RAID card recommendations needed, plz

[Polizei]

A friend is building a rather hefty media server, and is looking to have a prety big array to serve HD and SD media to an HDTV and possibly multiple computers at a time. He's moving his AMD quadcore and 4gb of RAM to the server, and will use a 320GB drive for OS.

He's looking to have a large array for media - 8 drives, either 1 or 2TB each - for media storage.

He's looking at 1TB drives as buying 8, 2TB drives right now is cost prohibitive, and I've read that buying drives for a RAID array at different times isn't a good idea for a RAID array (possible different firmwares, etc), so he wants to buy all of them at one time.

What card would be good for an 8 drive array to serve HD media to an HDTV and at least one or two computers at the same time? He's looking at 7200rpm SATA-II drives. 8 port minimum, RAID6 preferred (almost necessary), 12 port would be nice if it doesn't triple the cost.

We're college students, so cost is a concern.

[MadHacker]

For all the raid card makers, Highpoint makes the cheapest...
I bought a 24 channel Raid 6 card for little over $1000, only down side is every once in awhile on reboot a harddrive is dropped and my server stays in the Raid cards bios screen, one refresh and it usually finds it.
a bit annoying but still for the price i can't complain... to much...
I have 8 1TB drives and 4 2TB drives all in raid 6.

I'm not sure if different firmware on harddrives has an affect on raid systems, and with the drives all setup in raid I wouldn't know how to check firmware on them to see if they are different.

but there is a possibility that 4 2TB drives would be cheaper then 8 1TB drives, in raid 6 however that would be a difference of 2TB, might be worth it to by 5 2TB drives, compare that price to 8 1TB drives. that way yo may only need an 8Channel raid card and save some $$$ there and still have room for expansion

my 2¢

[uOpt]

No raid card. Linux md or ZFS on FreeBSD.

[Serra]

If cost is a concern, I say a PERC6/i. They're not the fastest thing on wheels, but they're dirt cheap when purchased used because they're so common and has more than enough speed to handle streaming a few media streams. Definitely not recommended for SSD use, but for HDD use where we're not aiming for 1000MB/s speeds I really can't complain about them. Good RAID-6 performance as well.

Put the money you save into proper 2TB drives. Let's say that down the road you want to migrate to a larger array... the only way you can do it if you fill the ports is to buy a new RAID card. Having spare room is very helpful that way.

[Polizei]

We were at first looking at a Perc5/i, but thought we would check if there are any other good cards out there.

The Perc6/i is a SAS card... can he use that with SATA-II drives without issue, or does he need SAS drives?

Most places I see that sell the Perc 6/i don't include the SAS break out cables. Is this the proper cable? (http://www.amazon.com/CONTROLLER-CTLR2X4-CONNECTORS-INTERNAL-256MBCACHE/dp/B002MK3YD6/ref=pd_bxgy_e_text_b) Just need two to run 8 drives?

How does this card run 32 drives?

[zeroibis]

My areca 8 port works great and is very fast. If you look up some of the old benchmarks on xbitlabs it really outperforms the rest. It is the ARC-1220 and is only $444 on newegg right now. It has raid 6 support which is what I use on 2tb drives. One of the best features is the ability to migrate raid levels and even add more drives over time. Recently I added a 6th drive to my raid 6 and after 19hours it was ready to use! Note that I do not lose any data doing this! Also the fact that it has individual led ports is great too for people who do not have HDD racks that have error leds. I just got some red ones and taped them on the drives so I know what one died when something goes wrong.

A raid card like this is great b/c you can add drives over time as you require them to reduce cost. In addition you can replace the drives with larger ones over time without losing your data or needing another card. However you will need to have all the drives in the array be the same size as the largest to use its entire capacity. (for example I plan to replace these 2tb drives with 4tb drives over time and when they are all replaced my capacity will double) In theory there may be a way to also go from something like 8 1tb drives to 4 2tb drives without losing data but more data would need.

I have also attached a recent benchmark I did a while back on 6 2tb deskstars in raid 6 on this card:

[Nizzen]

zeroibis: You`re result is mostly cache. Try 4gb test file :)

105MB/s 4k random with harddisks LOL

[Serra]

We were at first looking at a Perc5/i, but thought we would check if there are any other good cards out there.

The Perc6/i is a SAS card... can he use that with SATA-II drives without issue, or does he need SAS drives?

Most places I see that sell the Perc 6/i don't include the SAS break out cables. Is this the proper cable? (http://www.amazon.com/CONTROLLER-CTLR2X4-CONNECTORS-INTERNAL-256MBCACHE/dp/B002MK3YD6/ref=pd_bxgy_e_text_b) Just need two to run 8 drives?

How does this card run 32 drives?

The PERC6 has notably better performance than the PERC5, particularly in RAID-6.

Your link shows me the RAID card, but here (http://www.amazon.com/0-5M-Internal-SFF-8484-4X7PIN-Cable/dp/B0027JQI9O/ref=pd_bxgy_e_img_b) is the cable.

Yes, it works with SATA drives. Each of the two big "tabs" up top connects to a breakout cable that supports a SATA drive.

I'm not sure about the 32 drive support... I think the 'external' models (PERC6/e) can hook into boxes with extra drives, but I'm not sure the "internal" (PERC6/i) can do that. I would consider it an 8-drive device anyway based on speeds.

I think I bought mine for $175 used, you should be able to find one used for under $200 I think.

[Anvil]

+1 for the PERC 6/i

It's a great controller, it does handle SSD's quite alright as well.

There are a few quirks though, depending on your MB you may have to do a small mod. (very easy to do)

[zeroibis]

Here is the 4gb test:

[Polizei]

Do these need firmware flashes like the Perc5/i's did/do? IIRC, they needed a firmware flash to work in non-Dell computers.

[Serra]

Do these need firmware flashes like the Perc5/i's did/do? IIRC, they needed a firmware flash to work in non-Dell computers.

I don't think the PERC6/i had the same compatibility problems of the 5/i, but in any event the issue was not related to firmware. It's actually a computer BIOS issue at heart, and the long story short is that it can be sorted by putting a piece of tape over specific PCI-E pins without compromising the card at all.

With that said, it's actually worth flashing the card anyway. You can use LSI firmware on them and I think it's beneficial to do so as LSI focuses more on optimizing storage than Dell does.

[Hawkeye4077]

I'll be getting a Highpoint RocketRaid 2720 SAS/SATA for my Media Server next week.

PCIe x8 (2.0)
8port Raid 0,1,5,10,50
expander ready
~$210, add in a couple Mini SAS -> SATA cables at $20 each and you've got a nice setup

Ive had a Perc 5/i with BBU & 512mb cache, it was about 20% faster than my RocketRaid 2300 in Raid 5.
I also had a LSI MegaRaid Sata 300-8x and it was garbage. Even with its built in Cache and a BBU it was slower than the 2300 that has neither cache nor BBU

[zeroibis]

I just hope with that many drives you never lose 2 at once. (assuming your using raid 5) Personally with my luck I figure the odds are assured that a second drive would fail during the rebuild from a drive fail and that is why I love raid 6.

Also what does the expander ready mean?

[MadHacker]

I have lost 2 drives at once when i was running Raid5 and lost everything...
which is why i switched to Raid6,

[PnoT]

If cost is your primary concern you should really think about going with a software RAID solution and just buy enough sata controllers to support how many drives you want. You should also considering going 5400 rpm drives because 7200 will not provide you with any benefits if it's going to be a media server for streaming and storage. The 2TB F3 Samsung drives are on sale for $94 on newegg right now and, as a previous response suggested, you'll kick yourself later if you go with 1TB. Windows Home Server and Windows Home Server Vail is a great solution but there are a few quirks with it.

Here is my media server with 6 2TB drives:

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/7402/512452t6r5.jpg

[zeroibis]

Here is my media server with 6 2TB drives:

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/7402/512452t6r5.jpg

What level raid is this!? 500GB total out of 6 2TB drives!?

[MadHacker]

What level raid is this!? 500GB total out of 6 2TB drives!?

he short stroked it to get better speeds:rofl::ROTF:

[PnoT]

he short stroked it to get better speeds:rofl::ROTF:

I sliced off a bit for incoming newsgroup files :rolleyes:

[Nizzen]

My Areca 1880 Raid 6 array, and no shortstroking :p:

And a raid-5.... :D

[zeroibis]

Very nice, got to love that card!

[Hawkeye4077]

I just hope with that many drives you never lose 2 at once. (assuming your using raid 5) Personally with my luck I figure the odds are assured that a second drive would fail during the rebuild from a drive fail and that is why I love raid 6.

Also what does the expander ready mean?

I've had the same WD 750greenies since they came out. 5 out of 5 were good and still are. Ive lost Raid 5 arrays by my own stupidity, but none due to HDD failure

I've had zero luck with software based raid. Ive tried openfiler/free nas and none get anything over 30-35mb/s whereas the RR2300 avgs around 70-80mb/s. (Raid 5 writes)

Highpoint shows the 2720 with 8 drives around 300+mb/s on raid 5 for SATA; SAS is even faster.

There are some external setups made by Sans Digital that are a little intriguing. Anywhere from 4-8 drives with host based raid controllers as well as hardware raid 5. These are E-Sata of course.


Edit: I have a system here that would likely make an Ideal fileserver, but slow PCI bus limitations more or less make it useless:
Dual P3 933mhz
1GB ram
PCI Sata 300TX4
PCI Gigabit Nic

Unfortunately it is not worth going out on Ebay and buying a used motherboard with 64bit PCI slots (PCI-X not available that far back)

[MadHacker]

here is the benchmark for my raid6 drives
the one on the left is 4 2TB WesternDigital WD20EARS-00S8B1, not very fast. but fast enough for video playback, which is all i use it for anyways.
the one on the right is 8 1TB Samsung HD103UJ
all on a 24 channel HighPoint RocketRaid 3560.
http://inlinethumb09.webshots.com/26824/2785104530106201080S500x500Q85.jpg (http://image87.webshots.com/87/1/4/53/2785104530106201080nHLfFx_ph.jpg)

[Polizei]

What's the LSI model for this card?