Should I purchase a separate RAID controller or the BIOS?

[ahthurungnone]

I have lost drives that were setup on RAID 1 through my BIOS. However, each time this occured I had to move the data to another drive and restup the RAID 1 with a working HD.

Note: If I simply plug in a new drive in the same sata port as the failed drive (with the power on or the power off), the BIOS does not recognize the new drive and wants the old failed drive. Thus, I have to delete the RAID setup and resetup with two working drives. The BIOS deletes all the data from the one good drive that was previously setup on RAID which is why I must move all the data first before I do any of this.

My question is: I've heard that you should be able to just plug in a new drive without all this trouble. Is this because the RAID controller on the mobo is crap or am I just an idiot?

P.S. This mobo is not the one on my signature list.

 

[Dereck47]

My question is: I've heard that you should be able to just plug in a new drive without all this trouble. Is this because the RAID controller on the mobo is crap or am I just an idiot?

You're correct, the RAID controller on the motherboard has to support Auto Rebuild.

 

[FireWire2]

Highly recommend a hardware raid controller instead of use the Mobo RAID...

Although it works but it consumes too much CPU timing -

Example: RAID1 or RAID0 with 2x drives
When Read or Write - Both HDD send IRQ request to CPU, it's double amount of IRQ being send
where a hardware raid controller present to system a SINGEL HDD, therefore read/write requires 1/2 of the IRQ

This is why all the high-performance system uses hardware raid.

 

[ahthurungnone]

Thank you so much for all your help. Any preferences on the brand of raid controllers? Is there a preferred interface: PCI, etc?

 

[FireWire2]

There are some quite good add-in card hardware raid. Namely Areca, HPT, Atto. Adaptec...

With me after i found the driver-less hardware controller from DATOptic. That is for me...
Unless I look for over 500MB/s, 1000MB/sec raid for my clients. I would go for PCI e expandable SAS.

I refer to use this IMIRROR525A RAID

- Connect 2 drives to it
- Connect to a SATA port of MB
- Set the RAID i want...

That is it... No driver no software needed.

 

[ahthurungnone]

Do you know where to find some of these cards? NewEgg's listings are very confusing to someone like me. Thx.

 

[FireWire2]

Here it is:
http://www.datoptic.com/sata-hardware-raid-0-1-jbod-port-multiplier-controller.html