Angelbird Now Shipping SSD RAID Card for 800 MB/s

[nukemaster]

[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]I have no idea how I read it as "Angry Birds SSD".[/citation]
I did too.....

 

[Wish I Was Wealthy]

Another raid card,always good to see competition. When there's competition in a competitive market,that's when you get advances in technology faster.

 

[nikkidpartypooper]

That's right,wish i was wealthy! That's soo right!

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]ParrLeyne[/nom]This card has a couple of significant benefits over the RevoDrive:- you can use any SSD to increase the storage capacity- you can build a 512GB (2xCrucial M4 256GB SSD) config for about 3/4 the price ($950) of a 480GB Revox2 unit (Newegg = $1350), but have 8% more available space.- you can build a 768GB (3x256GB SSD) config for about 55% of the price ($1350) of a 720GB Revox2 unit (Newegg = $2400).[/citation]
i see your point, but the revodrive is made by a very reputable company, on the other hand, i have never heard of this other company...

 

[Wish I Was Wealthy]

You've got that right,nikkidpartypooper. You've got that so right! I know it & so do the rest that's posting in this articles blog.

 

[andy5174]

Angrybird SSD RAID card?!!!

 

[palladin9479]

This is an amazing idea. One of the biggest complaints about Revodrive based PCIe cards was that you couldn't upgrade the SSD capacity, your stuck with whatever you bought at purchase time.

This does away with that. You can start off with a single 240GB SSD, then upgrade / add more over time. You could even put a magnetic 2.5" HDD on there and a couple of SSD's and have two arrays (Boot + Data). And you can use any SSD from any manufacturer of any size, the choice is yours.

Although the price of the unit is rather high, needs to go down a bit.

 

[archange]

[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom]This is an amazing idea. One of the biggest complaints about Revodrive based PCIe cards was that you couldn't upgrade the SSD capacity, your stuck with whatever you bought at purchase time.This does away with that. You can start off with a single 240GB SSD, then upgrade / add more over time. You could even put a magnetic 2.5" HDD on there and a couple of SSD's and have two arrays (Boot + Data). And you can use any SSD from any manufacturer of any size, the choice is yours.Although the price of the unit is rather high, needs to go down a bit.[/citation]

Yeah, to bad that instead you're stuck with "just" 800 MB/s, no matter what SSDs you add along the way...

Speed freaks go with the Revodrive, or RAID them SandForce SATA3 SSDs.
Still, I wist Angelbird all the best; we need healthy competition and innovation.

 

[Guest]

Archange, you seem to forget that there are no great PCIe SATA3 controllers that allow a good SSD RAID, plus most of the s1156 motherboards around, so the majority of them, only have 2 PCIe lanes available...

SATA3 is just too young now to be taken in consideration.

And also, you can stack more Wings together, so, if it's speed you want, get another card and pair it with the one you have...

 

[ParrLeyne]

[citation][nom]Trocader[/nom]Archange, you seem to forget that there are no great PCIe SATA3 controllers that allow a good SSD RAID, plus most of the s1156 motherboards around, so the majority of them, only have 2 PCIe lanes available...SATA3 is just too young now to be taken in consideration.And also, you can stack more Wings together, so, if it's speed you want, get another card and pair it with the one you have...[/citation]
Trocader, I don't know where you have gotten your facts but you are wrong on many levels.

First, Adaptec and LSI have great SATA3 RAID controllers.

Second, they both offer excellent SSD RAID solutions.

Third, s1156 MB have at least 2 x16 PCI interfaces, which are broken out into 1 @ x16, 1 @ x8 and 2 @ x4. So, there is no bandwidth problems.

Finally, SATA3 has been around for 18 months and most new SSDs are shipping with SATA3 -- in fact, new SATA2 SSD are an anomoly which is highlighted by news/review writers.

 

[Guest]

The LSI cards you talk about are VERY expensive. This is 166 euros...
Current Marvell 91xx motherboard SATA3 controllers suck, and have 2 ports @ PCIe x1, so if you do the math the bandwidth of a sata3 raid is crippled by 50%+.

Plus this thing boots and works on Mac. I don't love Apple but people and pros use it, matter of fact. So this is a good product, and sATA3 is experimental imo, and customer comments on SATA3 beta firmware incompatibilities speak for themselves.

 

[jacobdrj]

I want some 3rd party benchmarks. I wonder if using this would have a similar effect to using an LSI card on Indilix SATA SSDs. (Improve general performance in RAID over the onboard RAID controller).

 

[palladin9479]

Parr you realize you just compared a high end HW RAID card, something we buy for the stuff in our data center, to a ~$250~300 consumer card?

I've been drooling over a revodrive x2/x3 for awhile now, haven't yet made my mind. But this card has me very tempted. That I can do RAID0 SSD x 2 + RAID0 HDD x 2 on the same card is amazing. Take two 80~100GB fast SSD's and boot off them, then use two 500MB ~ 1TB 7200RPM HDD's in RAID0 as a fast data storage option. Or if your paranoid then you can use RAID-1 on the 1TB HDD's for data storage and archival.

 

[ParrLeyne]

[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom]Parr you realize you just compared a high end HW RAID card, something we buy for the stuff in our data center, to a ~$250~300 consumer card?[/citation]

9240-4i is high-end?!!!??

It is a 4 port 6GB/s SAS/SATA Raid card, available from Newegg for $190 USD!

It is cheaper than the 166 EUR Angelbird card!

Let's get our facts right folks!

 

[romac]

@ ParrLeyne

You cant compare these product since it has a completely different concept and idea. I never saw something like that before and for sure will love to hear reactions of users which tried it. For sure I will give it a try.

 

[ParrLeyne]

[citation][nom]romac[/nom]@ ParrLeyneYou cant compare these product since it has a completely different concept and idea. I never saw something like that before and for sure will love to hear reactions of users which tried it. For sure I will give it a try.[/citation]
@Romac,

There are only 2 things that makes the controller unique:

- you can mount the SSDs on the controller's PCB. And thus use a single slot.
- the controller can come with an onboard SSD

In every other functional area, an Adaptec/LSI controller would meet or exceed the Angelbird offering:
- the others are cheaper
- the Angelbird site has little or no details on some of the advance features they refer to, which suggest a wiff of "vaporware"
- the limited distribution of the product (getting support could prove interesting)

 

[Guest]

A few questions:
1. Could i build a raid with my 2 Velociraptor disks and take power from the power-supply instead of the board?
2. Does this RAID controller overcome the Trim-problem with SSD's? I want to use my 2 Intel SSD's. Or is it the SSD-drive itself that must have a Auto-trim function?
3. The models with a SSD drive on-board. Can this partially be used for Caching my in RAID hard-drives?
When 3 times YES; i buy one, immediatly!!!