

Might be an option, I'll look into that. Thanks, I do think I already have an SAS card though.

 

Why not your motherboard RAID? You can get 6 drives on that?

 

Unfortunately you're out of luck as far as PCI-E RAID cards go. There really aren't any RAID cards with RAID 5 under $300 USD.

 

My motherboard has 6 ports; 4 to 4TB drives, 1 to a 120GB SSD (boot drive) and 1 to the optical drive. I'll keep looking, thank you.

 

RAID cards are expensive. If you have a low budget, you could buy a HBA card and use software RAID. This kind of card increases your SATA port count, if you need more.

They are, but, I'd rather not pay to build a rackmount storage server if I don't have to just to add more drives. Also, due to the price, NAS units are out of the question. I'll look into that, got any ideas?

 

 

I did find a card I like, from LSI, which I heard is a good brand.  Any opinions? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118112

[wpirobotbuilder]

I did find a card I like, from LSI, which I heard is a good brand.  Any opinions? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118112

LSI is a good brand, and that card is very well regarded. It doesn't have RAID 5 support, but it has good performance in RAID 10.

 

That particular SKU doesn't come with the cables you need to hook up the drives. I presume you already have the right cables?

[Atlantisman]

I've had a Highpoint card in the past, piece of crab. They sent me a replacement that half-worked. Thank you for the suggestion though.

 

 

Might be an option, I'll look into that. Thanks, I do think I already have an SAS card though.

 

 

My motherboard has 6 ports; 4 to 4TB drives, 1 to a 120GB SSD (boot drive) and 1 to the optical drive. I'll keep looking, thank you.

 

They are, but, I'd rather not pay to build a rackmount storage server if I don't have to just to add more drives. Also, due to the price, NAS units are out of the question. I'll look into that, got any ideas?

 

 

I did find a card I like, from LSI, which I heard is a good brand.  Any opinions? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118112

That card is also a mini-SAS card, for which you need a break-out cable such as this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132040&cm_re=mini_sas_breakout-_-16-132-040-_-Product

[asquirrel]

There is no such thing. Any card that costs less than $300 is NOT actually a raid card; it's an expensive HBA (Host-Bus adapter). The tipping point at which a PCIe card becomes a RAID card is generally when it offers the option to buy a battery backup unit (BBU) for the card. The BBU will power the RAM on the raid card for something like 24 hours to maintain write consistency and avoid the time consuming full-read-checks that software/mobo raid drivers must go through after any unexpected shutdown.

 

A raid card alone should run you about $300. The BBU will cost another $150 or so. That said, a proper raid card is wonderful. Expensive, but wonderful.

 

One final note, do yourself a favor and DON'T use RAID-5. The reads are fast, sure, but the writes are apocalypticly slow even on good raid cards. Well, slow compared to RAID-10 with the same drives. The other reason not to bother with RAID-5 is because if you lose a 4TB drive, it could take several DAYS to rebuild the raid set. If you lose a second drive during that time, you're boned. In RAID-10, rebuilds are *far* faster, as you don't have to recompute the data from parity information, you simply copy a good version from one of the remaining disks. Rebuilds finish in under a day, usually a few hours.

[Schmarvin]

LSI is a good brand, and that card is very well regarded. It doesn't have RAID 5 support, but it has good performance in RAID 10.

 

That particular SKU doesn't come with the cables you need to hook up the drives. I presume you already have the right cables?

 

Yea, I know it doesn't have RAID 5. I might go RAID 10. Its just not ideal. I do have the cables, not an issue.

 

That card is also a mini-SAS card, for which you need a break-out cable such as this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132040&cm_re=mini_sas_breakout-_-16-132-040-_-Product

 

Yes, I have the cables.

 

There is no such thing. Any card that costs less than $300 is NOT actually a raid card; it's an expensive HBA (Host-Bus adapter). The tipping point at which a PCIe card becomes a RAID card is generally when it offers the option to buy a battery backup unit (BBU) for the card. The BBU will power the RAM on the raid card for something like 24 hours to maintain write consistency and avoid the time consuming full-read-checks that software/mobo raid drivers must go through after any unexpected shutdown.

 

A raid card alone should run you about $300. The BBU will cost another $150 or so. That said, a proper raid card is wonderful. Expensive, but wonderful.

 

One final note, do yourself a favor and DON'T use RAID-5. The reads are fast, sure, but the writes are apocalypticly slow even on good raid cards. Well, slow compared to RAID-10 with the same drives. The other reason not to bother with RAID-5 is because if you lose a 4TB drive, it could take several DAYS to rebuild the raid set. If you lose a second drive during that time, you're boned. In RAID-10, rebuilds are *far* faster, as you don't have to recompute the data from parity information, you simply copy a good version from one of the remaining disks. Rebuilds finish in under a day, usually a few hours.

 

I'd like to point out that RAID 5 would b e beneficial over RAID 10 for me for the following reason. I'd be using this only for storage and not as a server or workstation. So it would mainly have backups and archived files which rarely be accessed. So, reads over writes would be fine. And if I lose 4TB of data from anything it will take a while to rebuild. As noted in my first post, this is for a home server, not an enterprise system.