Fileservers require redundant storage to safeguard vital data. Here are five of the latest RAID controllers for Serial ATA hard drives that supposedly do the job.

Q1) How much cache does each controller have ?

Q2) What I/O processor is each card using ?

I'm kinda disappointed with your selection of the Areca controller. The one you worked with is, I believe, one generation back from the latest. Also, you selected the lowest end one, when the 1220 would have been just fine, or the entry-level next-gen 1231ml. Either should meet the price-point requirement.

I agree with neuromandw.

The choice of Areca controller is poor. TH reviewd the ARC-1220 last year amd it received the best rating. Areca probably didn't want to pay extra for a good review. TH used to be a decent "UNBIASED" review site, but that is no longer the case.

Inquiring minds would like to know if these cards
work with entry-level motherboards ?

What I would like to build is a raid server using a
motherboard with integrated graphics and the one
pci-e x16 slot for the raid card. It would be good
to review "entry-level" mobos for raid card use.
Or anyone who tried some and found it to work ?

Yes, they should. It would mostly depend on chipset. Most server boards use onboard graphics, and the Areca ARC-1220 does work with Tyan boards (S2891)

This article is incorrect. You state that: "HighPoint offers the fastest RAID 0+1 solution, but requires the controller card RocketRAID 2322 plus an external multi-lane SATA enclosure, which together exceeds $600".. But this is totally untrue. Highpoint Rocketraid does NOT require the external enclosure. That is an add on if you want to put your drives outside of your server case.

That is like saying, a TV costs $500 but requires the PS3 which will put it over $1,000. Please correct the article. You are doing a disservice to your readers with this bad info.

I myself am a HighPoint Raid card user. It is one of the cheapest and best Serial RAID cards on the market. The only negative points are that it has no cache, and once u build an array, you can't add drives to the array. On my system though, each of my eight 500 GB drives have 16 MB of cache on the drive itself, and I have used all 8 ports, so both of these negatives are nullified in my usage.

I'm not running block for TH, but the RacketRAID 2322 reviewed is an External solution. The only way to make it internal is to run the cables back inside your case. There are no internal connectors on the card reviewed

The Raid 5 performance is abysmally low. How many hard drives were used in the Raid 5 tests?

3 is minimum for running raid 5 without a backup.
4 is minimum for running raid 5 with a backup.
6 or more before you start seeing benefits over 0, 1, 0+1

Would have been nice to see a Raid 5 setup on one of the 8 Disk controllers with 8 Disks. Talk about a spanking

Absolutely! I'd also like to see how each of these scale as drives are added, be very interesting. Good point!

The RocketRaid 22xx and 23xx support OCE/ORLM, so you can add more drives to an existing array. This was noted correctly in the article as well.

I'm pretty ignorant about these devices. Can anyone explain command queue depth and what it means to real world performance? For example, the LSI card performed worse as Q increased. Does this matter and if so, under what circumstances?

Were any of the controllers tested, configured with a battery backup and write caching enabled??

I believe most server boards are compatible with
raid.

What I meant for "entry-level" is consumer,
desktop mobos with IGP. I heard some of the single x16
pci-e is hardwired for video use only, i.e. can't
be used for raid cards, e.g. can't use igp with pci-e at
the same time. Another problem is that these
consumer mobos with onboard raid are not very
expandable (4 ports).

Highpoint RocketRaid 2320. 8 internal connectors and same performance as the 2322. I have one on an asus socket 939 board and it's fast. It does allow adding HD's, had three to begin with, added a fourth and it expanded, slowly but it worked great.

I use this for my media server and it's fast enough with my gigabit network connection to serve video to all four of my tv's media boxes without problem. RAID 5 btw.

The RocketRaid 22xx and 23xx support OCE/ORLM, so you can add more drives to an existing array. This was noted correctly in the article as well.

Sorry.. I mispoke.. I was talking about MY negative points on the Highpoint card I have..the 1820A. On that version, u can't add drives to an existing array.

As for the article, why would u compare an external array card, to internal cards... At least include a comparison of Highpoints internal array cards for an accurate peice.

Last... for the speed differences in using more drives on a RAID 5 array. I can tell you from experience.. When I decompress a RAR'd movie on a stand alone drive, it can take up to 30 seconds to finish. On a RAID 5 array with 8 drives, it can take 5-8 seconds. I now decompress all my downloads on my self bult server.

http://mtvhouse.evanwashere.com/ Scroll down the first 3 pics...You will see the Highpoint card I used as well as the other parts.. Note: I replaced the 300 GB drives with 500 GB as well as added a bunch of externals 2 TB's. Here is another pic before the RAID upgrade, but still with 9 TB: