should I use Silicon Image software or Server 2008 to manage RAID 5?

[ChingChang]

I have a DFI LANPARTY UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert mobo with onboard Silicon Image SiI 3114 controller. I'm using it with four 1.5TB seagate drives in RAID 5 on Windows Server 2008. I've been using the SI software for the past week but have been having a few problems.

First time I built the array, a few hours after it finished (took 50 hours) one of the drives dropped out and it said it had to rebuild again.
I just decided to reformat (for a different reason) and now after setting it up again I am having another problem when I restart the computer. In the log it says Warning "Group 0 'RAID5' was not shut down properly." and then has to restore redundancy which takes about an hour.
I've only restarted twice and each time it has done this. It's hella frustrating.

Would I be better off using windows to manage raid 5 array? what are the advantages/disadvantages

 

[ChingChang]

I think I might just get this and four more 1.5 TB drives in raid 6. 4TB isn't enough anyway

 

[brandinb]

Sounds like a good plan. Software raid 5 in server 2008 is very stable and works well but the write speeds are pretty bad.

For the price of that raid controller I would get a intel board and cpu and use intel matrix raid and get an upgraded system.