which RAID setup for work PC

[Okda]

here is a possible solution:

go to ebay for PERC5i or PERC6i

both cards do the RAID level(s) u want.
the PERC6i even does RAID6
both cards are a lil old, but will still be far better than onboard intel in RAID5 (in fact, the PERC5i has same XOR as the areca 1210)
both cards have cache - the 6i has 256MB, the 5i has a upgradable RAM DIMM, so u can choose between 256 or 512MB cache!
& both cards are under USD$200 on ebay

well unfortunately ebay is not possible for me since i am from Egypt

No cache isnt a big loss, Still will yield way better performance over intel raid setup wether it be hardware or software raid.. You can go for the 9211 but i believe doesnt support raid 10 or raid 5, cant quite remember tbh.. 9240 would be your best bet with a FP key.. @ tiro im quite sure it increases IOPS mate, seen a thread a while back from one of the ssd gurus..

seems the 9240 will be the best option, and i can buy this FP key in case i will upgrade to SSD in the future

You guys are recommending some pricey options for a simple HDD Raid. This thread makes sense if he was looking for a raid card for some C300s or something, but it makes no sense for HDDs. There will basically be zero differences between cheapo hardware options and something high end like 9260 with FP key because 3 HDDs will not stress anything on either setup. The differences of 0.1ms in access times hardly matter when we are talking about the 10ms HDDs have and any Raid card can do the <300MB/s his HDDs are capable of.

Hell, I would stay with onboard for a simple HDD raid, but that's just me.

well , i will explain why i need a raid card, i am forced to build a PC now and i can't think for a person who won't buy a Sandy bridge based system, i am located in Egypt so have the board replaced after the B3 chipset r out is not a certain thing and also i want a raid setup that in case the mobo dies it will still work n another system since this raid setup will contain my OS and my work program and files