Adaptec vs Areca vs HighPoint

[NLight95]

For RAID 0, which of these companies provides the fastest SATA II controller card under $500?

I've read some favorable reviews of the HP 3520 but want to know what the others offer.

[swiftex]

For RAID 0, which of these companies provides the fastest SATA II controller card under $500?

I've read some favorable reviews of the HP 3520 but want to know what the others offer.

"save up and buy a Rolls Royce or Bentley instead"

[biftek.]

i hear good things about Areca.
they seem to be the most recommended.

[yankee]

I could be wrong, but you won't see huge gains from any of those controllers if you're just running RAID0. Intel ICH9 would even be ok.

[XS Janus]

If only for RAID0=not worth the $$$

[Serra]

This isn't directed at the poster - it's more a rant directed at all the people on these forums who have promoted this bad idea, you know who you are - but....

Why do people actually buy hardware add-on cards for RAID-0? Why on earth do others advocate it?

Let me spell it out plainly:
There is *nothing* that a hardware add-on card can do to improve performance with RAID-0. It can provide on-board cache, which can be a benefit to *some* desktop users, but unless your motherboard-based RAID solution is garbage (ie. NF4), you will not see any noticeable improvement. RAID-0 has no calculations to perform and no optimizations that can be made. Even those interrupts which it does generate *must* be sent to the CPU and cannot be offloaded to the card.

Now, if you still want a RAID card, go get a Promise software-based card. It'll cost you <$80 and it'll do as much as the hardware-based card with no loss in performance. RAID-1 performance is actually even improved versus most hardware cards.


*waits for all those posters who bought $600 Areca cards for RAID-0 to start chiming in, knowing they won't address anything I said... they never do... *

Edit: If you have the money to spend though, then I'd look long and hard at a RAID-5 array using a $500 card. Performance will be somewhat comparable to RAID-0, just without one of the disks. Considering the tradeoff that your data is secured against some disk failure, I think it's a good deal. It doesn't do anything against corruption (which you may very well see from a failing hard drive), but that's another matter.

[IanB]

Why do people actually buy hardware add-on cards for RAID-0? Why on earth do others advocate it?

I agree exactly with the reasons you have for the rant. But there are three reasons why someone (me for instance) would do exactly that...

The first is motherboard incompatabilities with certain disks. The particular bugbear I have in mind is the P5K Premium board, one that is still a killer except for the well-known problems with RAID and certain Samsung/WD disks, that are still not certainly fixed in later hardware/BIOS revisions for the board.

The second is the (related) ability to take the card + attached disk arrays and simply slot it into a brand new mainboard without having to worry about whether the Southbridge will read the disk arrays correctly. It likely will, between Intel ICH versions, but then what if you decide to switch to a SLI mainboard with an nForce chipset? Having a RAID card insulates you from that potential problem in upgrading, so it (and working disks/installation) can carry through many builds giving good value for the money spent.

The more expensive the card the better the future options too, you may not want or need RAID5 today, but a mix of RAID0 or RAID1 may do nicely, and then you have the power if you do wish to upgrade later and you aren't limited by the onboard Southbridge capabilities.

The third is the fact that if you are using SSDs or similar solutions, the Intel ICH has a bug that caps throughput and IIRC sometimes causes boot-up issues. Using an offboard hardware controller avoids the bandwidth cap even if for all other intents and purposes it operates no differently from the Southbridge RAID. Anyone with or intending to play with SSDs will therefore need an offboard controller even for RAID0 to make full use of the silly money they've spent. (Yeah, speaking as a 2x i-RAM owner...)

I think you also have to throw in the question of reliability too. The P5K Premium debacle shows that mainboards (perhaps from some manufacturers rather than others) are not terribly reliable and prone to manufacturing problems and design flaws, but also lack of commitment to fix bugs in "non-essential" areas of the BIOS or hardware, such as onboard RAID, which is basically added-on value to the board's main function. I don't know if there are any comparative reviews of the RMA rate or user satisfaction between RAID cards and mobos, but anecdotally on this forum you generally hear people swearing BY their Arecas and AT their Asuses...

The bottom line for this argument, it seems to me, is that RAID card manufacturers make a profit on their ability to make good hardware, and they compete intensively in a specialised market for this function only, so they have an incentive to get it right. Viz the recent Areca firmware fix for the X38 chipset problems with their cards, a little late but certainly welcome for their users. Mainboard manufacturers are just bundling an Intel add-on to their product, so it is not their PRIME focus of business and (as has been shown) their concern for its fitness has been dubious at best. Why are nVidia chipsets STILL destroying data on SATA drives? They can get away with that because people buy the chipset for SLI and know they can work around it. The specialised RAID hardware companies would die in months if they released a product like that.

So despite your unarguable technical objections, I respectfully submit there can still be very good reasons for preferring a RAID card over an onboard solution, in certain situations, however dumb the processing being done.

[itznfb]

software based RAID = fail
onboard RAID = fail

3Ware > Areca > Adaptec > Highpoint > Promise

[Serra]

I agree exactly with the reasons you have for the rant. But there are three reasons why someone (me for instance) would do exactly that...

The first is motherboard incompatabilities with certain disks. The particular bugbear I have in mind is the P5K Premium board, one that is still a killer except for the well-known problems with RAID and certain Samsung/WD disks, that are still not certainly fixed in later hardware/BIOS revisions for the board.

The second is the (related) ability to take the card + attached disk arrays and simply slot it into a brand new mainboard without having to worry about whether the Southbridge will read the disk arrays correctly. It likely will, between Intel ICH versions, but then what if you decide to switch to a SLI mainboard with an nForce chipset? Having a RAID card insulates you from that potential problem in upgrading, so it (and working disks/installation) can carry through many builds giving good value for the money spent.

The more expensive the card the better the future options too, you may not want or need RAID5 today, but a mix of RAID0 or RAID1 may do nicely, and then you have the power if you do wish to upgrade later and you aren't limited by the onboard Southbridge capabilities.

The third is the fact that if you are using SSDs or similar solutions, the Intel ICH has a bug that caps throughput and IIRC sometimes causes boot-up issues. Using an offboard hardware controller avoids the bandwidth cap even if for all other intents and purposes it operates no differently from the Southbridge RAID. Anyone with or intending to play with SSDs will therefore need an offboard controller even for RAID0 to make full use of the silly money they've spent. (Yeah, speaking as a 2x i-RAM owner...)

I think you also have to throw in the question of reliability too. The P5K Premium debacle shows that mainboards (perhaps from some manufacturers rather than others) are not terribly reliable and prone to manufacturing problems and design flaws, but also lack of commitment to fix bugs in "non-essential" areas of the BIOS or hardware, such as onboard RAID, which is basically added-on value to the board's main function. I don't know if there are any comparative reviews of the RMA rate or user satisfaction between RAID cards and mobos, but anecdotally on this forum you generally hear people swearing BY their Arecas and AT their Asuses...

The bottom line for this argument, it seems to me, is that RAID card manufacturers make a profit on their ability to make good hardware, and they compete intensively in a specialised market for this function only, so they have an incentive to get it right. Viz the recent Areca firmware fix for the X38 chipset problems with their cards, a little late but certainly welcome for their users. Mainboard manufacturers are just bundling an Intel add-on to their product, so it is not their PRIME focus of business and (as has been shown) their concern for its fitness has been dubious at best. Why are nVidia chipsets STILL destroying data on SATA drives? They can get away with that because people buy the chipset for SLI and know they can work around it. The specialised RAID hardware companies would die in months if they released a product like that.

So despite your unarguable technical objections, I respectfully submit there can still be very good reasons for preferring a RAID card over an onboard solution, in certain situations, however dumb the processing being done.

I have read your entire argument, and accept only one statement in it right now - that hardware controllers let you migrate to RAID-5/6. Please allow me to explain myself.

Concerning the first (P5K Premium compatibility issues) - issues with certain brands of hard drives? I'll want to see some proof of this, I've never heard of issues with different brands. I've never actually even heard of issues with it's on-board RAID offerings.

Concerning the second - I can do that with my software RAID card, at a fraction of the cost. I paid a high price (for this item) of $69.00 and have better RAID-1 and equal RAID-0 results to those who bought hardware cards (minus their cache, obviously), plus the ability to move my arrays as well.

Concerning the third - SSD's? C'mon, who owns one? Who can afford to? But OK, we'll look ahead into the future, by about 5 years. Frankly I'm not convinced any hardware cards out right now are really right for the speeds SSDs will have by the time we can afford them either. Sure they can decode RAID-5 off a regular disk just fine, but it has a lot of access time to do that in... with SSDs, that luxury is gone. If you want to do a lot of small file work on SSDs, you're getting a new card anyway.

Reliability? Nothing wrong with an add-on software RAID card. For that matter, I don't think there's a lot wrong with on-board RAID solutions, stability-wise anyway. But because we like to screw up our boards so much here, I'll concede those to you in this environment. I will not concede software RAID cards though.

So my bottom line is this:
My best practice for RAID1/0 would be to suggest an add-on SOFTWARE RAID card. It's still a piece of hardware you plug in, it just requires some software. Going to RAID-5? By all means, get the more expensive one. But if you're not, don't waste the money.

^ You'll note I did suggest the poster consider RAID-5 if he has the money for a card in my above post too...

software based RAID = fail
onboard RAID = fail

3Ware > Areca > Adaptec > Highpoint > Promise

Getting the same performance out of a $600 card that you could have gotten for free = Fail too.

Realizing that with my $70 software RAID I can take advantage of RAID-1 seek optimizations you can't with your $600 solution? Priceless.

[itznfb]

Getting the same performance out of a $600 card that you could have gotten for free = Fail too.

Realizing that with my $70 software RAID I can take advantage of RAID-1 seek optimizations you can't with your $600 solution? Priceless.

lol, what are you smoking?

[Knight]

I had a similar question as the OP.

What type of card would be required for +5 hard drives in a Raid 0 array? Most on-board raid solutions can't support that amount of drives. (loss of data acceptable)

[Serra]

lol, what are you smoking?

I can do an elevator seek on RAID-1, can you? Or do you just seek per job randomly assigned to each disk, regardless of which has a head closer to the data?

$70 card FTW

Edit: I invite you to find any way in which your hardware card can perform an action my card cannot. Once you look into it and realize how it works, you'll see there really isn't anything RAID cards to for RAID 1 or 0.

[NapalmV5]

i couldnt live without raid0

gimme raid0 or gimme death!

intel matrix: soft - never never get 100&#37; performance out of hdd +
uses way more cpu% especially the more drives used

iop/etc controllers: hard - less cpu% + takes any hdd to its 100% performance

[stocius]

I hate onboard raid as much as I hate onboard audio. AARRRRGHH! I will never give up my Areca!!! lol

[Serra]

i couldnt live without raid0

gimme raid0 or gimme death!

intel matrix: soft - never never get 100% performance out of hdd +
uses way more cpu% especially the more drives used

iop/etc controllers: hard - less cpu% + takes any hdd to its 100% performance

What kind of CPU are you using? I've never even seen 1% utilization, even on arrays of 4 drives, and have never seen my results go under that which is seen on Areca cards... NEVER.

Edit: Yes, this was a typo. See post 67 for details. Should be about 3%. In fairness though, 4 drives in RAID-0 on add-on software-driven cards are bottlenecked by either a PCI or PCI-Ex1 bus anyway... so that's why you won't see more than that. Oh, and that was on an Opty 170 @ stock.

Edit: Last time I could do testing on my card was with a s939 Opty 170 too... stupid add-on cards don't stupid work on my stupid P5K Deluxe... grrr..


I'm not being ultra pro-onboard here people, but full-on hardware? I want to see someone give me *results*, not superstition. Fact is hardware is only all that when it's, you know, doing something.

[Coroner Kyle]

Concerning the first (P5K Premium compatibility issues) - issues with certain brands of hard drives? I'll want to see some proof of this, I've never heard of issues with different brands. I've never actually even heard of issues with it's on-board RAID offerings.

FYI: If you want proof, check out the threads here or at the Asus forums.

I know I've read all of them because I have a P5K-Premium and I have problems with my new WD640's.

[NapalmV5]

What kind of CPU are you using? I've never even seen 1&#37; utilization, even on arrays of 4 drives, and have never seen my results go under that which is seen on Areca cards... NEVER.

Edit: Last time I could do testing on my card was with a s939 Opty 170 too... stupid add-on cards don't stupid work on my stupid P5K Deluxe... grrr..


I'm not being ultra pro-onboard here people, but full-on hardware? I want to see someone give me *results*, not superstition. Fact is hardware is only all that when it's, you know, doing something.

dual-cores

0% @ 4x raid0? you want to edit your post?


theres no superstition

ive posted many dvdshrink/nero results on areca 1210/1230

here you go,
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=126594

try and match that with a soft raid or single drive

[Serra]

FYI: If you want proof, check out the threads here or at the Asus forums.

I know I've read all of them because I have a P5K-Premium and I have problems with my new WD640's.

Hmm... tried:
Google (using keywords P5K Premium WD640 compatibility) - no results
Asus Forums - Just had to go back a few days, found nothing... couldn't find a search bar though
XS Forums - I found a few pages, all with answers that got people working

Maybe you can find something I can't?

Still don't see how this would be an improvement versus a software-driven add-on card in that way though, unless you'll also state that software-driven add-on cards won't work either.

[Serra]

dual-cores

0&#37; @ 4x raid0? you want to edit your post?

theres no superstition

ive posted many dvdshrink/nero results on areca 1210/1230

here you go,
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=126594

try and match that with a soft raid or single drive

Nope, no reason to edit my post. Fact is, RAID-0/1 just isn't processor intensive. I hate to break it to you, but all the same interrupts I get from it are the same that you do too, even with your hardware. Why? Because after the simple call, which goes out to the add-on card, all there is to return is something saying "I gots the datas", which has to go to the CPU anyway.

I would like to bring up that challenge, but my P5K Deluxe is kind of teh crappy with working with add-on cards (and as a result of which, I have gotten rid of all but 2 of my hard drives, some to external storage, some to other computers). I think it's very solvable without though - you find something your card does for RAID-0 or 1 that mine *can't* or that mine *can with greater stress in some limiting way* and I'll concede the point. Mind you, even if that were the case - and it is not - the difference would be AT BEST 1-2% (at the cost of $500-$600).

Edit: Plus, I notice you're using a 400x9 kenty in that post entitled "kenty power"... sadly, I'm hitting 3.0 - 3.2 *tops*... sigh.

Edit II: If someone wants to prove Areca RAID-1 performance is better, show me some results showing it taking seek times down >10% on random reads versus a single disk

[itznfb]

I can do an elevator seek on RAID-1, can you? Or do you just seek per job randomly assigned to each disk, regardless of which has a head closer to the data?

$70 card FTW

Edit: I invite you to find any way in which your hardware card can perform an action my card cannot. Once you look into it and realize how it works, you'll see there really isn't anything RAID cards to for RAID 1 or 0.

well first of all in RAID0 software/onboard RAID controllers don't scale. they'll will increase in performance up to about 3 drives and then they drop exponentially in performance with each additional drive. whereas a $300 - $600 8 port 3ware or areca will take all 8 drives and continue to spank the hell out of any software/onboard raid controller.

second, software/onboard raid controllers are worthless when it comes to reliability, which is kind of the point of raid.

third, any decent dedicated hardware raid card beats any software/onboard raid in performance drive for drive, and scaled upwards.

fourth, i could be wrong but as far as i know the term elevator seek is just a data handling scheme coined by promise used in their software raid products. every raid solution has its own data handling schemes. most mid - high end raid cards in raid 1 will write/read data from the first drive available in a such a way that increases read/write times by 10-20&#37;. every raid solution does this, and most mid-high cards have a few different options of data handling to choose from raid 1. sounds like you're telling you're stuck with what your software card gave you.

it's not the fact that software/onboard can perform the same functions, its the fact that hardware raid cards perform those functions better, faster, and more reliably.

edit: for the record, software/onboard raid is very CPU intensive

I've never even seen 1% utilization, even on arrays of 4 drives

this is just a lie

[NapalmV5]

Nope, no reason to edit my post. Fact is, RAID-0/1 just isn't processor intensive. I hate to break it to you, but all the same interrupts I get from it are the same that you do too, even with your hardware. Why? Because after the simple call, which goes out to the add-on card, all there is to return is something saying "I gots the datas", which has to go to the CPU anyway.

I would like to bring up that challenge, but my P5K Deluxe is kind of teh crappy with working with add-on cards (and as a result of which, I have gotten rid of all but 2 of my hard drives, some to external storage, some to other computers). I think it's very solvable without though - you find something your card does for RAID-0 or 1 that mine *can't* or that mine *can with greater stress in some limiting way* and I'll concede the point. Mind you, even if that were the case - and it is not - the difference would be AT BEST 1-2&#37; (at the cost of $500-$600).

Edit: Plus, I notice you're using a 400x9 kenty in that post entitled "kenty power"... sadly, I'm hitting 3.0 - 3.2 *tops*... sigh.

Edit II: If someone wants to prove Areca RAID-1 performance is better, show me some results showing it taking seek times down >10% on random reads versus a single disk

lol you wanted results not superstitions

i post raid0 results.. that aint good enough..

now you want raid1

cpu is also the problem

1-2% at best?

best if i leave it there..

why do i get myself into controller/hdd threads.. so silly

[Coroner Kyle]

Maybe you can find something I can't?

I'm not trying to argue with you about which card or type of raid is best. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, which makes XS a great place for advice and information.

I'm only telling you that the board has problems. The problem is that some boards work and some don't. The information is scattered, but it's there. I just would hate for others to have problems like me.

Not saying that newegg reviews are worth anything, but a quick google search turned this up. As you can clearly read, some have problems and some don't. I do.

Newegg
Link

XS
Here

Another

My post

Yet it works here

Asus
Link

[Serra]

IN my responses, please keep in mind that I'm defending software-driven add-on cards, not onboard, unless specified.

well first of all in RAID0 software/onboard RAID controllers don't scale. they'll will increase in performance up to about 3 drives and then they drop exponentially in performance with each additional drive. whereas a $300 - $600 8 port 3ware or areca will take all 8 drives and continue to spank the hell out of any software/onboard raid controller.

Now that is true. Scaling can indeed be an issue, especially with onboard. Software add-on, less so... but still, yes. I never said it wasn't.

second, software/onboard raid controllers are worthless when it comes to reliability, which is kind of the point of raid.

Why? Because they don't generate as much heat as your Areca? Perhaps you feel that if a drive fails in a RAID-0 array, your data is somehow less lost? What point of failure are we talking about? If my OS becomes corrupted I can't use mine, that's true... but if your OS is on your array, you're not exactly using yours either. RAID is not a solution to corruption. So... where is this reliability issue coming from?

third, any decent dedicated hardware raid card beats any software/onboard raid in performance drive for drive, and scaled upwards.

Scaling, yes. Again, no question. Drive for drive? I don't think that's necessarily the case. Onboard can be flaky with performance for sure, but aside from something like using a PCI bus to limit yourself with an add-on card... single drive performance for me has always been the same as anyones Areca results. What part of your magical hardware makes your same drive go faster?

fourth, i could be wrong but as far as i know the term elevator seek is just a data handling scheme coined by promise used in their software raid products. every raid solution has its own data handling schemes. most mid - high end raid cards in raid 1 will write/read data from the first drive available in a such a way that increases read/write times by 10-20%. every raid solution does this, and most mid-high cards have a few different options of data handling to choose from raid 1. sounds like you're telling you're stuck with what your software card gave you.

You are, in fact, wrong. Check it out on wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_algorithm

I strongly suspect this will make you say "Oh" and concede that maybe - just maybe - by virtue of the fact that I have the flexibility of software I could handle tasks like seeks in RAID-1 with a little more finesse.

it's not the fact that software/onboard can perform the same functions, its the fact that hardware raid cards perform those functions better, faster, and more reliably.

Again - what makes you say "better", "faster", and "more reliably"? If you're using SAS or something, for sure. There are actually different commands you can give devices to get different results with SAS that would probably be lacking from most add-on software-driven cards.

With SATA, there are only a handful of requests you can make of a hard drive, no more no less. There are no "hidden" commands that only your magical $600 rocket can pull out. And the fact is, my $70 card can issue those commands at the same rate yours can (again, RAID-0/1 only).

I've already questioned the "reliability" argument above.

edit: for the record, software/onboard raid is very CPU intensive

I remember about 2 years ago these forums were full of people who commonly saw in benches that it took next to no CPU utilization to use RAID-0 on anything. Why has that suddenly changed? It's not like all the data that gets pulled from the hard drive has to be inspected by the CPU.

lol you wanted results not superstitions

i post raid0 results.. that aint good enough..

now you want raid1

cpu is also the problem

1-2% at best?

best if i leave it at there..

why do i get into controller/hdd threads.. so silly

I didn't say your RAID-0 results weren't good enough. I said that I have no ability to compare with yours. It's like telling Brian Johnston "using those $400 shoelaces doesn't make your shoes faster" and him saying "Well you run faster than me and I'll believe you". That's not the kind of question you can ask of me - as clearly you have the superior hardware (both in quality and quantity). Sorry about that, I guess.

So I asked you to run a test which you *COULD* perform which would be objective - a simple seek time test on RAID-1 (only test I could think of). You responded mockingly. Gee, I'm sorry.

[Serra]

I'm not trying to argue with you about which card or type of raid is best. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, which makes XS a great place for advice and information.

I'm only telling you that the board has problems. The problem is that some boards work and some don't. The information is scattered, but it's there. I just would hate for others to have problems like me.

Interesting results. Just another for Asus I guess. Just reading all these, it almost looks like its an issue with AHCI... but I digress.

[Serra]

Before we go any further, I'd like to draw your attention to a review of the Areca 1210 by our own Virtual Rain. It's a comparative review against the NF4 chipset (widely known as one of the worst chipsets for RAID ever):

http://virtualrain.blogspot.com/2007...rformance.html

Please note how the differences with 2 drives are extremely slight, and keep in mind that any decent on-board or - especially - add-on software card should also beat an NF4. In real-world performance, the NF4 even wins sometimes.