I was wondering if with my Asus rampage III formula and 120gb corsair sata 3 gt, would I be able to get a raid card and, say, 3 more 120gb corsair ssd's AND utilize my onboard raid controller to make a JBOD or maybe a raid 10 for storage? I was having trouble trying to create a raid with both onboard controllers at the same time, which is why I ask. Would this be the best work around or should I try something else? I'v estimated that 480gb +- is about what I need to store all my games and other programs and I think it would be pretty wicked to just make a 4 ssd array vs setting the one i own aside and buying bigger ones. I don't know much at all about dedicated raid cards but from just browsing newegg it looks like a $400 to $700 raid card would be required, am I misled in this?
-
Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!
Dedicated raid + mobo raid?
- Thread starter jmccann
- Start date
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2011
Beware of bandwidth ceilings. I heard the Intel South Bridge has one. http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/07/06/ssd_raid_scaling_under_windows_7/2 Marvel will likely have one (all models?). It's likely the cheaper raid cards are no better and use variants of these Sata controllers.
I looked at AMD and Intel mother board raids on the two systems I had at the time. Look for the Poor Mans Raid thread.
So far, the TRIM command does not work for SSD Raid. Background garabage colection may not be enough.
I wouldn't put the SSD in a JBOD. I would want about 10-20% free space on each one.
One SSD for OS, one for Apps and Games, would distribute some of the read workload.
I looked at AMD and Intel mother board raids on the two systems I had at the time. Look for the Poor Mans Raid thread.
So far, the TRIM command does not work for SSD Raid. Background garabage colection may not be enough.
I wouldn't put the SSD in a JBOD. I would want about 10-20% free space on each one.
One SSD for OS, one for Apps and Games, would distribute some of the read workload.
- Thread Starter
- #3
Thanks for the reply. I wasn't clear on the JBOD/ raid 10 part. that would just be storage made up of HDD's run off the up to 6 sata II ports I have available on my mobo. I'v got a bunch of media and would easily fill up much more space than I have now. my external 2tb is full and the HDD's in my system aren't far behind. It's been a while since I'v tryed but I believe I ran into problems with the way the Rampage III's sata ports work when trying to use the sata III port to boot from I couldn't have a RAID on my sata II ports. I could of totally fudged the process and given up to soon when I corrupted my data though.
I was looking at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151105 as a high end price point card that would allow 4 ssd's to stretch out so to speak. Is that overkill or about what I would need? I wouldn't want to half *** it but money in the pocket is never a bad thing.
I'd just want to make sure I would still be able to use my mobo raid options for HDD storage as well.
Ill go look into the poor mans raid thread
I was looking at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151105 as a high end price point card that would allow 4 ssd's to stretch out so to speak. Is that overkill or about what I would need? I wouldn't want to half *** it but money in the pocket is never a bad thing.
I'd just want to make sure I would still be able to use my mobo raid options for HDD storage as well.
Ill go look into the poor mans raid thread
- Thread Starter
- #4
On the cheaper side (without sacrifice?) I see something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816117153
Which would end up costing somewhere around $850 for 480gb of space with 4x raid 0
Also as I have a rampage 3 formula I don't think I have trim and sata 3 available to me because it's on a marvell controller. it's currently running off a sata 2 port and it makes me sad.
Which would end up costing somewhere around $850 for 480gb of space with 4x raid 0
Also as I have a rampage 3 formula I don't think I have trim and sata 3 available to me because it's on a marvell controller. it's currently running off a sata 2 port and it makes me sad.
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2011
There is a lot I don't know about RAID cards. There are a lot of reviews on the WEB and many helpful people. Also try Storage Review dot Com and their forums.
I would also look at New Egg customer reviews:
"While i'm sure every system isnt the same, and every IT Admin has their own way of doing things, industry standards are pretty consistent.
You generally do NOT boot to a RAID array. You install your OS to a standalone drive, say 250gb then you sandbox everything to your RAID store. User files, application installs ... all of this can be sandboxed (redirected) to the RAID array.
The OS being on the standalone drive allows a little more fault tolerance, puts a lot less demand on the RAID and when the OS becomes infected (And Windows WILL become infected sooner or later) just wipe and reload the standalone.
Backups are also smoother because you are not trying to backup a bunch of different folders mixed in with the OS and your not backing up files in use by the OS ...you just backup the whole RAID store."
This guy might be talking about shadowing, not sandboxing. This is the first I have heard of it on this scale.
I would also look at New Egg customer reviews:
"While i'm sure every system isnt the same, and every IT Admin has their own way of doing things, industry standards are pretty consistent.
You generally do NOT boot to a RAID array. You install your OS to a standalone drive, say 250gb then you sandbox everything to your RAID store. User files, application installs ... all of this can be sandboxed (redirected) to the RAID array.
The OS being on the standalone drive allows a little more fault tolerance, puts a lot less demand on the RAID and when the OS becomes infected (And Windows WILL become infected sooner or later) just wipe and reload the standalone.
Backups are also smoother because you are not trying to backup a bunch of different folders mixed in with the OS and your not backing up files in use by the OS ...you just backup the whole RAID store."
This guy might be talking about shadowing, not sandboxing. This is the first I have heard of it on this scale.
Last edited:
@jmccann, There can be only one little problem. I'm using R3E and this board just won't let me enter to LSI RAID ROM. My brother had this board before me and he was using Revodrive ... but to make it work he had to turn off all SATA controllers except Intel which could run only in AHCI or IDE mode or he couldn't boot from revo.
I'm not saying that will happen with R3F but better look for some more info before you buy anything.
With good cache config, drivers etc. ICH10 can make up to 1.0-1.1GB/s no matter if you have SATA2 or SATA3 ports. If you use RAID card then in theory there is only pcie bus limit ( also depends from card processor and some other things ). In real that Intel controller from your link should be enough to reach 2GB/s ( at least most 8 port LSI 2108 controllers are making up to 3GB/s ).
Back to your board. Intel SATA2 controller will give you better overall random transfers performance than Marvell. Marvell can be only faster in sequential read and even there, max will be something under 380MB/s so nothing special. Good advice, just turn it off as it has problems even with optical drives.
Check also this site http://thessdreview.com/category/raid-enterprise/raid-cards/ . There are some nice tests that maybe will give you some answers.
I'm not saying that will happen with R3F but better look for some more info before you buy anything.
With good cache config, drivers etc. ICH10 can make up to 1.0-1.1GB/s no matter if you have SATA2 or SATA3 ports. If you use RAID card then in theory there is only pcie bus limit ( also depends from card processor and some other things ). In real that Intel controller from your link should be enough to reach 2GB/s ( at least most 8 port LSI 2108 controllers are making up to 3GB/s ).
Back to your board. Intel SATA2 controller will give you better overall random transfers performance than Marvell. Marvell can be only faster in sequential read and even there, max will be something under 380MB/s so nothing special. Good advice, just turn it off as it has problems even with optical drives.
Check also this site http://thessdreview.com/category/raid-enterprise/raid-cards/ . There are some nice tests that maybe will give you some answers.
- Thread Starter
- #7
Thanks for the reply woomack! I had heard that with a revo drive You wouldn't be able to use your onboard raid options. I had looked into the revodrive and figured based on that and the price ($1500 vs $850 for my raid card/ssd idea for comparable performance and same size) that I should stay away from that option. Thanks for the link also, never been there and quick look shows lots of cool info that is very applicable to helping me figure out what I want to do.
I'v hit up the rog.asus forums to see if I could get some direct answers from them on the topic. Ill update what I find out when I can.
kinda wish I just waited for sandy bridge for intel sata III ports, woulda been pretty easy to settle in and be content with 2 in raid 0 off the mobo. But I have what I have and likely wont do a system upgrade till ddr4 starts maturing.
I'v hit up the rog.asus forums to see if I could get some direct answers from them on the topic. Ill update what I find out when I can.
kinda wish I just waited for sandy bridge for intel sata III ports, woulda been pretty easy to settle in and be content with 2 in raid 0 off the mobo. But I have what I have and likely wont do a system upgrade till ddr4 starts maturing.
