# Raid control card vs on board raid?



## drumsonly2002 (Dec 31, 2009)

Gettng a EVGA X 58 and it has on board raid. Got 3 x 256 meg SSD's want to Raid 0 them. Should I put the OS on another drive IE. a single small SSD, thus the 3 SSD's Raid 0 used for data only? The other thing, should I  get a stand alone card such as Adaptec 1430SA 4 Port SATA II RAID 0/1/10/JBOD Low Profile Controller Card PCI-E4 RoHS?  What card do you recommend if any? this is my first computer build and learning a I buy parts. The computer will be for flight sims only, thus I have the Need for Speed. Thanks!


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## Zubasa (Dec 31, 2009)

If you are going SSD raid, it always makes sense to get a dedicated RAID card.


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## DarkEgo (Dec 31, 2009)

Dell Perc 5/i's are nice and cheap off ebay. I would pick up one of those, just make sure you have good air flow.


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## Hayder_Master (Dec 31, 2009)

since you got 3 SSD's i see no problem to get extreme raid controller card, there is some performance up from on board raid card , and think about raid card with SATA II support for more speed


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## DarkEgo (Dec 31, 2009)

hayder.master said:


> since you got 3 SSD's i see no problem to get extreme raid controller card, there is some performance up from on board raid card , and think about raid card with SATA II support for more speed



I agree SATA 2 is a must, just one SSD will saturate SATA 1.


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## DirectorC (Dec 31, 2009)

Are you going to do anything besides play flight sims?  Will it be a daily use computer?  Do you upload/download a lot (use torrents, seeder)?  My problem is I made a RAID0 and it's often a bit laggy because I have uploads and/or downloads going all the time, so in the future I will have two arrays, one for the system and one for data, so that read/writes to the data drive don't affect applications and system performance or game load times.  Hope these considerations help.


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## slyfox2151 (Dec 31, 2009)

Since there SSD's (i presume with onboard cache) there shouldnt be any lag or delay as there responce time is less then 0.1, with your HDD raid the heads would be moving all over the disk as it tried to read / write torrents and load an application, you wont get that lag as the head moves to the data with a decent SSD


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## Beertintedgoggles (Dec 31, 2009)

With more and more SSD's having large amounts of cache onboard is the need for a dedicated RAID card starting to diminish?  Sure an onboard solution will take some CPU cycles but processors now seem more than up for the task (being multi-cored and just more powerful overall than even a few years ago).  Have there been any speed comparisons lately with say an x58 board's solution versus a dedicated card with onboard processor and cache with the same array?


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## slyfox2151 (Dec 31, 2009)

Onboard x58 VS low end Hardware raid card vs highend


that would be very interesting.

of course i would assume any Raid 5/6/10 would be faster on the Dedicated Hardware card, however i think Raid 0 would score within 5%,( just a guess.)


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## Disparia (Dec 31, 2009)

The 1430SA is a HostRAID device. I haven't used that particular model, but usually with ICH vs HostRAID I usually tend towards ICH for RAID-0 and RAID-5, and HostRAID for RAID-1 and RAID-10.

Which EVGA X58 board? And how many slots will be taken by video cards? Will help let us know if you can fit an x8 or x4 RAID controller.


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## DirectorC (Dec 31, 2009)

slyfox2151 said:


> Since there SSD's (i presume with onboard cache) there shouldnt be any lag or delay as there responce time is less then 0.1, with your HDD raid the heads would be moving all over the disk as it tried to read / write torrents and load an application, you wont get that lag as the head moves to the data with a decent SSD



NO lag?  There WILL be lag.  The drive can still only read one piece of data at a time.


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## slyfox2151 (Dec 31, 2009)

>0.1ms responce time, High transfer speed..... this lag will be unnoticeable.


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## DirectorC (Dec 31, 2009)

slyfox2151 said:


> >0.1ms responce time, High transfer speed..... this lag will be unnoticeable.



Have you owned/operated/tested an SSD to be able to say any of this for sure?


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## slyfox2151 (Dec 31, 2009)

check my system specs? iv used several in a raid to check them out.


i have multiple raid's in a few computers.


this is getting slightly off topic, but what type of caviars do you have in your raid 0? Greens, blues or blacks.


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## drumsonly2002 (Jan 1, 2010)

DirectorC said:


> Are you going to do anything besides play flight sims?  Will it be a daily use computer?  Do you upload/download a lot (use torrents, seeder)?  My problem is I made a RAID0 and it's often a bit laggy because I have uploads and/or downloads going all the time, so in the future I will have two arrays, one for the system and one for data, so that read/writes to the data drive don't affect applications and system performance or game load times.  Hope these considerations help.



Just flight sims. FSX and a couple others. Got another computer for daily use. Thanks for mentionong that.


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## drumsonly2002 (Jan 1, 2010)

Jizzler said:


> The 1430SA is a HostRAID device. I haven't used that particular model, but usually with ICH vs HostRAID I usually tend towards ICH for RAID-0 and RAID-5, and HostRAID for RAID-1 and RAID-10.
> 
> Which EVGA X58 board? And how many slots will be taken by video cards? Will help let us know if you can fit an x8 or x4 RAID controller.



This puppy here http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4694158&CatId=4068

Your advice is well appreciated.


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## Disparia (Jan 1, 2010)

Very nice. Looks like you could do triple video cards and still have an x4 slot for a controller, or use just two video cards and have x8 available.

Now that we know you can, we can ask if you should 

ICH is free, and can handle sustained speeds of 600MB/s. So 3 SSD's is probably the sweet spot. There's a large amount of aggregate cache, performance will be good.

A dedicated controller usually helps the most with mechanical drives, having it's own 128-512MB (or more) cache. But could be useful with a large number of SSD's. If you already have those three 256GB drives, then ICH is probably the better choice, otherwise want to look into using a bunch of 64GB/128GB drives and a dedicated controller.


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## Mussels (Jan 1, 2010)

DarkEgo said:


> I agree SATA 2 is a must, just one SSD will saturate SATA 1.



that makes no sense. its not like RAID only uses one SATA port - its 150 (or 300) MB/s *per* port - so if he raids two SSD's on SATA 1, thats 300MB/s total (or 600, on sata II)


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## drumsonly2002 (Jan 2, 2010)

Jizzler said:


> Very nice. Looks like you could do triple video cards and still have an x4 slot for a controller, or use just two video cards and have x8 available.
> 
> Now that we know you can, we can ask if you should
> 
> ...



Excuse my stupid, what is ICH, is this a card? I was  told  I can only Raid 0 in pairs, thus no raid 0 using 3 drives.  The SSD's have 68mb on board cache. I really appreciate the replies. Building a new computer, my first, so getting the good stuff hoping I can get 3 year cycle out of it.


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## Mussels (Jan 2, 2010)

ICH is the name of intels southbridge, and thusly, the name of the IDE/SATA/RAID controllers on intel chipset motherboards.


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## drumsonly2002 (Jan 2, 2010)

So... since SSD's appear raid friendly, shall I. drum roll..... get an raid card .. and (bonus  question) run my 3 in raid 0? My stupid is being cured on this forum like a hard drive getting de fragged. I promise to use my  hard drives for the purposes of good not evil.


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## Chris_Ramseyer (Jan 3, 2010)

What SSDs do you have? If they are Vertex drives then you can run the 1.41 firmware and have garbage collection and you are fine. If they are not Vertex or Samsung controller based then you are f-ed in RAID because the the garbage is going to pile up.

If it were me, I would run the OS on one drive and install your programs on the other two in RAID 0. I would also use a controller for all three drives.


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## drumsonly2002 (Jan 3, 2010)

The are all Samsung drives, Summit series. The first two drive I have firmware is VBM 94D 1Q. Apparently Samsung has not issued a firmware flash yet. I believe they have G/C. The second unit FW is VBM24D 1Q, no dope on the firmware on the net. When I called Samsung about flashing the first 2 drives, Tech support had no idea what trim was, that is true. The work around is found here  http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=64753  Apparently Trim / Raid do not speak to each other.   So while the great minds at Samsung figure it out, I'll do a Tony after installing drives, if GC doesn't work good. If on board raid is good enough, I'll go that route. The question, how much will it bog down the CPU. FSX is CPU intensive.


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## Mussels (Jan 3, 2010)

good old tony, always saves the day.

he's one of the few people i look up to, and trust their advice completely (w1zzard being about the only other one)


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## drumsonly2002 (Jan 3, 2010)

OCZ has a great forum for SSD drive issues and info. Samsung has yet to get their act together. They seem to be hiding with the Trim issues with the non trim firmware. When those first/ second gen SSd's get monkied  and slow, there is going to be a whole lot of non technical people thinking they were suckered in by the SSD hype Samsung put forth. Their tec support is useless information wise. I was very surprised to find myself having more knowledge about SSD's Trim issues / firmware then the person I was speaking to, as I am not technically astute. I am really disapointed with Samsung. Samsung is big and rich, and will dance if they think sales will be impacted. Tony is more concerned they all of them put together, he is a hard drive guru, and provides results. Samsung should simplify and arrange some type of de-fragger software for all SSD's.  I am a hands on guy, thus prefer Tony trim. Tony has got it right, Samsung should take a lesson from him.  Samsung rant mode off.


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## Chris_Ramseyer (Jan 3, 2010)

Samsung and Corsair just released TRIM.

http://www.tweaktown.com/pressrelea...formance_series_solid_state_drives/index.html


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## drumsonly2002 (Jan 3, 2010)

Still Samsung SSd's need an external de frager because Trim will not work in a Raid set up note this Samsung reply 

"Hello xxxxxxx ,
Thank you for your inquiry to Samsung Semiconductor.

Windows 7 Trim can not work properly on RAID configuration.
If you are using XP and Vista with non-RAID configuration, there will be an application for performance recovery. We are developing it but we do not know when it will be released.
If you have any further questions, please send us more question again or visit our Homepage(http://www.samsungsemi.com).

Sincerely,
Semiconductor Business
Samsung Electronics Co,.Ltd"

At least they are honest. I care less about Trim, going to manually take care of my HD's. I have no problem with do stuff my self to make the computer run better. Seems to me trim is for those who do not do their own tweeking or maintainence, and that is understandable. 
My take on EVGA raid control, is it should be good enough. I do not imagine it takes that much CPU power to run Raid 0, correct? BTW thanks for all the responses.


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## Chris_Ramseyer (Jan 3, 2010)

The TRIM command isn't passed through any RAID controller right now that is on the open market. I do have a controller here that it will work with eventually but not tight now.

You are not getting the TRIM command on Intel, Samsung or Indilinx RAID right now either. 

The cool thing about Samsung SSD is you get hardware garbage collection and have for quite a while now. It might be slow as hell but if you leave your system on all of the time it isn't that big of a deal.


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