Hello Community,
I'm in the market (possibly) for a Raid Host Controller and would like to hear ( read ) your take on the issue.
What I'm looking for:
True Hardware Raid, usually around $300 & up
Support for booting OS from Raid card
Native linux support ofcoarse
Reliability
I've been browsing newegg.com for several different vendors (Areca, Adaptec, & LSI ) they all seem to be pretty reputable from some reviews & their underlying specs but I did see a good amount of negative reviews as well all in the area of these units failing early after a few years or even months of service. I also realize these few reviews don't account for total sales but it looks too frequent in my opinion. Thats also going to depend on usage, a lot of people seem to use them in high i/o intensive 24/7 operation so thats also gonna bring down the life expectancy.
Few example cards I've been watching:
LSI MegaRaid 9260-4i
3ware 9750-4i
Areca ARC-1213-4I
I truly have no specific requirement for a raid card other than wanting to play around with various raid configurations and possibly boost overall performance of disk access.
What is your take on these hardware devices? Do their bang equal up to the buck you have to pay? Should I even waste my time or stick with the onboard Raid controller?