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  • 1.  Need a cheap SATA RAID controller for home box

    Posted Jul 07, 2011 02:47 PM

    I was thinking about getting a Dell UT568 SATA PERC. Is there a different one that might be cheaper or better for me to use. I'm on a budget so cheaper is always better. Right now I'm using a Dell Poweredge T110 with the Stock 250G SATA drive. I think that its SATA 1. I was wanting to pop in some more drives but I dont want to speed a whole lot. would poping in another help with the iops? are does the drive's transfer rate max out the SATA bus? Any help will be most welcome. Can this server use SATA II drives? Would I benifit by removing the drive and switching to SATA II drives?



  • 2.  RE: Need a cheap SATA RAID controller for home box

    Posted Jul 07, 2011 03:07 PM

    The Dell Perc 5 devices are often very inexpensive. They are no longer sold by Dell but are available from online resellers. To get the full benefit of the RAID card you also need the Battery Backed Cache module to allow write caching.

    How old is the T110? If it is fairly recent the drive should be SATA II.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOPS



  • 3.  RE: Need a cheap SATA RAID controller for home box

    Posted Jul 07, 2011 04:50 PM

    The T110 is new Jan of this year. its a western digital H962F. The only information that I have been able to find out about the drive is that its a SATA drive. I'm thinking that its SATA 1.

    Does anyone have any links or model numbers for SATA RAID cards?



  • 4.  RE: Need a cheap SATA RAID controller for home box

    Posted Jul 07, 2011 05:13 PM

    The drive will be SATA II. SATA I drives haven't been in production for many years so it is doubtful Dell would have sold you a SATA I drive. The Dell Perc 5 is a good choice. There aren't too many inexpensive supported hardware RAID controllers. To get the benefits of the RAID controller you would need to add several more drives. RAID 10 offers good performance at the expense of capacity. Again battery backed cache is important.



  • 5.  RE: Need a cheap SATA RAID controller for home box

    Posted Jul 08, 2011 08:13 AM

    In addition to the abov, if you can stretch to the Perc 6i it will give you a bit more performance as it supports SATA NCQ, and it uses a lot less power (you might need to stick in an extra little fan with the Perc 5):

    http://blog.peacon.co.uk/bargain-on-dell-perc-6i-raid-controller-direct-from-dell/

    Another option, depending on your storage capacity needs, would be to get a decent SSD instead (SF-1200 based for example) which will give IOPS in a completely different league, at the cost of capacity of course.