Connecting 8 x 3tb SATA hard drives

[satisfaction_uk]

Hi, I am building a new server using a Corsair 800D tower box and need to connect 8 x

Seagate 3TB 3.5 inch 7200RPM 64MB Cache SATA3 Hard Drive to a MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) Motherboard (corei7, LGA2011, Intel x79 ATX Raid, Gigabit, Lan. The processor I will be using will be an Intel i7 230EE. The board will have the full 128gig of memory.

My question is, will the raid that is built into the mother board be able to handle the 8 hard drives as is, or will I have to buy some other components or hardware to make them work ok.

Oh, I will be running windows7 enterprise and centOS as the operating systems.

[chrisram]

Re: Connecting 8 x 3tb SATA hard drives

Your built in Intel RAID will work with 6 drives but even then it won't be optimal. Hop on EBay and look for a RAID controller from LSI or ARECA. You don't need the latest and greatest since you are using spinners. That will also give you RAID 6 (or even RAID 5) without taxing the CPU. You can find older LSI 9260-8i cards for 300 Dollars. You can even find some older SATA II cards for 100 or less.

[craigcurtin]

Re: Connecting 8 x 3tb SATA hard drives

Hi, I am building a new server using a Corsair 800D tower box and need to connect 8 x

Seagate 3TB 3.5 inch 7200RPM 64MB Cache SATA3 Hard Drive to a MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) Motherboard (corei7, LGA2011, Intel x79 ATX Raid, Gigabit, Lan. The processor I will be using will be an Intel i7 230EE. The board will have the full 128gig of memory.

My question is, will the raid that is built into the mother board be able to handle the 8 hard drives as is, or will I have to buy some other components or hardware to make them work ok.

Oh, I will be running windows7 enterprise and centOS as the operating systems.

What are you planning on using this box for ? That will better answer the question as to how to hook it up.

Remember if you buy a hardware RAID controller - you had better buy 2 of them - when one dies - the last thing you want to find is that you can not get a replacement that will read the RAID set on the drives. Remember there is no industry standard for setting up RAID so one manufacturers controller will not understand a RAID setup on another.

Dependant on what you are doing with the drives then you would be better looking at Linux Software RAID with LVM on top - but this will not obviously work under Windows natively

Craig

[nleksan]

Re: Connecting 8 x 3tb SATA hard drives

I would highly recommend the Dell PERC6/i, which is available on fleabay constantly for under $100. You can typically find the card selling with the breakout cables and the battery backup unit for that price .

It's perhaps the best hhardware RAID card for the money, period. I have used it, as well as the previous version the PERC5/i, and I love them. You willnnot be able to run more than 8 drives, but if youddon'tpplan on extending the array, you will be fine.
In use in a home server (Q9850, P5Q Premium, 2x 470's SLI, 16GB RAM, PCI 4xUSB3.0 card, PERC6/i with BBU, TV Tuner, 4x WD VR 300GB RAID0, 2x C300 120GB RAID0 OS, LG BR Burner, 8x WD RE4 1TB RAID10, 1x WD Green 3TB, PC P&C 900W PSU, and a new Lian Li D8000), withwrite-back cache enabled and the cache upgraded to 2GB, I can see Reads of 700MBs and writes around 400. For comparison, the VR's in RAID0 via ICH10R push 525MBs/500MBs.

The PERC6/i is just awesome!