Best Value Raid 0 card ....?

[Nikolai]

Hey Guys,
In my rig i want to put 2 X 400gb WD HD's in a RAID 0 configuration to speed things up ... what is the best card to do this with ...?

Ive seen some raid cards as much as $1000 and some as little as $40 .... so i dont see what the difference is? some recommendations would be much appreciated !

[Capper]

Whats wrong with the INTEL controller built into that board? Its free, and it works really well.
Personally, RAID is a waste of time (Not our RAID, but RAID storage)..

[[Dr. V]]

Originally Posted by Capper

Whats wrong with the INTEL controller built into that board? Its free, and it works really well.
Personally, RAID is a waste of time (Not our RAID, but RAID storage)..

Phew...at least we cleared that up!

[Quakindude]

Like Capper said, the integrated RAID solution on the mobo you plan to buy for your system is more than capable of handling your most complex home computer storage needs. Those $1,000 RAID cards are geared towards enterprise storage solutions.

Unless all you plan on doing with this rig is tons of video/photo editing, tasks which utilize very high HDD I/O operations, there really isn't a tangible difference in performance over a non-RAID system.

Plenty of web-sites and publications would have you believe you *really* need RAID. But unless you're doing the work I described, or running benchmarks for e-peen bragging rights, there's no reason to run RAID that outweighs the wear and tear on two drives.

[polobunny]

I will third everything said in that thread. The onboard RAID is fairly good, but you'll be deceived by RAID performance difference overall, if you're even able to notice it. RAID for home systems is something that only looks good on paper, in real life it's something you don't notice...

[gvblake22]

I've tried RAID 0 myself with two 74GB Raptors and I agree that it isn't worth the time and effort. I did notice a little bit of a performance improvement loading Windows, but not much else beyond that.

Like Capper said, the onboard RAID controller does a fine job. You have it, so you might as well give it a shot...

[Hitman]

I too agree, one thing not mentioned yet is RAID 0 increases the probability of data loss. RAID 0 does not provide redundancy so if one of the drive fails all data is lost.