floyd197
asked on
Which RAID Card To Purchase
Hi,
I'd like some advice on which Raid adapter to purchase. It's for a windows XP machine
which is acting as a server. It is an Intel Quad Core machine based on a Asus P5K-Pro
motherboard which had 2X Seagate Barracuda 500GB drives set up as Raid 1 using
the Intel onboard Raid. It has worked fine for a year or so but recently has started
degrading the drive quite frequently. You can rebuild it but after a few weeks will
do the same again and now will not let you do it. I have lost faith with and it is now working
off 1 drive. The plan is to fit a Raid controller card propably from Adaptec as I have
used them before - was thinking along the lines of a http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/products/controllers/hardware/sata/entry/aar-1220sa/ or a http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/products/controllers/hardware/sata/entry/aar-1430sa/. Are these both reliable and up to the job and
if not what else should I be looking at. Ideally the budget I am looking at for such a card
is around £100.00. I am also thinking of replacing the drives with X2 Seagate Constellation 500GB or 1TB and cloning the working drive onto one of these and the mirror this on the
second drive. I am not thinking of rebuilding and starting from scratch just want to
install the card and then create a raid 1 array using I assume the adapted storage manager.
Is this the right way to go about things and would appreciate peoples comments/advice
Thanks
Karl
you can try LSI cards instead of adaptec esecially with your budget. as it is just a mirror then the lower end cards should be fine
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A raid that will not rebuild reeks of a double fault, which is where the same block of data is somehow unusable on both disks in the raid 1. I would make sure to back up fregquently until you have a stable solution. I would also recommend that you do any and all data integrity checks available to you.
Based on the hardware you have listed and the budget you mentioned, it sounds like you are on an understandably modest budget. I have to ask, however, how important is the data? What would it cost to lose it? That should be the underlying question in how much you can spend on raid/harddrives.
Based on the hardware you have listed and the budget you mentioned, it sounds like you are on an understandably modest budget. I have to ask, however, how important is the data? What would it cost to lose it? That should be the underlying question in how much you can spend on raid/harddrives.
ASKER
Thanks
So If I go for 2 new Seagate Constellation drives, these are classed as enterprise 24X7
drives aren't they? and an Adaptec 6405e controller would this be a good reliable
setup. Just to clarify this is on top of a backing up not instead of
Yes, that should be a good combination.
ASKER
Now leaning towards a LSI 9240-4i. Is this a suitable choice
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ASKER
It's a good point, the card needs to go into an Asus P5K-Pro motherboard and I may be wrong but I don't
think this has an x8 PCI-Express slot so would that rule out the LSI totally.
Of course it would also fit into an x16 slot, but those are usually already used by the video card.
ASKER
Very helpful many thanks