Hooray for inbuilt RAID.. wait.. no...

Hey Guys,

I've been having a lot of trouble with my RAID setup recently, well, since I got it actually. I did have a thread previously regarding some of the troubles and didn't really want to ressurect this as the topic is a bit different...

I currently have the Silicon Image 3112 RAID controller using bios 4.2.50 and it sucks for me. Would buying an external RAID controller for my SATA drives be worth it stability and well, useability wise? I'm not saying inbuilt RAID controllers suck for everyone, but mine just doesn't like me. Windows crashing, programs not operating correctly/patching. I would like to just have a working box, i've replaced cables/changed configurations and it still does it (its not the drives, they're fine).

So yeah... external controllers, would they be of any benefit or is there a possibility I would have the same issue? I may just ditch RAID and have 2 160 GB drives

I had some bad luck on those boards and RAID as well. An external card would work for you, but the downside is the PCI bus limit. It will limit maximum throughput to around 115MB/s, less if you have other PCI cards running. Since you have two 160s, it may shave a bit off the top. If you have TV tuners, sound cards and other PCI cards, then it would bottleneck more.

Cool, thanks for the reply. I'll look into a RAID card, i don't run any other PCI cards so it should be sweet.. hopefully.