Promise Fasttrack SATA300 TX4

I'm just shopping around a bit, completing the specs for a workstation setup, that will include a raid 5 disk array, and came acros this controller from Promise, while LSI doesn't seem to offfer a 4 channel sata2 solution just yet.

My thoughts on it happened to be, SATA2 raid on a 32 bit PCI bus? In theory, the 32 bit PCI bus - as far as I recal - can only support 133 mbit/s, and I recall a lot of testing the early days of the PCI bus to prove that the limit was much closer to 100 mbit/s than the theoretical 133.

So whats up with it? Can the 32 bit PCI bus actually deliver the stuff for a sata2 raid controller, or is it just a marketing gimmick?

/Flix

Although not exactly the same as your choice, I think you might check this out 1st :

ExtremeTech Report: Workstation RAID Card Shootout (June 15, 2006)

PCI bus will be the bottleneck if coupled with latest fast drive, check Seagate 7200.10 drive posts in this forum.

Beware of very slow RAID-5 Write Bandwidth (like less than a single SATA drive by itself) unless you spend big-bucks on a nice RAID-5 card... That immediately turned me off from RAID-5. Cheap RAID cards are not a good form of Data Security either - so you will STILL have to back up that RAID-5 array if you want serious redundancy.

I run RAID-0 on ICH7R, but backup religiously. The extra back-up HD's were cheaper than an expensive RAID-5 card, and I get insane write speeds too

Thanks for the heads up guys.

I reckon I'll stick with mirroring instead, as security is my primary goal, seeing as the raid5 performance on the cheap sata raid cards aren't worth it.

Guess I was just too naive to wish for some extra spice for a cheap dollar rather than opting for big dollar u320.

Cheers, Flix

I still wouldn't rely 100% on MoBo Southbridge RAID-1 as complete "Data Redundancy" either. These cheap controllers can still "Wig Out" fairly easily (more so on an OC'd PC) and and a fried Power Supply or power surge can EASILY fry all HD's in a system. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS back up your "Consumer" RAID arrays - even RAID-1! You won't regret it