areca ARC-1210 PCI-Express x8 SATA II Controller Card RAID

[Talonman]

The areca ARC-1210 PCI-Express x8 SATA II Controller Card RAID:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816131003

I want to talk about this SATA RAID controller card.

First off, the reasons I am considering this:

1) Due to me having some 'fresh off the production line' Raptors. I have hearing that some of the latest revision Raptors, are having some issues with the P35 chip set recognizing them. I would like to avoid this.

2) I like the idea of a few extra SATA ports available on the system.

3) Speed. I hear this controller is faster than the on-board P35 SATA controller chip.

Does anybody have one of these SATA controller cards? If so how do you like it?

Do we know for sure that it will work with Vista 32 and 64 bit OS?

I don't see that OS listed as suported....

[tiro_uspsss]

head over to 2CPU forum - they got lotsa info ;)

[Talonman]

Thanks ... I'll give it a look. ;)

I did some light skimming....

Still cant see if it works with Vista 32 and 64 bit.... hmmmm

[The Legend]

Thanks ... I'll give it a look. ;)

I did some light skimming....

Still cant see if it works with Vista 32 and 64 bit.... hmmmm

CyberDruid had this working with Vista x64 before his board went bad. It should work just fine.

[koc]

I have the areca ARC-1210 PCI-Express x8 Controller Card RAID

works like charm with my vista 64-bit and 3 raptors in raid0

[The Legend]

I have the areca ARC-1210 PCI-Express x8 Controller Card RAID

works like charm with my vista 64-bit and 3 raptors in raid0

What are your access times and throughput? Have you tested the returns between using 2 drives and 3?

[koc]

What are your access times and throughput? Have you tested the returns between using 2 drives and 3?

These are the results

Areca 1210 X8
2Xraptors - Raid0 - strip 16
window XP - SP2

http://www3.0zz0.com/2007/10/25/22/56926513.jpg

http://www3.0zz0.com/2007/10/25/22/45187471.jpg

and as soon as possible , i will make the same tests with 3Xraptors :)

[IanB]

You might want to have a look at this article:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/pci-express-sata-raid-controllers-for-smb-servers-uk,review-1927.html

I realise that it's THG, and that's considered a bit of a joke around here, but if you don't want RAID6 then from my reading the best solution there was the HighPoint RR2322. It owned the Areca in every benchmark despite it having no onboard cache memory, it runs natively at 4xPCIe which is more compatible with most mainboards than the 8xPCIe Areca and in the UK I can buy it for well over £100 cheaper (over $200 US).

The only reason they didn't score it highly that I can see is because it comes with a cable designed to link it to a proprietary external HD box, but an alternative cable that terminates in standard internal SATA data connectors is available for £30 ($60), so the total cost is just £210 ($420). Why would you want to pay more?

UK sales links:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=408086 (Highpoint RR2322)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=554374 (4-way SATA cable for it)

[continuum]

I have the areca ARC-1210 PCI-Express x8 Controller Card RAID

works like charm with my vista 64-bit and 3 raptors in raid0Works like a charm with your GA-X38-DQ6?

Hmm, that's great to know. I'm considering an ARC-1680 in an X38-DQ6 for immediate purchase, I've got a bunch of Q6600 G0's here that aren't happy OC'ing in my P965-based board, and figure I might as well grab a new DDR2-based MB...

[stevecs]

Works like a charm with your GA-X38-DQ6?

Hmm, that's great to know. I'm considering an ARC-1680 in an X38-DQ6 for immediate purchase, I've got a bunch of Q6600 G0's here that aren't happy OC'ing in my P965-based board, and figure I might as well grab a new DDR2-based MB...

I was also looking at the 168x series here as well for expansion (was looking to go to 64-128 drives). Anyway, two items:

1) areca does not support more than 32 drives per base raid set (ie, raid 3,5,6) if you want more you have to do raid 50 or 60 and you cannot migrate to those at this time so you have to set it up that way from the beginning.

2) talking to areca they do not recommend using the 168x with sata drives yet. from what I understand it's due to incompatibilities with the various enclosures/backplanes out there.

Due to this I just upgraded to the 1TB drives on my 1280ml and will hope that it will last for another year in which time I hope the issues have been fixed.

[continuum]

Hmm. Good to know.

I've got my ARC-1680 happily plugged into an X38-DQ6 now for the last couple of days. The SAS disks are plugged in directly via a SAS fanout cable and work fine.... the four ST31000340NS (Seagate Barracuda ES.2 1TB's) drives are plugged in directly via a SATA fanout cable and consistently drop one drive out of RAID5. In individual RAID1 arrays they seem to work fine. I'm still troubleshooting.

[stevecs]

Let us know what you find out w/ the SATA drives dropping off line. I would have expected problems with backplanes after what areca said but I wouldn't have thought that it would have been an issue with a sata drive directly connected.

[2000army]

just ordered one to play with my DFI X38 and 2 raptor x's

[mouawad]

areca cards in raid 0 ...damn that's a waste of money :)

[Serra]

areca cards in raid 0 ...damn that's a waste of money :)

QFT. I was just about to post the very thing when I saw this.

Buy hey, if you want to go throw your money down the drain, that's your business...

Edit: Of course, it looks like you just revived this thread, from November, so it's probably all a moot point by now. I hope the gentleman who ordered the Areca card for his 2x raptors is enjoying it :rofl:

[koc]

areca cards in raid 0 ...damn that's a waste of money



I hope the gentleman who ordered the Areca card for his 2x raptors is enjoying it

Areca card its not waste of money , specially for Nvidia chipsets , coz it has poor raid performance

Thats why i bought the card for my old asus 680i mobo

[F.E.A.R.]

@ Talonman

The ARC-1210 ist a very good, cheap PCIe x8-controller with cache. But the tests with a Raptor HDD are not so good. Try a test with an d without write-cache. I dont see a advantage!?!?!? :shrug: But with a Samsung HD501LJ...

"Red" is with cache and "blue" is without cache (h2benchw ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/h2benchw.zip)

http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=6189733&postcount=167



And here my tests with SSDs. I love this controler :up:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=2675580&postcount=1


@ all ARC-1210-users...

At any sites i read the chip is a IOP331 with 400MHz and 128MB Cache. But this is my system info...

http://www.abload.de/img/pict0367u2o.jpg

And on the chip-die (i changed the cooler) i read "80333". Its a IOP333!?

Sorry for my bad english :p:

[Big Myke]

http://i25.tinypic.com/15yucna.jpg


Areca 1210 X8
2Xraptors - Raid0 - strip 128
Windows Vista x64 Ultimate


Koc, what are your results with 3x Raptor 150's in Raid0? Do you mind sharing?

[koc]

Koc, what are your results with 3x Raptor 150's in Raid0? Do you mind sharing?

http://www5.0zz0.com/2007/11/14/13/79698384.jpg

[Big Myke]

Thanks Kock for your fast reply. I also use Everest's benchmarking. Any thoughts about how accurate everest might be compared to hd tach/hd tune?:shrug:



http://i30.tinypic.com/2hd6rsh.png

Areca 1210 X8
2Xraptors - Raid0 - stripe 128
Windows Vista x64 Ultimate

[F.E.A.R.]

:p:

AID 0 with 3 SSDs...

http://www.abload.de/img/hc_256wzi.jpg http://www.abload.de/img/hc_257n2a.jpg
http://www.abload.de/img/hc_259zoa.jpg http://www.abload.de/img/hc_2601n9.jpg


AID 0 with 4 SSDs... *ggg*

http://www.abload.de/img/hc_247er8.jpg http://www.abload.de/img/hc_24955n.jpg
http://www.abload.de/img/hc_2542cl.jpg http://www.abload.de/img/hc_255066.jpg


RAID 5 with 3 SSDs...

http://www.abload.de/img/hc_261909.jpg http://www.abload.de/img/hc_262ymo.jpg
http://www.abload.de/img/hc_2633a6.jpg http://www.abload.de/img/hc_264zx4.jpg


RAID 5 with 4 SDDs...

http://www.abload.de/img/hc_250s8x.jpg http://www.abload.de/img/hc_2528cv.jpg
http://www.abload.de/img/hc_251z6n.jpg http://www.abload.de/img/hc_253ad5.jpg

[Big Myke]

very interesting on SSD

[F.E.A.R.]

but very expensive, too :D

i have only 2 SSDs - the other 2 SSDs my friend

[Serra]

Areca card its not waste of money , specially for Nvidia chipsets , coz it has poor raid performance

Thats why i bought the card for my old asus 680i mobo

The idea is that RAID-0 does not require any special logic and has next to no optimizations possible... hence, it's considered a waste. You'll get increased speed to/from cache obviously, but that's kind of a specialized requirement.

[Big Myke]

what would you suggest serra?

[Serra]

If you have the hardware, I say use it. RAID-5 or 6 would be ideal, but it likely has at least some of the possible RAID-1 optimizations (that would still probably be a bit of a waste though).

RAID-0 is something you can do just fine with on-board RAID in nearly all cases... maybe a cheap software RAID controller if you want to be able to migrate from system to system. The thing with RAID-0 that makes hardware controllers wasted (again, except for cache) is that every time an onboard RAID-0 set would require a CPU interrupt, so do hardware cards. There's really no saving at all CPU-wise, because RAID-0 is, well, a no-brainer.

[Jazzy jeff]

I have the Areca 1210 and was using it with Vista. It worked really nicely, and the only problem I had with it was a very annoying beep every time I booted up (you can't disable it either) and it took along time to recognize my drives on boot (7-10 seconds).

[F.E.A.R.]

There is no problem...
The Areca´s checks the BIOS, the ecc-cache and the Raid-Set at every boot.
A cheap controller check only the Raid-Set, because the most have no cache (and no Bios-check).

I boot my PC every 3-6 weeks (ARC-1210). So i can forget this 10seconds *g*
But for heavy hardware-testing (many, many boots) this 10 seconds are a long time (you are right ;-) )

[Jazzy jeff]

Have you figured out how to get the loud beep to stop? I disabled it in the bios but it still doesn't turn off.

[virtualrain]

I ran some tests of the Areca vs. nForce4 some time ago. 680i RAID is even worse that NF4 so if you are using an NV platform, do yourself a favor and put an Areca in that third x16 slot!

My Review (http://virtualrain.blogspot.com/2007/04/areca-raid-controller-and-performance.html)

If you are using Intel, I wouldn't bother, the ICH9R is pretty good from what I've read.

[Big Myke]

I ran some tests of the Areca vs. nForce4 some time ago. 680i RAID is even worse that NF4 so if you are using an NV platform, do yourself a favor and put an Areca in that third x16 slot!

My Review (http://virtualrain.blogspot.com/2007/04/areca-raid-controller-and-performance.html)

If you are using Intel, I wouldn't bother, the ICH9R is pretty good from what I've read.

any results yet with vista and shortstroking 4 harddrives with the areca 1210?

[koc]

Areca 1210 is avery good alternative for the crapy nForce4 on bord raid

but the matrix raid on the intel chipset Achieved better results than areca 1210

areca 1210 and 3 raptors

http://www5.0zz0.com/2007/11/14/13/79698384.jpg

raid matrix

http://www4.0zz0.com/2007/12/30/15/21663876.jpg

Iv got lower access time and higher average read with raid matrix

[Big Myke]

http://i30.tinypic.com/dfenbp.jpg

Here are my 4 Raptors in raid 0

Areca 1210 X8
4Xraptors - Raid0 - strip 128
Windows Vista x64 Ultimate

[F.E.A.R.]

@ Big Myke

What says the FC-Test?

This is the test with 4 SSDs...

http://www.abload.de/img/hc_255066.jpg

[Big Myke]

sorry fear, I couldn't get FC-test to work properly.

http://i28.tinypic.com/73gmrc.jpg

any idea why I get a few drooping spikes in my benchmark?:down:

[F.E.A.R.]

Os? ;)

What´s wrong with FC-Test?

[F.E.A.R.]

At the moment the Highpoint HPT3520 is better than ARC-1210.

http://www.forumdeluxx.de/forum/showpost.php?p=8596984&postcount=2641

[Big Myke]

http://www.areca.us/support/main.htm

New firmware added on 3-30-2008

ARCXXXXBIOS.BIN V1.21 Date: 2007-10-11
ARCXXXXBOOT.BIN V1.44 Date: 2008-01-28
ARCXXXXFIRM.BIN V1.44 Date: 2008-02-01



Cheers




At the moment the Highpoint HPT3520 is better than ARC-1210.

http://www.forumdeluxx.de/forum/show...postcount=2641

Not for the money/speed ratio it isn't better imo.

[Big Myke]

Hate to bump a year old thread but its better than creating a new one.
I updated to 1.48 Firmware. They came out a few days ago. No issues so far. :up:

http://www.areca.us/support/main.htm

Good Luck Fellas.

Firmware 1.48
Win 7 64bit
4x Velociraptors

http://i50.tinypic.com/9t0gv4.jpg

[tiro_uspsss]

wouldnt mind seeing results with 2-4 x SSDs esp OCZ vertex or agility

[pajda]

Sry for bumping

I can get this card for around 200$, with 3 months warranty, so would it be worth to get it?

[tiro_uspsss]

Sry for bumping

I can get this card for around 200$, with 3 months warranty, so would it be worth to get it?

naaa..:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118130

:up:

is it 2nd hand? cause if so it'd be even less worth it.. iirc 2nd hand 1210's go for a max of USD$150

[pajda]

yup its 2nd hand, thx for the tip tiro :)

[tiro_uspsss]

yup its 2nd hand, thx for the tip tiro :)

:O thats way too much :down: