Raid Board on a Budget

W

Wynsam

Expert Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2005
Messages
1,361
Reaction score
9
Hi there

I am looking at getting a new machine for our small offices. I have in mind something that will be able to support the Intel 805 CPU and RAID 5. The Intel 805 because it offers good bang for the buck and will meet the processing needs that we will have. Raid five for the redundancy from a failed drive that this config offers. All of this at the best possible price.

I dont know if this exists or if I am dreaming. Help me out please!
 
Hi Wynsam

The Asus A8N-SLI-PRM MB has Raid 5...I am certain you can find something similar for Intel. I am running Raid 1...easy to set up and seemless after that.
 
Thanks for that suggestion.

RAID 1 looks like an option as well. It look cheaper to implement than RAID 5, and cheaper is good if it accomplishes the same job for us. Anyone have any idea of what AMD chip offers bang for buck in a similair vein to the Intel 805. It needs to a dual core chip preferably.
The 805 can be had for approx R1000 here in SA.
 
most motherboard have raid on them cept for foxconn

i know even the asus entry level boards have raid
 
The Athlon64 x2 3800+ (socket AM2) is dual core, but costs around R1500. But then again it beats even a 3,4GHz dual core Pentium D silly, and that 805 is only 2,66GHz dual core.

You can get a AM2 Foxconn nvidia chipset motherboard with RIAD for R800.
 
Make sure

Make sure you get a hardware RAID solution if you don't want performance degradation. Software RAID is cheap and common, but not ideal for a server. Hardware RAID need not be very expensive. Onboard RAID is likely to be software based AFAIK.
 
That is part of the reason for wanting dual core. Its makes the performance degradation less of an issue.(I Hope)
 
Last edited:
Possibly, but I have my doubts... remember that it has to do with the channel throughput as well... not just internal CPU processing. Hardware RAID is not that expensive...
 
If the board support raid, do the manufacturer supply the raid drivers? How do you install WinXP onto a raid configuragtion?
 
Bios

spiderz said:
If the board support raid, do the manufacturer supply the raid drivers? How do you install WinXP onto a raid configuragtion?
Click to expand...

There should be a RAID bios which allows configuration of the channels if it supports HW raid. Once the bios is set up (much like a scsi bios - sometimes seperate from usual bios), just install Windows and then manufacturer supplied RAID driver (to get full support - hot swop if available, fail over, etc.) - best to get the latest off the web and not use CDs from the original box.
 
HillBilly said:
Wynsam,

I recently got a gigabyte board as I had similar requirements; it's a GA-8VM800PMD-775 (http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products...spx?ProductID=2159&ModelName=GA-8VM800PMD-775)

It has IDE and 2xSATA connectors though the RAID only works on the SATA drives so best you can do is RAID 1 (mirror).

Bought it from Rectron for R400.00 and put Pentium D915 processor on it.
Click to expand...

Looks like a reasonable buy. Only problem that I see on the spec sheet is that it does not support 1000 lan, only 100. This machine will be used for others to draw info off and to backup onto(hence the RAID requirement) so it would be silly to not get a 1000 compatible board as we will shortly be going that route.

Anyone else know know of any board that does at least RAID 1 and 1000Mbps LAN on a budget.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X