Jump to content

RAID-card for use in desktop?

DemcoX99X

Hello,

 

I've been looking for a RAID card that I can use on my desktop PC. It will be used in Windows 8.1 Pro. 

 

Is it even possible to use a RAID-card in a standard desktop version of Windows?

 

My countless google-searches didn't provide the answer so I would really appreciate

your help! 

 

DemcoX99X

ASRock X99X Killer, i7 5820K @4Ghz, 16Gb Crucial DDR4, 2x 250Gb Samsung Evo, WD 2TB Black + 2TB Red, Corsair 750D, EVGA Supernova G2 850 & GTX 980 (ref.)


 


If you wish for me to reply, please quote my comment ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

i'm pretty sure you can use any raid card you want, wouldnt see why not tbh.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

As long as there windows 8.1 drivers for it then any card should work.

An AMD cpu has no place in a solely gaming build, end of.

I3 4150, Intel HD graphics, corsair CX750M, 4gb ram, Asus H81M-E, corsair 230T, Intel stock cooler WD Green 2TB Gigabyte 550TI

Why you shouldn't trust Gpu or Cpu boss Click on this I dare you!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

My LSI MegaRAID 92608i-CV runs on my PC quite fine. My hardware is not in their tested configurations either.

 

My PC:

CPU: Intel i5-2500K (Overclocked to 4.6 GHz at 1.398v)

GPU: Two Firepro V7900 in Crossfire Pro

Mobo: Asus P8Z77-V Pro

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

 

I think the main thing you should ask yourself if you want a RAID card though. The decent ones start at over $300 (You want DDR3 Cache on the card).

 

In addition, you will need the battery backup unit for your RAID card, otherwise when you turn the PC suddenly (Due to BSOD or instability from overclock) you will lose the data on the DDR3 cache on the card.

 

It also adds like quite a lot of time to the boot time of your PC. Around a min to the boot time. It loads the RAID card BIOS first then restarts, then loads your OS.

 

Finally, these things run hot. They're usually in servers with high CFM fans blowing on them. I would recommend putting a fan under this card to cool down the heatsink. Mine regrettably has no fan under it, and doesn't get much air flow. It gets hot enough to burn fingers, especially after I sanded the stock heatsink and changed the thermal paste on it.

 

I only know LSI MegaRAID cards, but I would recommend a 9361-8i (Battery unit sold separately). It depends on your drive needs though. It gives you two SAS ports on a 12 Gb/s SAS interface. You can feed the ports to a SAS expander card if you need more ports.

 

Or if you want bang for the buck, you can usually find a bunch of older Dell PERC or OEM RAID cards on ebay. Some even have the battery back up unit with it, but ah, I would personally prefer new cards.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hello,

 

I've been looking for a RAID card that I can use on my desktop PC. It will be used in Windows 8.1 Pro. 

 

Is it even possible to use a RAID-card in a standard desktop version of Windows?

 

My countless google-searches didn't provide the answer so I would really appreciate

your help! 

 

DemcoX99X

Can I ask you why you want a dedicated hardware RAID card? Not always necessary - depending on what you want to achieve. Otherwise @scottyseng has some good info. BBU (Battery Backup Unit) is a MUST. Don't use a RAID card without one. LSI MegaRAID cards are excellent and have a great reputation. I have an older LSI 8888-ELP RAID card that I got used, and it still works perfectly.

 

My LSI MegaRAID 92608i-CV runs on my PC quite fine. My hardware is not in their tested configurations either.

 

My PC:

CPU: Intel i5-2500K (Overclocked to 4.6 GHz at 1.398v)

GPU: Two Firepro V7900 in Crossfire Pro

Mobo: Asus P8Z77-V Pro

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

 

I think the main thing you should ask yourself if you want a RAID card though. The decent ones start at over $300 (You want DDR3 Cache on the card).

 

In addition, you will need the battery backup unit for your RAID card, otherwise when you turn the PC suddenly (Due to BSOD or instability from overclock) you will lose the data on the DDR3 cache on the card.

 

It also adds like quite a lot of time to the boot time of your PC. Around a min to the boot time. It loads the RAID card BIOS first then restarts, then loads your OS.

 

Finally, these things run hot. They're usually in servers with high CFM fans blowing on them. I would recommend putting a fan under this card to cool down the heatsink. Mine regrettably has no fan under it, and doesn't get much air flow. It gets hot enough to burn fingers, especially after I sanded the stock heatsink and changed the thermal paste on it.

 

I only know LSI MegaRAID cards, but I would recommend a 9361-8i (Battery unit sold separately). It depends on your drive needs though. It gives you two SAS ports on a 12 Gb/s SAS interface. You can feed the ports to a SAS expander card if you need more ports.

 

Or if you want bang for the buck, you can usually find a bunch of older Dell PERC or OEM RAID cards on ebay. Some even have the battery back up unit with it, but ah, I would personally prefer new cards.

For Sale: Meraki Bundle

 

iPhone Xr 128 GB Product Red - HP Spectre x360 13" (i5 - 8 GB RAM - 256 GB SSD) - HP ZBook 15v G5 15" (i7-8850H - 16 GB RAM - 512 GB SSD - NVIDIA Quadro P600)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks alot for the answers everyone! 

 

Can I ask you why you want a dedicated hardware RAID card? Not always necessary - depending on what you want to achieve. Otherwise @scottyseng has some good info. BBU (Battery Backup Unit) is a MUST. Don't use a RAID card without one. LSI MegaRAID cards are excellent and have a great reputation. I have an older LSI 8888-ELP RAID card that I got used, and it still works perfectly.

 

It's a mix of having no more SATA-port on my motherboard (yes, I've filled all 10) and wanting a more secure and fast storage solution on my main system. This drive-pool will be used as my main scratchspace. 

ASRock X99X Killer, i7 5820K @4Ghz, 16Gb Crucial DDR4, 2x 250Gb Samsung Evo, WD 2TB Black + 2TB Red, Corsair 750D, EVGA Supernova G2 850 & GTX 980 (ref.)


 


If you wish for me to reply, please quote my comment ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks alot for the answers everyone! 

 

 

It's a mix of having no more SATA-port on my motherboard (yes, I've filled all 10) and wanting a more secure and fast storage solution on my main system. This drive-pool will be used as my main scratchspace. 

 

Well, if you just want more ports, there are PCI express sata port cards or HBA cards that will give you a lot of ports.

 

If you want RAID though, yeah, you will need a RAID card. I can vouch for LSI, my 9260-8i CV has been running like a tank since I bought it.

 

Realistically though, you're looking at probably $500+ for a decent LSI MegaRAID card with the battery backup module. Mini-SAS to four Sata breakout cables are usually $20-25 a piece.

 

What RAID level are you looking at for how many drives? For my LSI MegaRAID card, RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10 are non expandable. So you can't add drives to it later on. RAID 5 and 6 are.

 

Keep in mind, the larger the array, the longer the creation time will be. My RAID card took 7 days (24/7) to build my array, which is four 4TB drives in RAID 10 (Two drives per array). Your PC has to be on constantly during the build time if you are using RAID 0, 1, or 10.

 

I would take the hit and use only RAID drives, like the Western Digital Red lineup or any enterprise drive.

 

If you have any more questions on LSI cards, feel free to ask.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Well, if you just want more ports, there are PCI express sata port cards or HBA cards that will give you a lot of ports.

 

If you want RAID though, yeah, you will need a RAID card. I can vouch for LSI, my 9260-8i CV has been running like a tank since I bought it.

 

Realistically though, you're looking at probably $500+ for a decent LSI MegaRAID card with the battery backup module. Mini-SAS to four Sata breakout cables are usually $20-25 a piece.

 

What RAID level are you looking at for how many drives? For my LSI MegaRAID card, RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10 are non expandable. So you can't add drives to it later on. RAID 5 and 6 are.

 

Keep in mind, the larger the array, the longer the creation time will be. My RAID card took 7 days (24/7) to build my array, which is four 4TB drives in RAID 10 (Two drives per array). Your PC has to be on constantly during the build time if you are using RAID 0, 1, or 10.

 

I would take the hit and use only RAID drives, like the Western Digital Red lineup or any enterprise drive.

 

If you have any more questions on LSI cards, feel free to ask.

RAID-5 is what I want since I would most likely be adding more drives later on.

I own several WD RED's so HDD's won't be a problem. So far I've just been adding drives when I needed more storage. Yeah, I'm familiar with the long creation time - it's not really a worry for me. Is this done the the LSI BIOS or from the Win desktop?

 

Right now, RAID-cards is a jungle for me. Could you outline some good models or features I should be looking for?

 

Thanks alot for the response! 

ASRock X99X Killer, i7 5820K @4Ghz, 16Gb Crucial DDR4, 2x 250Gb Samsung Evo, WD 2TB Black + 2TB Red, Corsair 750D, EVGA Supernova G2 850 & GTX 980 (ref.)


 


If you wish for me to reply, please quote my comment ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hello,

 

I've been looking for a RAID card that I can use on my desktop PC. It will be used in Windows 8.1 Pro. 

 

Is it even possible to use a RAID-card in a standard desktop version of Windows?

 

My countless google-searches didn't provide the answer so I would really appreciate

your help! 

 

DemcoX99X

 

Hey DemcoX99X,
 
You can use pretty much any RAID card on a regular PC. If you need a RAID array for simple storage/speed boost/redundancy you can freely used the one that is built-in on your motherboard. Most RAID cards are rather expensive and are not worth it if you plan on doing simple consumer-level storage on the array with no need for extra stability or features. 
What are your goals with this?
 
Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

RAID-5 is what I want since I would most likely be adding more drives later on.

I own several WD RED's so HDD's won't be a problem. So far I've just been adding drives when I needed more storage. Yeah, I'm familiar with the long creation time - it's not really a worry for me. Is this done the the LSI BIOS or from the Win desktop?

 

Right now, RAID-cards is a jungle for me. Could you outline some good models or features I should be looking for?

 

Thanks alot for the response! 

 

RAID 5 is a good choice. Just make sure you know the downfalls of RAID 5 (If more than one drive fails at the same time, your array is dead).

 

You can do it either way, using the LSI BIOS or MegaRAID storage manager on Windows. I would heavily recommend using the MegaRAID storage manager because the LSI card BIOS really looks like something from the 90s. I mean it works, but the BIOS is very dated looking. The Windows program is far more modern looking in that regard.

 

Well, you have to make sure RAID 5 and 6 are supported on the card (Some of the entry level ones don't have them). Next is to make sure the RAID card has a cache of some kind, such as DDR3 or DDR4. Then make sure it has at least two SAS ports (Better for you in the future for expansion). LSI usually has SAS ports as a multiple of 4 because they break out to four lanes (So 4 = One SAS, 8 = Two SAS, and 16 = Four SAS). Also, there are two types of ports, SAS external and internal. Make sure you get internal (For LSI, this is denoted by a i on the end so a LSI 9260-8i has two internal SAS ports).

 

The cards I would recommend (This depends on pricing though), are:

 

The new gen LSI 93xx series:

The LSI MegaRAID 9361-8i with the separate battery backup unit LSI LSICVM02. You will also need two Mini-SAS SFF8643 to four SATA breakout cables.

 

The previous gen LSI 92xx series:

The LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i, 9261-8i with the cache vault unit (Varies by model). For this, you will need two Mini-SAS SFF-8087 to four SATA breakout cables.

 

If they cost the same where you live, I would get the new gen card for the newer processor and higher bandwidth for future use.

 

As for getting the array set up, you should first, plug in all RED drives, new and old, run the Western Digital Lifeguard utility (Extended Burn Test). You want to make sure the drives are 100% working when you build the array.

 

Then plug the drives into the controller, and use LSI MegaRAID storage manager to build the array.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

@captain_WD, I've already used all my SATA-ports (also using onboard RAID, please see earlier comments). The goal is to create a drive pool for long time storage and redundancy.

 

@scottyseng, Alright thanks a bunch! I'll look at specific models when I'm done with finals. You really provided some solid info - thanks :-)
                       

ASRock X99X Killer, i7 5820K @4Ghz, 16Gb Crucial DDR4, 2x 250Gb Samsung Evo, WD 2TB Black + 2TB Red, Corsair 750D, EVGA Supernova G2 850 & GTX 980 (ref.)


 


If you wish for me to reply, please quote my comment ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

@captain_WD, I've already used all my SATA-ports (also using onboard RAID, please see earlier comments). The goal is to create a drive pool for long time storage and redundancy.

 

@scottyseng, Alright thanks a bunch! I'll look at specific models when I'm done with finals. You really provided some solid info - thanks :-)

                       

 

No problem. I'm also tackling finals myself next week. Feel free to ask me any more questions on the set up or process if needed.

 

Ah, forgot to mention you need to grab the latest drivers and firmware for the card before building the array (For safety).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×