Help for choosing raid controller

[Louis54000]

Hi guys,

I looking for a 4 port sata 3 raid controller for my PC. I have only 2 6gbps port on my motherbord.

I'd like to have : my SSD and 1.5TB WDC Black drive on motherboard and perhaps 3 *3TB WDC Red on the raid card in raid 5. I have a gigabit internet connection so it needs to be fast (my WDC Red doesn't hold up on Steam downloads...) and redundant (can't loose 3TB of data...)

Is this any good? http://www.ebay.fr/itm/IBM-Serveraid-M5015-8-Port-6Gb-s-PCI-E-x8-SAS-SATA-Card-46M0851-/281531126687?pt=UK_Computing_ComputerComponents_InterfaceCards&hash=item418c90139f

I'd like to have it for under 200$.

 

Thanks!

[UnknownEngineer]

Are you absolutely sure you need a RAID 5 array?

It would seem as if you system was meant purely for gaming, and I can tell you this, RAID controllers are for those who want servers.

 

Even if you couldn't afford to lose 3TB of data, and had a 1GB connection, you wont need a RAID 5 array, let alone a controller. All things considered WDC Reds are meant to last long, at least to my knowledge. By the time they start dying, it will not matter what RAID you are using, you will need to replace them. RAID 1 will allow you to clone the data just as well. Not to mention that with RAID 1 you could afford to lose 2 drives at the same time, you would still have all your data.

I'll give you 2.5 good reasons why you don't need a RAID controller or RAID 5.

 

1. You can only afford to lose 1 drive in raid 5, so you aren't exactly gaining anything there, RAID 1 has you covered just as well, if not better. You can still have 3 drives in RAID 1, you will also have read speeds of 3x SATA 2, assuming that you have more than 2 SATA ports.

 

2. I am 100% certain that even if your drives were in RAID 1 (both are clones of each other), and on the motherboard with SATA 2 connections, you would never have your drives limit you DL speed. You download bandwidth is reported in Mbps (megabits), the drive speed is reported in MB (megabytes), each byte is 8 bits.

Your internet would thus reach a max of 125MBps, the max for a single SATA 2 is 300MBps.

 

2.5 RAID 5 is slower when it comes to writing as opposed to RAID 1, writing the parity blocks on the other drives holds it back, if your connection truly is 1GB, RAID 5 is till not a good option. It would be better to get a proper mobo then create a RAID 1 or 0 array.

 

I would first get a proper mobo, one that has plenty of SATA 3 ports, before getting an expensive RAID controller. AFAIK the cheaper ones still load the CPU if you use something like RAID 4, 5 or 6.

 

TL:DR?

Don't get a RAID controller, or a RAID 5 array. Use your money on a proper mobo and get a RAID 1 array.

[Louis54000]

Hi, first thanks for your answer.

My PC it absolutly not purely meant for gaming. It's kinda of both a server and gaming PC.. I have a FTP server, Universal Media Server for my TV, IIS Web Server for Owncloud and Samba shared files for all the other home PCs. I don't game that much lately, don't have enough time!

As for my gbps connection, I downloaded COD AW when it was free : on my WDC Black around 25MB/s peak at 45MB/s. On my SSD 65MB/s steady.

Here are my speeds : SSD -> WDC Red : 90MB/s 

                                   SSD -> WDC Black : 140MB/s 

As you said, it seems sata 2 doesn't affect speeds. 

I'm not sure if my onboad controller is fast enough to handle 6 drives. And 3 more drives just to get 3 more TB is quite expansive! I'm always afraid to loose all my data... But if you said WDC Red are built to last I might aswell just buy a 6TB red, and save only important files on both drives...

 

I would love to buy a new mobo with plenty of usb 3 and sata 3 ports... But if I buy a new one it would mean changing CPU (newer have 1150 socket i believe). I love asus X99-deluxe but... yeah... don't have the money

What would you do knowing I have a 3770k 16GB DDR3 ram and a z77-gd55 mobo? (I also need lots of usb ports, I have only 6 ports and it's not enough...

I can get  Z97 gaming 7 + 4790k for 440€ ($540) tax incl. (or 5820k+X99S for 500€ but I'd need DDR4 ram) If I sell my 3770k and z77-gd55 i can get perhaps 350€. If I'm very lucky.

[UnknownEngineer]

Hi, first thanks for your answer.

My PC it absolutly not purely meant for gaming. It's kinda of both a server and gaming PC.. I have a FTP server, Universal Media Server for my TV, IIS Web Server for Owncloud and Samba shared files for all the other home PCs. I don't game that much lately, don't have enough time!

As for my gbps connection, I downloaded COD AW when it was free : on my WDC Black around 25MB/s peak at 45MB/s. On my SSD 65MB/s steady.

Here are my speeds : SSD -> WDC Red : 90MB/s 

                                   SSD -> WDC Black : 140MB/s 

As you said, it seems sata 2 doesn't affect speeds. 

I'm not sure if my onboad controller is fast enough to handle 6 drives. And 3 more drives just to get 3 more TB is quite expansive! I'm always afraid to loose all my data... But if you said WDC Red are built to last I might aswell just buy a 6TB red, and save only important files on both drives...

 

I would love to buy a new mobo with plenty of usb 3 and sata 3 ports... But if I buy a new one it would mean changing CPU (newer have 1150 socket i believe). I love asus X99-deluxe but... yeah... don't have the money

What would you do knowing I have a 3770k 16GB DDR3 ram and a z77-gd55 mobo? (I also need lots of usb ports, I have only 6 ports and it's not enough...

Heres is a vid about WDC red drives by linus. I was assuming that you already had the drives, maybe I read that wrong. Anyhow I think reds should be just fine for a server, that is what a NAS essentially is.

More on the red drives. (a PDF, no need to download)

The onboard controller should be fast enough, if there are 2x SATA 3 ports and some SATA 2 ports then it means that you have at least 2 controllers. That is at least what I have learned.

Considering the FTP and IIS server you have it might actually be a good idea to have some redundancy, and additional read speed. I am not yet sure about your budget, but personally I would recommend 2x 6TB reds in RAID 1. That wouldn't max your controller(s) and should be good for a server.

 

Considering the networks speed having a single drive might be cutting a little close, it would be nice to know how much traffic you get, how often do you use the server functionality? HDD's don't max out their interfaces if you are reading data that is written in several locations.

 

The only thing that worries me about this is the size of the HDD, I am not sure of your mobo supports 6TB drives, you'll need to get someone elses input on that.

[Louis54000]

Well, IIS is for Owncloud I don't use it much, so not much of a problem here (I have 200mbps and usually to upload large files so sequencial read is ok).

But, I need to be able to : download multiple files at minimum 30-40MB/s, read a large file for my TV (gets encoded) and read a movie locally (I have 30GB .ts files so around 10MB/s). Sequencial speeds don't really matter, but the ability to write multiple files at high speeds is important to me (yeah 10TB SSD would be great ).

Right now I have 1 WDC Black 1.5TB and 1 WDC Red 3TB. Buying 3*3TB so I have a total of (4*3)/2 6TB seems good (300€, raid 10). Buying 2*6TB drives costs 500€ for 6TB (raid 1). Won't I get more speed with 4 drives instead of 2? 

I'm afaid I won't get good speeds with onboard raid (they say  Intel® Rapid Storage Technology enterprise (AHCI/ RAID 0/ 1/ 5/ 10) sur Intel® Z77).

I'll ditch my DVD burner.. Who needs that anyway?

[UnknownEngineer]

Well, IIS is for Owncloud I don't use it much, so not much of a problem here (I have 200mbps and usually to upload large files so sequencial read is ok).

But, I need to be able to : download multiple files at minimum 30-40MB/s, read a large file for my TV (gets encoded) and read a movie locally (I have 30GB .ts files so around 10MB/s). Sequencial speeds don't really matter, but the ability to write multiple files at high speeds is important to me (yeah 10TB SSD would be great ).

Right now I have 1 WDC Black 1.5TB and 1 WDC Red 3TB. Buying 3*3TB so I have a total of (4*3)/2 6TB seems good (300€, raid 10). Buying 2*6TB drives costs 500€ for 6TB (raid 1). Won't I get more speed with 4 drives instead of 2? 

I'm afaid I won't get good speeds with onboard raid (they say  Intel® Rapid Storage Technology enterprise (AHCI/ RAID 0/ 1/ 5/ 10) sur Intel® Z77).

I'll ditch my DVD burner.. Who needs that anyway?

Ok, I was off the ball there as to what you had, and what the cost was going to be. The 4x 3TB RAID 10 is better than anything I have suggested so far.

[Louis54000]

Ok, I was off the ball there as to what you had, and what the cost was going to be. The 4x 3TB RAID 10 is better than anything I have suggested so far.

Alright, can someone tell me if I'm going to get good speeds with onboard controller ?

 

And how do I do : let's say I buy 3*3TB drives. My existing 3TB drive is full. How do I create my raid 10 array without loosing other data?

[UnknownEngineer]

Alright, can someone tell me if I'm going to get good speeds with onboard controller ?

 

And how do I do : let's say I buy 3*3TB drives. My existing 3TB drive is full. How do I create my raid 10 array without loosing other data?

Sorry about the delay, this got buried in my notifications at some point.

 

I have never setup a RAID array my self, I don't have a clue about the process for RAID 10, as it is essentially a combination array. RAID 0 always needs a clean HDD, the data is written in stripes to both drives, this means that if a file is striped into 4 stripes, only 2 of those parts will exist on one drive. AFAIK you can't stripe existing data, it is possible in theory. It is best to store the data somewhere for the time being.

 

Considering how nobody else is assisting you here, you could just ask about the RAID setup in a second topic. The only solution that shouldn't wipe your data is RAID 1, there is no striping in RAID 1, just 2 clones. Again, ask for advice from someone else here. If you buy 2 6TB drives for RAID 1 then you can just copy all the data from the single 3TB drive to the RAID 1 array.

 

The thing you need to decide over is, do you need write speed and read speed (raid 0, also double theoretical failure rate, here everything is doubled), or just read speed with redundancy (RAID 1, everything is the same, except read speeds and data security is doubled). You shouldn't be limited by the drives either way, if all the writes are limited by the 125MB ( 1 Gigabit) network you have.

 

Also, one final note, all of the above is theoretical, as with all PC related things you might not get more that 125MB writes and reads all the time. You could get limited by the network here as well, the 125MB speed is theoretical, and it degrades over distance, unless every cable in your system is fibre. <-if that is the case then money is no issue for you.

[madcow]

You won't be able to keep your data and move to motherboard raid (or any firmware/hardware raid). This goes for all raid levels including raid1 and even raid0 or JBOD of a single disk. Some software raid options may allow you to keep your data. Not sure.

 

4 disk raid10 sounds like a good option to me but you will need to back up your data elsewhere for migration.

[Louis54000]

 You could get limited by the network here as well, the 125MB speed is theoretical, and it degrades over distance, unless every cable in your system is fibre. <-if that is the case then money is no issue for you.

I get consistent 920mbps, but I don't hit it very often. Around 600 max usually, I don't know a lot of servers that can provide full gigabit. Even Steam doesn't. I have fiber to the home + cat 6 to my pc (20 meters, no loss). Well I'll think about it then because backing up 3TB of data isn't easy. And buying 2*6TB is too expansive. I'll think about it! Maybe I'll just buy 2 3TB drives in raid 0 and back up only imporant data with a software idk. Thanks for your help anyway guys !