Need a little advice from about an LSI 9211-8i in my HP Z800

[Sleepy3103]

Ok so right now I have my Z800 set up with a graphics card in one of my PCI-e slots, a cheap SATA-3 PCI-e card in the other for my boot ssd since the Z800 is only SATA 2. I also have a USB 3.0 Card in the 8X slot. I don't have much room left and I want to add two 4TB drives in RAID 0 to back up my 8TB raid 0 in my HTPC/NAS. By default the HP Z800 only allows up to 2TB raid arrays with the built in intel and lsi raid.
My plan Is to use a LSI 9211-8i, but I don't know how I'm going to have the space for it. What I need to find out is, can I boot from my SSD on the LSI 9211-8i and create a 2 disk 8TB raid 0 array? If I can that will solve all my problems and I will order one.

 

[photonboy]

I do not recommend RAID0.

It's less reliable. There's also not much need for faster drives in an HTPC/NAS.

(I know you said to "backup" but aside from the first backup, copy times for any file changes is going to be pretty low)

 

[photonboy]

Other:
I use a WDMYCLOUD as my main house storage for media playback.
https://wdc.com/products/personal-cloud-storage/my-cloud.html

It's attached to the ROUTER via ethernet so can be seen by all devices. I have a 4TB unit, with a 4TB My Book unit for backup. (Works really great. 90MB/s copy speeds max from PC. Only one issue is the automatic backup doesn't work. I have to manually backup but it's not a big deal)

May be no use to you, but I thought I would mention it... You can also use this as a BACKUP from the PC if you want, or use the PC as the backup instead and link to the WD MY CLOUD is seen by all devices.

You can link to it with software such as KODI. I'm using the latest KODI 17 nightly. It does a great job of organizing my video collection. I also have a different WD player.

(some media players won't play videos due to codec or Cinavia watermark issues, but WINDOWS is fine as said with KODI)

 

[Sleepy3103]

I am doing raid 0 for cheap cost of storage. if I do a raid 5 I need 3 drives instead of 2 to get the same amount of storage and it still needs backed up. So I do a raid 0 on my HTPC and a raid 0 on my Z800 to back it up. I have been doing that for years but this is the first time it has been this large so I need a different controller. The controller in my HTPC can do up to 4TB hard drives per drive so Im good there.

 

[Sleepy3103]

I would never use an external hard drive for my nas. Not knocking you or anyone who does. But they are to slow, and to expensive to upgrade when you need more storage. I boight 2 4Tb hard drives for $249 with 3 year warranties. Way cheaper storage method. I keep all our movies and meadia and we backup all our pcs and laptops to the htpc/nas, then it gets synced to my Z800 nightly by freesync. It only syncs the files that have changed. I also use kodi on my htpc and I have about 4TB of HD movies on it. Thats why I need to upgrade my storage.

 

[photonboy]

I am doing raid 0 for cheap cost of storage. if I do a raid 5 I need 3 drives instead of 2 to get the same amount of storage and it still needs backed up. So I do a raid 0 on my HTPC and a raid 0 on my Z800 to back it up. I have been doing that for years but this is the first time it has been this large so I need a different controller. The controller in my HTPC can do up to 4TB hard drives per drive so Im good there.

OKAY, but let's look at some solutions?

1) Software RAID?
2) Different PCIe RAID card?
3) Different motherboard?

A different motherboard might be cheaper than a better RAID card, but I don't know what SOCKET you have for CPU and how expensive it would be to replace.

Part examples for storage cost:

#1 - 8TB USB drive is $250
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBFJK0080HBK-NESN/dp/B01B6BN0Q2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1475962602&sr=8-1&keywords=wd+8tb

#2 - single 8TB NAS is $320
https://www.amazon.com/Red-8TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B01BYLY4DM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1475962602&sr=8-2&keywords=wd+8tb

#3 - WD MY CLOUD 8TB is $300
https://www.amazon.com/Cloud-Personal-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B01C7JIO5Y/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1475962602&sr=8-4&keywords=wd+8tb

(comment system is screwed at Amazon. Many comments are OTHER similar WD units, or don't apply now because WD fixed the issue)

*This WD MY CLOUD again can be accessed by all devices.

#4 - 2x4TB drives?
Not sure about Seagate so cheapest I'd get is $130 ($260 total) for 2xWD Blue:
http://pcpartpicker.com/product/jp2rxr/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd40ezrz

Hmm...

If you have to buy a different SATA controller or motherboard then there is no price advantage to getting the two separate drives.

Summary:
Since it's a backup solution, frankly I'd go with the WD MY CLOUD. You can have a folder on there so that all devices can access if you have any space left.

(You'd use something like SyncbackSE FREE which I use unless you have your own solution. I just setup a daily check to mirror changes, so the backup in your case would be initiated by the Z800 basically using the WD MY CLOUD the same way as a local HDD)

Or you may change the way you do things and this has flexibility that a standalone SATA or USB drive doesn't have.

It's also nice not to have the extra drives spinning up when attached to the PC.

 

[Sleepy3103]

I can access my raid array from anywhere. All my computers in the house back up to it plus I can access it from anywhere in the world through my ftp server. Those my cloud junk drives are for people that don't know what they are doing. I don't claim to be an expert but I still would never use an external drive or one of those over priced nas boxes as a solution. I'm not knocking you if thats for you but Its not for me. If you don't have any info on the LSI 9211-8i then don't worry about it. By the way, this is a HP Z800 workstation. You can't just swap out the motherboard.