limitations of software raid

[ThatNorwegianGuy]

hey, i am wondering if there are any limitations to raid. 0 - 1 - 10. if i where to put 10x 3TB seagate barracuda harddrives in my computer, would this inhibit the performance of my pc to the point that i no longer can use it`? if so, what is the practical limitations of software raid whit that many HDD's and is it possible to use a raid card in raid 10`?

[ThatNorwegianGuy]

i was thinking about using raid 10. but if there are other and better ways to achieve speed, reliability and are able to recover all the data if there should be a HDD that gives inn, please say.

my pc runs - i7 3770k - ASUS GTX 680 - corsair dominator DDR3 2133mhz memory - 240gb Kingston HyperX SSD - Asus P8C WS motherboard.

[azeotrope]

raid10 will be faster than raid5/6 and is almost as reliable as raid6, but how do you want to implement this? That motherboard only has six ports, so you cannot do chipset raid10 with 10 drives and windows doesn't have any software raid10 built in AFAIK, assuming that you are using windows. If you are willing to invest this much into storage, you should consider building a dedicated storage server or NAS or getting a raid card.

[ThatNorwegianGuy]

yes i am using windows 7 for my personal PC and that is only because i cant game on Ubuntu (yet). i can invest in a raid card, could you link a card that suits my needs`?

[azeotrope]

It depends on what performance you are expecting. For a 10 drive setup with around 300-400MB/s writes, a card set-up would cost at least $400-$500 AFAIK. You could either get a mini SAS card and a SAS expander card or a 3 port mini SAS card with breakout cables. The latter solution might be a bit cheaper. Once again, I really reccommend looking into a dedicated storage solution instead if you don't need that kind of performance.

[ThatNorwegianGuy]

i do not care about the costs to complete this (within reasonable limits ofc). all i want is a high preformence pc with the best possible storage solution.

[MG2R]

I would pick up a RAID card then. If you have a choice, just pick a SATA controller, or one that does both. SAS drives are more expensive and really not necessary for consumers.

[ThatNorwegianGuy]

ok, thanks guys :D i will come back if there are any problems

[azeotrope]

The reason I suggested a SAS/SATA card is that I'm not aware of any decent sata card with at least 10 ports. You could go with something like the HP rocketraid 3530. If you want something better established with more mature firmware, have a look at the LSI LSI0024 or adaptec 2274500-R. I don't have personal experience with these cards but have heard good things from admins running them in various servers. If want to put an OS on this raid you should consider putting some SSDs in raid instead. you'll have better real world performance and your system will feel more snappy overall.

[ThatNorwegianGuy]

ok, but i dont need to have the OS stored on a drive in the raid. can i just have a ssd loaded with the OS and other applications outside the raid`?

[azeotrope]

Sure that would be fine, but many programs would perform better on a good SSD than on a high performance raid with mechanical drives because of seek times. You might want to consider running a smaller HDD raid array alongside a raid0 SSD array with for OS and programs/games.