3ware 9650se or ARC-1220?

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FireFoxx74

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Apr 23, 2002
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Hi all,

I'm thinking of upgrading my current home server, and I'm unsure which of these two RAID cards is the best bet.

Currently, I'm running:
Athlon 64X2 3800+
nVidia based board, with 6x SATA RAID ports:
2x320GB Western Digital - RAID1
3x750GB Western Digital - RAID5
1x120GB Western Digital - Boot disk
Windows XP, 2GB RAM

I'm thinking about moving to a dedicated RAID card for obvious reasons, the nVidia boards won't be around forever, and TBH the RAID5 performance leaves much to be desired (write speeds < 20MB/s, which is a known issue with nVidia RAID5). I was thinking of the following setup:

Jetway JNC94-510-LF mini ITX Motherboard (PineTrail + PCI-E)
1x160GB Western Digital - Boot
3x1TB Western Digital RE3 - RAID5
Windows Server 2008 RE2, 2GM RAM

I'll clean the 2x320/3x750 from the old server, and move them across, so that I have more available storage.

But, I'm not sure on the RAID card to use? The 3ware seems to be sufficient, but then again, people are reporting performance problems with this card. The Areca looks much more promising, but it's more expensive.

Is the 3ware card really that bad?

Thanks
 
Unless you can get a good price on the 3ware card, and assuming you want a 8 port card, you should consider the much newer LSI (which now owns 3ware) 9260-8i/9261-8i/9260DE-8i with SAS+SATA 6Gbps support.
 
It's not that they are bad performers, they are just not top performers. I inherited an environment 6-7 years ago that had all 3ware controllers in the servers. To this day, not one controller (among 12 or so?) has ever given any trouble and I used every SATA & SAS model they have released to date. They are very easy to set up and support and they are very compatible with every hard drive I've thrown at them. The UI is also very easy intuitive. If top performance is isn't a concern, but reliability and a good price point is then you won't go wrong with a 3ware.

OTOH, if you're willing to spend the extra bucks for performance and features, the Areca and new LSIs are excellent choices.
 
I also agree with the above statements. The 3ware cards are slower than the newer ones from Areca and LSI but I have found that they are almost bulletproof and not one card has ever given me a single problem. They also have worked flawlessly with any drive I have installed on them (almost all non raid WD drives).
 
I will add that if you are using Raid 0 (as it looks like you are) the Areca card will be the choice you will want to use. The Areca card will run circles around a 9650SE card in Raid 0.
 
What's a good 3-4 port card that supports RAID 5 or 6?

The first card that have my attention is the Areca 1210, but I'm not sure if that offers the best value for me at the moment.
 
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