So, I had gotten an ASUS motherboard that had an on-board RAID controller. It comes and, for some reason, I can't set up my four SATA drives in two RAID 1 configurations. Turns out, the RAID controller only RAIDs an external drive with an internal drive. :downs:

So, I'm looking for a RAID controller, and this one has what I want - transfer rate of 3.0GB/s, four SATA ports, and a PCI-E interface. However, I'm not familiar with the company - are they worth spending $180 on?

What do you need the RAID for? RAID is pretty crappy technology as of late, especially since cards aren't compatible with eachother (so if your card dies you're screwed unless you find that exact card again).

I don't see how incompatibility would necessarily be problematic for my uses - I'm just planning on setting up two RAID 1 configurations, which would mean I've got consistent and up-to-date backups.

I've got four 250 GB SATA drives in my computer and two of them sit doing nothing (and the third only has about 500 MB of usage). I only got them for the exact purpose of always having that backup drive ready to go just in case.

Also, keep in mind, RAID1 is not a replacement for a good regular backup. RAID1 only really protects you from a hard drive failure. If you, say, accidentally delete an important file on your computer, the file is instantly deleted on both drives, and thus, is ineffective as a true backup.

If you want to keep a proper backup, I'd suggest looking more into drive cloning software to run every day/week/month/your choice. Not only will it keep you safe from hard drive failures, but it'll save your *** if you suddenly brainfart and wipe out your home directory :p

I agree about backup software. They only backup files that changed, so it's not that slow.


D: Are they ever!

I will take two redundant arrays of independent disks, please.

Nothing wrong with raid. Good old striping with parity is where its at.