Mobo RAID or Cheap Controller?

[ReubenHodgkins]

Hey guys. Looking to see what people think is better. 

 

Im doing a NAS / Server build on a budget, Which do you think would be better? a cheap £30 / $50USD RAID controller or using the mother board's RAID controller utility? 

 

Thanks for your help 

 

R

[manikyath]

depends on the hard drive setup and specific motherboard.

[ReubenHodgkins]

im wanting a RAID 5 with 4x 1TB drives. 

 

Not sure what mobo right now because i've bought the system yet. Im planing on repurposing a used machine for better performance per buck 

[Aekim]

The cheapest way would be a Software RAID. Windows with its storage pools vor sth like openmediavault or freenas.

If you really want to get a Hardware solution get a RAID card, sometimes the RAID on mobo is not the best performance wise

[Jarsky]

If you build a hardware RAID, you have to take into account that all 4 of those disks have to be on the same controller - many older boards, only have 2-port raid controllers (the other sata ports are usually on a secondary controller). Also keep in mind, that if the board dies....goodbye RAID.

 

You'd be best off doing a software RAID 'on the cheap', up to you wether you use onboard sata or get an HBA for connecting them. Id personally recommend an HBA.

[ReubenHodgkins]

Cheers for the info guys, ill think more about this and look at what i can afford 

 

R

[leadeater]

Hey guys. Looking to see what people think is better. 

 

Im doing a NAS / Server build on a budget, Which do you think would be better? a cheap £30 / $50USD RAID controller or using the mother board's RAID controller utility? 

 

Thanks for your help 

 

R

 

Does it have to be hardware RAID? Could you use a software configuration like unRAID(BTRFS), FreeNAS(ZFS) or Storage Spaces etc?

[KuJoe]

Hardware (w/BBU) > Software > FakeRAID (onboard/motherboard)

[Mikensan]

Performance wise you won't notice a difference between a controller and the board for normal use (like at home). Some cards allow you to export the configuration, so if the card dies you can replace the card and pick back up where you left off. The fancier controllers do all sorts of error detection and correction and sometimes have cache which is why they cost so much, and they want drives that do not do their own error correction (NAS specific drives).

 

I think you'd be fine using onboard if you're only doing 5 disks JBOD + Software raid.