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Best practice RAID: PCIe v. MOBO

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Trivius

Member
Joined
Sep 29, 2012
Location
Fresno, CA
I have a Areca card with two SAS connectors, for one connector I am planning on setting up 4-HHD in RAID10, but I also have 2-SSD that I am planning on setting up in RAID0 and to use the latter as my OS and for a scratch-drive (split-partitioned). So I am wondering would it be better to connect the SSD through the motherboard or apply them to the second SAS connector? (The motherboard is an EVGA X58 C-3 and the system runs on a large Cyberpower UPS.)

My thinking is that keeping the RAIDS on the card will minimize CPU use, but that it might be better to split the work between the two and running from MOBO might prevent Windows issues, but that also it is possible there could be nice speed improvements if everything is ran from the PCIe PCIe/SAS adaptor being that the Intel HDD drivers for this mobo are crap.
 
I would run on the card, it is designed for that purpose and if your mobo dies you don't lose everything.
 
Agreed on the card, the onboard sata for x58 are problematic at best
 
Yup agree the x58's raid is dangerous. I had a few boards, and while it worked it wasn't the best solution by far. While the boards die, as long as you stick with Intel chipsets, you should be able to just plug and play your array to another board as long as the drives are still good. I've gone to earlier versions and later ones with the same Raid0 array without issues.

Later edition boards work better IMO... but I wouldn't use it for anything more than Raid1 or Raid0.
 
I neveer had any issues running onboard with a rampage II extreme. but i would imagine they do exsist. pla with it a lil bit run them off the card and do a HDD Bench mark then try is on board and run the HDD benchmark again you might even be able to get away with just cloning. or if you start witht eh card then switch to on boad you might not have to do anything it may or may not boot worth a try if your just testing right now
 
Wait a min scratch that you will have to reformat the drives going from one conroller to the other but if you use a cloning software like acronis or macrium your should be able to get away with out having to install twice. i have found macrium reflect to work best for me especially benching with multiple oses or cloning even a UEFI partition
 
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