Raid 5

[Guy]

What is the cheapest most reliable way of getting raid 5? are there any motherboards that support it? or any Raid cards that anyone recomends?

[arthurleung]

I wouldn't recommend using onboard RAID5. I have tried software RAID5 from Intel (i955x chipset, think it is ICH7R), and also SIL3114R.

After I've given 10 hours of time for the array to initialize both gave me about 30 second burst speed of 60MB/s (limited by source hdd) then it dropped off to 3MB/s (presumably the memory cache have ran out).

For a 900G (4x300G RAID5) 3MB/s is simply unacceptable. It would take days to copy files into that array so I did not bother to continue or even try simulating a disk failure.

It might be just my harddrive got bad firmware or whatever.

I would recommend you to try it in steps.

First, try your onboard RAID5 (if you have it), test for file copying speed, and also simulate harddrive failure (as simple as pulling one cable while copying files). If you feel the speed is unacceptable, or it couldn't recover from single disk failure, forget about motherboard solution.

Second, try windows/linux RAID5 solution. repeat the same process.

Third, get a cheap RAID3(Revo64)/RAID5 card. There is cheap XFX Revo64 card @ SCAN today only (But support is minimal), or there is someone selling Highpoint RR2320 in HEXUS.classifieds (but you'll need 50 posts i think).

If you really have the budget, go for some mid-end card like Promise EX8350 (Approx £260) or Rocketraid 2320 (Approx £190). Driver support is pretty decent for Windows (average for linux, might need to think about the future).

Going further up you could go for cards like 3Ware 8500/9500 (Cheap on ebay, approx £200~300, I got my 9500S-8 for £150).

Even further Areca ARC-1230 / LSI Megaraid 300-8E / 3Ware 9590 / Any SAS card.