RAID controller Card

[HatMan]

Hi All,

My TPower I45 never remains stable with a RAID array. It will run perfectly for a week or two then fall over. I then switched over to the MArvell RAID controller which fell over the same day. I bought a pair of brand new RE3's and they fell over with 4 days. Switching back to non RAID and all is well but slower. I want to use a external device, i.e PCIe SATA RAID controller. Can anyone recommend one for me that does RAID 0,1 and 1+0.

Thanks

 

[rpstewart]

Personally I'd be trying to work out why the onboard controller isn't stable before going for an add in card. The ICH10R is as good as onboard controllers get and certainly doesn't have a reputation as a toublemaker.

Are you overclocking the board at all?

 

[Ryx]

I recently switched to a Highpoint RocketRAID 3560 and it's excellent.

The problem with cheaper RAID controllers is that even those that claim to have hardware RAID can be really processor intensive. Previously I used a RocketRAID 2320 but CPU usage (3.07ghz i7) would routinely sit 15% in Win 7 and 20% in Vista simply because the card was making it do all the work.

If you really want a PCI-e RAID sollution avoid the cheaper options, it was the biggest mistake I made when setting up my new system. Admittedly I was running a RAID5 setup and RAID0 probably wouldn't be such an issue, however, I'd be a little worried about running 0 or 1+0 on a cheaper card.

For info the system is:

Asus P6T7 WS Supercomputer
Intel i7 950 @ 3.07 ghz
6gb of RAM
Sapphire Radeon 5870
350gb Raptor – boot drive
2tb Seagate- network drive
9 x Seagate 1.5tb drives in a RAID 5 array via a Highpoint RocketRAID 3560 (2gb of onboard RAM)
Corsair HX450W running RAID array and a 1000w supply feeding the rest

Hope this helps.

 

[HatMan]

Dude that card is £620 odd!!!!

My mobo has the latest Intel drivers from GURU3D and it still fails after a while. I get ace performance but it doesn't take long for something to go wrong and it falls over.

I want card that can do 1+0 that's less than £100.

 

[HatMan]

Oh and no the board is not overclocked at all.

 

[AbsenceJam]

What do you mean by fell over?

 

[HatMan]

Well as far as I can tell the same thing happens everytime.

I am using the PC for gaming, surfing whatever. I have to switch my PC off in the night as it is too close to my bed. The next boot up if it fails will result in a missing operating system message. If I am lucky Vista will fix itself by asking it repair itself, however most of the time I need to format and start over as the fault is not always curable. I have tried other RE3's and the same thing happens. It has never died "fallen over" when in use always at a reboot.

 

[AbsenceJam]

Did you check all your drives for errors, try different SATA cables etc? Unles the controller is faulty or physically damaged you shouldn't have any trouble.

 

[Le Samourai]

My system isn't up and running yet (waiting on Win7) but I've got an Adaptec 1430sa and got 4 x Hitachi 1Tb in RAID-10.

It's PCIe x4. It'll work in a spare PCIe x8/x16.

It uses Adaptec's hostraid, so it's controlled by the CPU, so it'll use up a small percentage depending upon the load.

Don't know what overall performance is like yet - need some new windows... not long now!

As mentioned, there must be a reason why your mobo isn't playing ball though. Could ram corrupt the raid setup? Or a bios flash help?

 

[HatMan]

Well to be honest, I always suspect my mobo for everything that goes wrong, as well as myself. I run an E8600 which I cannot clock past 3.5GHz without it having a fit. My RAM won't run at 1066 for long. A restart ussually puts it back to 800MHz. I have tried numerous settings for OC from other people and get nowhere.

Yes I have tried formatting, writing zero, low level, force factory, and new RE3 and still get the issue. I have not tried RAID in Win 7 though as I am running RC Build 6100. It falls over no and then but that's the OS in beta so I don't whine about it.

Will the OS make any difference to RAID stability?

MEMTEST says my RAM is fine. WD diagnostics says my RE3's are all fine. ICH10R has latest drivers. If I try to install new ones, or at least the new ones from BIOSTAR I get the error, my PC doesn't meet the required standard!! The driver I am trying to install from INTEL is called iata87enu.

 

[Le Samourai]

I'd try a bios flash and try it on bios optimized defaults for a while just to test it.

PSU up to the job and not too stressed?