Raid card

J

joe159540

Posts: 25   +0
Hello,
For my next upgrade [Some time around march,Just getting the shopping etc done now] I was thinking of increasing the boot times save times etc. My first thought was. Just get a ssd and plonk it into my system. By then I realised a raid card and Multiple HDD's would be a better option with more storage and more speed [in theory] so I've found a raid card.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PCI-Inter...d&pid=100005&rk=1&rkt=6&sd=360559937654&rt=nc
My only query is that I wont be able to setup RAID 10 with 320Gb and 300mb/s or RAID 0 with 720Gb and 600mb/s and have my OS put onto this setup. [My motherboard (g33mo3 foxconn board) does NOT support RAID to my knowledge(Feel free to correct me if you know different)] so would this card be able to boot from the HDD's attatched in RAID10 / RAID 0
Thanks.
P.S should I go with a faster and more storage or more reliable and less power etc...

Thank you again
~Joseph
 
If you're going to go RAID don't do it with the cheapest RAID controller money can buy. I can almost guarantee you won't have a great experience if you do. I've never seen a good $10 RAID controller before (unless times have really changed) and the controller you linked only has 2 SATA ports so you won't be setting up RAID10. RAID10 requires at minimum 4 drives.

nevermind - upon closer inspection it does have 4 SATA ports - but I still think if you're going to go with a RAID controller you should get a higher quality one than this.
 
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nickc said:
Joe, please give some specs of u'r computer? are u shure u have PCI slots most newer MBs have pci-e slots.
Click to expand...
The specs of my build are:
G33MO3 mobo http://www.foxconnchannel.com/ProductDetail.aspx?T=motherboard&U=en-us0000319
E8500 CPU https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCMQFjAA&url=http://ark.intel.com/products/33911/Intel-Core2-Duo-Processor-E8500-6M-Cache-3_16-GHz-1333-MHz-FSB&ei=jfHQVJGyDJDXap23gaAH&usg=AFQjCNGLv4CSGrOH4bZqIzSYYONzFheuxQ&sig2=GgE8rFA9fE4yPJST88xayg
cx430 PSU http://www.corsair.com/en-gb/cx430-80-plus-bronze-certified-power-supply
EVGA gtx 650 http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=01G-P4-2650-KR
[This GPU covers my PCIe x1 port.]
Currently I have 3 HDD's installed 2x80Gb HDD setup in RAID 0 and my OS boot drive is a 250gb Seagate HDD. I have one sata II port spare.

2x1Gb misc RAM [I don't even know the specs of them -.-] DDR2
1x2Gb Elpida DDR2
1x1Gb Elpida DDR2

Windows 7 Home premium 32Bit OS.

And Currently my Disk drive is broken that would fill up the other port.
If I were to upgrade to a SSD then I would replace my current boot drive with that and install Windows 7 64bit OS onto that
I hope this is enough infomation of my specs as I dont really know more than this.
P.S I am sure that I have a PCI slot spare. I have 3 spare at the moment. but 2 spare later on as my intergrated audio cards are cutting it at this moment so a low end audio card would be using one. Also sorry for my non-techy vocabulary I'm still new to building and customizing PC's
 
LNCPapa said:
If you're going to go RAID don't do it with the cheapest RAID controller money can buy. I can almost guarantee you won't have a great experience if you do. I've never seen a good $10 RAID controller before (unless times have really changed) and the controller you linked only has 2 SATA ports so you won't be setting up RAID10. RAID10 requires at minimum 4 drives.

nevermind - upon closer inspection it does have 4 SATA ports - but I still think if you're going to go with a RAID controller you should get a higher quality one than this.
Click to expand...
So you would reccomend a SSD? My quiry with a SSD is that 120Gb wouldnt be enough for all my storage and my RAID 0 setup is extremly unreliable and just used for recordings. Its unreliable because RAID 0 explains for itself and also they are extremly old HDD's from older PC's that are no long operational.
Thanks
~Joseph
 
If you have room for raid, you have room for an additional drive such as an SSD. Continue using your HDD for storage. And use an SSD as the Boot drive. Just because you use and SSD, doesn't mean it has to be the only drive in the system.
 
joe159540 said:
Also my case only has 2 HDD bays.
Click to expand...
Then my question would be how four 3.5 inch drives configured in raid 10 would fit in two drive bays? Not to mention the cost of four drives being higher than a single 2.5 inch 250GB SSD. And by the time you factor in the cost of a quality raid card, the cost would equal that of a 500GB SSD ($240).

Picture illustration of Raid 10:
th

2 mirrored(raid 1) arrays striped(raid 0), equaling 4 drives in total.
 
cliffordcooley said:
Then my question would be how four 3.5 inch drives configured in raid 10 would fit in two drive bays? Not to mention the cost of four drives being higher than a single 2.5 inch 250GB SSD. And by the time you factor in the cost of a quality raid card, the cost would equal that of a 500GB SSD ($240).

Picture illustration of Raid 10:
th

2 mirrored(raid 1) arrays striped(raid 0), equaling 4 drives in total.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the help, I have a external HDD bay that I can put outside the PC which I have no problem doing and putting a fan there to cool. And the cost of the RAID card + the 4 HDD's [Each 160GB] is £50 [$75.96]. and a 250Gb SSD would be somewhere around 70-100 £ thats $106-151. Also having the RAID setup would mean id get more storage. of 320Gb against 250Gb etc.
 
I think the route you are thinking about going would be fun for learning or playing but not something I would actually use for day-to-day use. I imagine your array (if you are able to successfully build it) will be bandwidth starved and feel pretty sluggish. I think there's a max theoretical bandwidth of 120+ MB/s using PCI and I'm betting you won't get anything near that with that controller.
 
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LNCPapa said:
I think the route you are thinking about going would be fun for learning or playing but not something I would actually use for day-to-day use. I imagine your array (if you are able to successfully build it) will be bandwidth starved and feel pretty sluggish. I think there's a max theoretical bandwidth of 120+ MB/s using PCI and I'm betting you won't get anything near that with that controller.
Click to expand...
AGREED!!!
 
LNCPapa said:
I think the route you are thinking about going would be fun for learning or playing but not something I would actually use for day-to-day use. I imagine your array (if you are able to successfully build it) will be bandwidth starved and feel pretty sluggish. I think there's a max theoretical bandwidth of 120+ MB/s using PCI and I'm betting you won't get anything near that with that controller.
Click to expand...
So PCI Raid cards expecialy cheap ones are NOT worth it?
 
LNCPapa said:
Yeah - I think in this day and age a PCI RAID controller is mostly useless. I think the only real benefit from one of these is in the creation of a JBOD array for capacity sake - hardly what you're trying to do.
Click to expand...
can you reccomend a SSD either 64Gb Thats fairly cheap I dont need extreme w/r as im still on SATA II. Ill be using it to store Windows 7 32 bit a few games 10Gb max google chrome and not much more. Thanks again
 
It would be easiest to start off with a budget - what you'd like to spend as well as the maximum you can spend on this SSD. It would also be good to know what capacity you would like and what capacities are workable. The bigger an SSD gets the faster it gets and prices between 64 and 128 are not that big anymore. Even 256 is getting really inexpensive - under $100 US a lot of the time.
 
My budget is somewhere around £70 maximum which is $106. I dont need alot of storage just enough for windos a few games skype thats it. so 120Gb is more than enough for what im using and my mobo is running sata II so nothing to extreme on speeds can be achieved. thanks
 
I'd say go for the Samsung Evo 840 or 850(the newest). Their name is number one for quality SSD drives among other products.

If I was to recommend a few other names it would be Crucial, Corsair, Mushkin Enhanced, OCZ, and PNY.
 
So any corsair SSD's are pretty good? im looking at a Corsair Force LS Series 2.5" 60GB SATA III Solid State Drive with roughly
  • 560MB/s Read
  • 535MB/s Write Speed
Is this a good decition for a £40 SSD ($60)
 
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