Which raid card?

[kinster45]

Hi everyone! Right now I'm building a bit of a super storage system. I'm using WD Black 4 TB drives "WD4001FAEX". I want to put them on a Raid 10 for high performance but great protection and I plan to make this my backup spot as well as a spot to put all my media like DVDs, Music, and pictures. So what I need is a great raid card with lots of ports and preferably PCIE 3.0 6 Gbs or 12 Gbs because I plan to make it run exclusively run on SSDs one day. Right now I'm looking at the Intel RS25AB080 or the Adaptec 8885Q. Which one do you recommend or is there something else I should look at? I could also go with a different raid setting. Thanks!

 

[dingo07]

how can I possibly recommend a product that isn't even on the market yet (Adaptec)...?

I've always used Adaptec for RAID, going back as far as SCSI controllers, they basically created the market, so I'm betting the Adaptec controller will be better suited than the Intel you mention, should at some point a comparison benchmark be done between them

 

[kinster45]

Hi everyone! Right now I'm building a bit of a super storage system. I'm using WD Black 4 TB drives "WD4001FAEX". I want to put them on a Raid 10 for high performance but great protection and I plan to make this my backup spot as well as a spot to put all my media like DVDs, Music, and pictures. So what I need is a great raid card with lots of ports and preferably PCIE 3.0 6 Gbs or 12 Gbs because I plan to make it run exclusively run on SSDs one day. Right now I'm looking at the Intel RS25AB080 or the Adaptec 8885Q. Which one do you recommend or is there something else I should look at? I could also go with a different raid setting. Thanks!

how can I possibly recommend a product that isn't even on the market yet (Adaptec)...?

I've always used Adaptec for RAID, going back as far as SCSI controllers, they basically created the market, so I'm betting the Adaptec controller will be better suited than the Intel you mention, should at some point a comparison benchmark be done between them

You have a great point there and I can't believe I missed that. I was told by a dealer that they were available. Ok how is performance in general of adaptec because I've been told LSI is better which is what the intel cards are based off of?

 

[dingo07]

I can't comment on which is better - but I can say they're the only 2 companies I would recommend to anyone

 

[FireWire2]

Hi everyone! Right now I'm building a bit of a super storage system. .... Thanks!

For backup media libraries and streaming, you need size and reliable, not FAST.
Each BD.ISO (no compression+DTSHD audio) max bit rate is 85Mb/s or 8.5MB/s, where DVD, JPED and FLAC (lossless codec) even lower,

Therefore highly recommend RAID5, RAID5+HS or RAID6 would do plenty, RAID10 is mainly for production's SQL or apps with lots of I/O

5x 4TB+ driver-less HW raid controller. You can configure:
as RAID5+HS = usage 12TB storage with speed of 205MB/s
as RAID5 = usage 16TB storage with speed of 245MB/s
and you can use Green HDD like my 40TB NAS, which consume less than 185W

Of course you can use 8x port Adaptec, LSI, Areca too.. but that is truly over kill
http://www.amazon.com/HPT-HIGHPOINT-TECH-RR3620-Hardware/dp/B00F3ACPV4
http://www.amazon.com/internal-cables-cables-Catalog-Category/dp/B00CQASUNG
http://www.amazon.com/LSI-LSI00214-Internal-Low-Profile-Controller/dp/B005T4B6CI

 

[kinster45]

Hi everyone! Right now I'm building a bit of a super storage system. .... Thanks!

For backup media libraries and streaming, you need size and reliable, not FAST.
Each BD.ISO (no compression+DTSHD audio) max bit rate is 85Mb/s or 8.5MB/s, where DVD, JPED and FLAC (lossless codec) even lower,

Therefore highly recommend RAID5, RAID5+HS or RAID6 would do plenty, RAID10 is mainly for production's SQL or apps with lots of I/O

5x 4TB+ driver-less HW raid controller. You can configure:
as RAID5+HS = usage 12TB storage with speed of 205MB/s
as RAID5 = usage 16TB storage with speed of 245MB/s
and you can use Green HDD like my 40TB NAS, which consume less than 185W

Of course you can use 8x port Adaptec, LSI, Areca too.. but that is truly over kill
http://www.amazon.com/HPT-HIGHPOINT-TECH-RR3620-Hardware/dp/B00F3ACPV4
http://www.amazon.com/internal-cables-cables-Catalog-Category/dp/B00CQASUNG
http://www.amazon.com/LSI-LSI00214-Internal-Low-Profile-Controller/dp/B005T4B6CI

Thanks very much for your indepth analysis. I have decided to go for overkill and bought a high end raid controller. I don't have a reason or need for such a thing as you've pointed out but I'm nuts and dumb so I decided to go with it anyways. After all when it's all said and done this will contain at least 70 TB of space for such things as backup, media, games, etc. I do have to say one thing about your NAS.....AWESOME!!!!! I will most definitely try using raid 5+HS as a test to see how I feel about it now with a dedicated controller. I 've used it before with marvell controllers and was rather disillusioned by it so I was running for 1+0 but will try both. Thanks for the advice. I'll update everyone once I've got this behemoth running.