Should I get a RAID controller?

[RangerLunis]

So I have a lot of important files i need kept safe, so one obvious solution would be a RAID 1, I understand how to implement this in disk management, but in my new build in total I'll be needing two raid 1's, and one raid zero. All using two drives each.

 

I would have two 2tb disk drives in raid 1 dedicated to assets for projects, pictures, video, audio, modeling files, programming files. 

A raid 0 between two SSD's, while some say this may not make a difference I just personally love it for games.

And finally another raid 1 between another two SSD's for programs like programming iDE's and the OS. 

 

Would I be fine using the standard software raid controller, or would I be better off buying a hardware raid controller? Could anyone recommend one that doesn't clash poorly with the theme of a build, mostly white? 

[scottyseng]

5 hours ago, RangerLunis said:

-snip-

So in total, you would have:

One RAID 0 array (Two SSDs for gaming)

One RAID 1 array (Two HDDs for assets)

One RAID 1 array (Two SSDs for OS / actual production software)

 

Personally, I say if you have enough ports on the motherboard, I would say to stick with the onboard RAID. RAID0 and RAID1 are the easiest RAIDs to run performance wise. The parity based arrays like RAID5 or 6 are where you might consider a hardware RAID. However, the array you have is quite small (even if there's three of them). The other thing is that a new decent hardware RAID controller with a oncard battery backup would probably cost more than your drives at the moment (Roughly $500-700).

 

Also, do note that hardware RAID controllers are enterprise grade. They don't care how they look. They all feature green PCBs, black SAS connectors, and usually a gray / silver heatsink. They're meant to be put inside of enterprise servers or towers where no one really cares how they look, so you're kind of out of luck there anyway.

 

Finally, if you do software RAID, you want to get a good decent UPS for the computer. If you have too many blackouts, you risk the RAID0 array corrupting (or writing corrupted data to the RAID1 array). Also, if you don't already have the SSDs already and the computer supports it, maybe consider a NVMe drive for the OS / production software? They're much faster than a two disk RAID0 array.

[RangerLunis]

2 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

So in total, you would have:

One RAID 0 array (Two SSDs for gaming)

One RAID 1 array (Two HDDs for assets)

One RAID 1 array (Two SSDs for OS / actual production software)

 

Personally, I say if you have enough ports on the motherboard, I would say to stick with the onboard RAID. RAID0 and RAID1 are the easiest RAIDs to run performance wise. The parity based arrays like RAID5 or 6 are where you might consider a hardware RAID. However, the array you have is quite small (even if there's three of them). The other thing is that a new decent hardware RAID controller with a oncard battery backup would probably cost more than your drives at the moment (Roughly $500-700).

 

Also, do note that hardware RAID controllers are enterprise grade. They don't care how they look. They all feature green PCBs, black SAS connectors, and usually a gray / silver heatsink. They're meant to be put inside of enterprise servers or towers where no one really cares how they look, so you're kind of out of luck there anyway.

 

Finally, if you do software RAID, you want to get a good decent UPS for the computer. If you have too many blackouts, you risk the RAID0 array corrupting (or writing corrupted data to the RAID1 array). Also, if you don't already have the SSDs already and the computer supports it, maybe consider a NVMe drive for the OS / production software? They're much faster than a two disk RAID0 array.

Yeah thanks so much for the reply, I wish I had done a lot more research before asking this but I'll be looking into nvme since my motherboard is quite expensive a z170 premium. I believe it supports up to 8 sata connections, atleast 6 and supports nvme raids actaully I believe. So yeah I definitely need to learn much more about UPS' since i'm a little confused on the subject but thanks! 

[scottyseng]

7 minutes ago, RangerLunis said:

Yeah thanks so much for the reply, I wish I had done a lot more research before asking this but I'll be looking into nvme since my motherboard is quite expensive a z170 premium. I believe it supports up to 8 sata connections, atleast 6 and supports nvme raids actaully I believe. So yeah I definitely need to learn much more about UPS' since i'm a little confused on the subject but thanks! 

Yeah, I would definitely go for NVMe if you have the hardware to support it. It's just far faster.

 

NVMe lives on PCIe lanes, not Sata ports. The Sata ports are not capable of NVMe, only PCIe lanes or PCIe based M.2 slots / Mini SAS connector.

 

Yeah, a UPS is pretty much a battery you plug your PC into. When the power goes out or for some reason dips below usable voltage, you draw power from the battery itself. However, you need to turn off the PC safely before the battery dies (It has a set capacity...of course the larger it is, the more it costs). The goal of a UPS is to give you time to safely shut off the PC (or allowing the UPS unit to turn the PC off for you) instead of just having the system have full power loss (It also prevents you from losing unsaved work). My preferred brands for UPS units are APC and Eaton (Though I'm liking Eaton more these days).

 

My hardware RAID card's on card battery has saved me many times through several power outs from losing data as I save up for a UPS unit (I need a fairly large one because I need it to power both my desktop and my NAS).

[RangerLunis]

1 minute ago, scottyseng said:

Yeah, I would definitely go for NVMe if you have the hardware to support it. It's just far faster.

 

NVMe lives on PCIe lanes, not Sata ports. The Sata ports are not capable of NVMe, only PCIe lanes or PCIe based M.2 slots / Mini SAS connector.

 

Yeah, a UPS is pretty much a battery you plug your PC into. When the power goes out or for some reason dips below usable voltage, you draw power from the battery itself. However, you need to turn off the PC safely before the battery dies (It has a set capacity...of course the larger it is, the more it costs). The goal of a UPS is to give you time to safely shut off the PC (or allowing the UPS unit to turn the PC off for you) instead of just having the system have full power loss (It also prevents you from losing unsaved work). My preferred brands for UPS units are APC and Eaton (Though I'm liking Eaton more these days).

 

My hardware RAID card's on card battery has saved me many times through several power outs from losing data as I save up for a UPS unit (I need a fairly large one because I need it to power both my desktop and my NAS).

I live right by the beach and there are always crazy outages everywhere, I totally understand the use and how a UPS works, the only thing is how do I choose one? Do I have to use the same wattage my powersupply uses? How does the measurement of VA work?

[RangerLunis]

3 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

-snip-

Another thing, for the m.2 I'm a little worried with it clashing with my build, do you know maybe if the logo on the 950 pro series is just a sticker?

[scottyseng]

58 minutes ago, RangerLunis said:

I live right by the beach and there are always crazy outages everywhere, I totally understand the use and how a UPS works, the only thing is how do I choose one? Do I have to use the same wattage my powersupply uses? How does the measurement of VA work?

Ah, yeah, my house has a pretty old transformer on the pole so when it rains hard here we lose power pretty much...

 

It's a bit more complicated than that. You have to figure out how much wattage your PC uses on average (unless you have your PC under load constantly), figure out what is a acceptable run time to you. This Eaton video helps to explain VA:

 

You can kind of guess a UPS model by using Eaton's calculator:

http://upsselector.eaton.com/Load/Options

 

As far as I know, the sticker is just a sticker. However, I would make sure the drive works well for a bit before removing it (In case you need to RMA)

[RangerLunis]

4 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Snip

Gotcha, thanks for that info i'll definitely do some more research on all this since I do plan on eventually setting up a server and nas as well, Thank you so much for this though.