I have onboard SATA, not an add in card. But the drive itself is great. I have been looking into SATA RAID set up and I have been looking into the Addonics stuff like this: AD2SA3GPX1 2 Port SATA II RAID5/JBOD PCI-Express controller

I think I already got sata RAID support on my mobo (Asus p4p800E Deluxe). I figure I can use a RAID PCI card without actually using the RAID functionnality to have a maximum storage, ain't it? ie: use the 4 outputs independantly (for example) on a RAID card instead of splitting in two (2x 2outs) for RAID purposes..?

I think yes, all controllers can do JBOD, I think my Rocket Raid has 8 ports which should keep me covered for a while.

One way to have a lot of storage is just to use drive caddies with drives in them, we've got over 10 of these for around 2TB storage, very easy way to handle mulitple customers unless they have a HUGE project although now that you can get drives of over 300 MB even that's less of an issue.

You can also get caddy systems that take two drives for RAID 0 if you need the speed..

Thing I like about caddies (if you buy the good ones) is having 2 fans to keep the drive cool, never lost a drive with these.

Bob.

On this same topic:

What should one look for in a RAID card?

Duncan

3ware for shure.
on one pci-x card i have 2 raids.
first is two disks raid1 for system and second is raid5 9 disks as 1.3Tb working volume.
now they have pci-express models much faster.

gordan antic

My guru buddy says that controller cards have a "tendency" to loose things.

JJK

> My guru buddy says that controller cards have a "tendency" to loose things.

Not sure about that. But I can guarantee you that the on-board RAID options pose a danger.
(1) They take a CPU hit. Usually low, but reportedly up to 10%.
(2) BSOD crashes can cause the bios to lose one of the two raid drives. You may be able to recover; you may not. I've had this happen to me (total failure, requiring a new format and OS install) 3 times in 2 yrs. Granted the BSODs were because I had bad RAM, but a crash should not cause you to lose a drive completely.

My system is on-board RAID-0 SATA. I love the speed of RAID, but next time I'll be getting a good controller card.

All of the SATA controllers that I have seen appear to be for internal drives as the cable connectors are on the tops of the cards. I was going to purchase an external SATA enclosure but how would one go about getting the cables out the back of the computer to the back of the external enclosure?

Thanks,
Duncan

For that to wrok well I think you need SATA II, I did see such a controller somewhere, had internal and external ports.
Bob.

If you read the entire thread go back and click on the link in the post I made above.

have just set up a new AMD 4200 dual core on a gigabyte mb with inbuilt "Silicon Image sil 3114 raid controller", attaching just one Sata II drive to it (for the moment) through the raid setup.

As Farss said above, setting up the drive through the raid controller as JBOD ('just a bunch of drives') worked fine - I could not get the drive recognised thru windows xt setup until I did this.

This mb (GA-K8NXP-9) also has firewire 800 on it, and works like a charm with my external firewire 800 hd.

I ordered the PCI-X 4 port version of this card:

AD2SA3GPX1 2 Port SATA II RAID5/JBOD PCI-Express controller

I will report back. Filmy if you want to send me an email I should have some info early next week. I also purchase their external 5 drive case with multi-bays.

I have four 300GB SATA drives - would I be best off configuring as RAID 5?

Duncan

I wish the powers that be had named PCI-X and PCI-Express differently.

They are not the same standard, and cards for one won't fit the other.

See for example this THG article for more on the differences.

Yes I know. My MOBO doesn't have PCI Express so I had to go with the PCI-X which is backward compatible with PCI. Thanks for the heads-up - appreciate you looking out for us newbs.

Duncan