Cheap PCI SATA RAID vs onboard SATA2, opinions?

[Bigdogbmx]

Basically I just got a cheap PCI SATA card which is a VIA VT6421A so I can have an external sata port, but I noticed its RAID as well, whereas my motherboard is just non-raid sata 2, and I wondered if running RAID 0 on the card would be faster than 2 normal drives on the mobo connectors. I already have 2 identical Seagate 250GB drives I bought thinking my board was RAID. Currently just have one boot and one storage. Since the card runs on the PCI bus so is 133MB/S max, will I see any real benefit over single drives on the motherboard?

Thanks, Bigdogbmx.

[warzooo]

That depends on how your motherboard raid-chip connects. If it also is on a PCI bus you face the same limit.
But most likely you will hit the PCI maximum transfer quite fast, if that cheap raid card even is possible to achive those numbers. I've tried a few cheap raid controllers (most for testing) and many of them cant handle data in up to 100MB/s, so they usually dont even max out the PCI bus.

[hank123]

I thinks its a JMicron equivalent.

Try it out and let us know. Runs test on what you have and what happens.

[Old Thrashbarg]

That depends on how your motherboard raid-chip connects. If it also is on a PCI bus you face the same limit

Pretty much all motherboards in the past few years have had the SATA built into the southbridge, so there's not really an interconnect, per se, although it probably uses a PCIe bus, technically.

You'll also be limited by the PCI bus, as you know, and the Via SATA chipset isn't very good either... they tend to be slow at best and unstable at worst. Just one of those Seagate drives will already be approaching the limit of the PCI bus, I doubt you'll see any improvement out of running them in RAID. You'd have better performance and stability by sticking with the onboard SATA.

[Bigdogbmx]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, informed and valid as ever :). I think Ill stick with the setup I have now then. No point tinkering about and reinstalling etc for tiny/no gains. I have to say I dont get why theres no RAID on this board (P35-S3G) when it has the ICH9R with it built in (far as I know anyway). It just seems like a way to make the board seem like it justifies the cheap price.

[nd4spdbh2]

your board only has the ICH9 controler hub and thus no raid support... a cheapie pci sata card is going to be horrible at best at raid 0... i have a rosewill silicon image based 2 port pci raid card and it maxes out at 75MB/s in raid 0.