Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe, RAID controller...

Does anyone know how good the RAID solution implemented on this board is?

If I do RAID, it'll be level 5, probably with 3 x 74gb Raptors, but I don't want £360 worth of drives to be let down by a poor controller that's not worth bothering with.

The only RAID controllers I've ever worked with are the INTEL and AMIRAID's for servers, and ADAPTEC for workstations. The Adaptec SATA RAID 2410SA is a consideration, but there's not point in dropping £230 on a controller that offers only marginally better performance than the onboard solution..

Any thoughts would be appreciated,
S. ;)

It's software RAID 5 - 'nuff said.

Personally I'd avoid it.

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Originally Posted by Kez

It's software RAID 5 - 'nuff said. Personally I'd avoid it.

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Ahh... 'twas you who pointed this out in the other thread.. Thanx for that.
I just wanted to make sure, as I couldn't quite get my head around what the mobo was offering, with an extra controller onboard. :inquisiti

I presume the controller chip, in this case, just allows the physical connection of the additional 4 SATA drives, and does not do any of the number crunching necessary for RAID implementation?
That's :rant: sneaky...

Do you use a RAID solution? If so, what controller do you use?

Anyone else?


S.

The Silicon Image controller (not nVIDIA's SATA300 support) is the device from which you can run the drives in RAID 5. If I remember correctly this is possible through the latest driver for that particular chip.

I use a Promise Fasttrack S150 TX - onboard XOR calculations and 256MB of write cache. The CPU still does some of the work, but for the price of the controller compared to others, it's fair enough.

I like the HighPoint RocketRAID 1640. Does a good job. I have tested both of the onboard SATA controllers on the A8N and they perform very well, but if you are running a high FSB overclock you'll get much better overclocking stability when NOT using onboard RAID controllers. If you're not running a high FSB the onboard SIL RAID is very fast, especially with a few 74GB Raptors.

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Originally Posted by StormPC

If you're not running a high FSB the onboard SIL RAID is very fast, especially with a few 74GB Raptors.

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What about in RAID 5? What's the CPU usage like?

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Originally Posted by Kez

...Promise Fasttrack S150 TX...

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by StormPC

...HighPoint RocketRAID 1640...

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How failsafe are these controllers? Do they have a nonvolatile memory with the drive configuration stored on the card? Do they have a software option to backup the config to disc, in case the controller kicks the bucket?

Many thanks as always,
S.