X58-UD5 New setup: RAID 0; Blue or White?

[mahicks3322]

I am setting up my sons new Christmas present. I will be running RAID 0. Data recovery and upgradability to different boards/harddrives are not important to the RAID config.

Which is best? The Gigabyte raid control on the white ports or the Intel on the blue?

[mv2devnull]

Re: X58-UD5 New setup: RAID 0; Blue or White?

Intel.

[mahicks3322]

Re: X58-UD5 New setup: RAID 0; Blue or White?

Intel.

Thank you for the quick response? May I ask why? If the Gigabyte is bios controlled and doesn't require the drivers installed, would that not make it better?

[Psycho101]

Re: X58-UD5 New setup: RAID 0; Blue or White?

The Gigabyte controller is crap. It's a sh1tty JMicron effort with known issues and poor throughput.

Both the Intel and Gigabyte controllers will require drivers. Any BIOS based RAID solution as well as any true HW solution will require drivers. As far as any BIOS RAID solution goes, this is actually "Fake RAID" or software RAID. The drivers are relied on in conjunction with the CPU to process the IO operations needed to work the array. This makes drivers even more an integral part of a BIOS raid solution, regardless of brand.

If there were ever a driver less system released, then that still wouldn't automatically make it "better". The better solution is the one that will provide the best speed if using RAID 0, security if using RAID 1 and a balance if using RAID 10 or RAID 5. As far as those requirements go, use the Intel ports. Save the JMicron ports for connecting eSATA back plates and for DVD/CD drives if you ever run short of Intel SATA ports. If you woun't be using the Gigabyte poets at all, I recommend disabling them in the BIOS. They're not worth wasting an IRQ on.

[qwertylesh]

Re: X58-UD5 New setup: RAID 0; Blue or White?

without a doubt, same as above posters, Intel, the blue sockets definitely.

I completely disable my white sockets, I see absolutely no need for their use considering the trouble they can cause.

[mahicks3322]

Re: X58-UD5 New setup: RAID 0; Blue or White?

Thank you all very much!

I went ahead and did the install with the intel ports. All is well.

I have another question though that is related:

Now that I have a RAID 0 array on two drives on the intel ports, I have another SATA drive that I would like to install as my sons Media/Download/Junk drive and keep his OS, Software, and Games on the RAID array for speed. I do not care for a backup configuration. I use backup software across my home network to backup all of my computers to a server.

Which ports would you use for this harddrive? Intel or Gigabyte? After what has been said, I would think the Intel ports would be the no brainer but I am thinking having the "scratch" drive on a seperate controller/IRQ might give a performance boost.

[Psycho101]

Re: X58-UD5 New setup: RAID 0; Blue or White?

Personally I would place the "Non RAID Member" on port 4 (5th port, next to the DVD). This is in case you want to either add disks to the existing RAID0 later (adding a disk increases performance but increases failure risk etc) or if you want to create a different RAID type later on.

Once again, due to the poor performance, the Gigabyte ports wouldn't be ideal even for a single mechanical HDD. The Intel ICH can handle a total throughput of 650MB/s, so you have plenty of performance left, with no need to worry. Simultaneously using all three drives at full pelt would also be rare, and the controller has methods of sorting out queueing data etc.

[mahicks3322]

Re: X58-UD5 New setup: RAID 0; Blue or White?

Personally I would place the "Non RAID Member" on port 4 (5th port, next to the DVD). This is in case you want to either add disks to the existing RAID0 later (adding a disk increases performance but increases failure risk etc) or if you want to create a different RAID type later on.

Once again, due to the poor performance, the Gigabyte ports wouldn't be ideal even for a single mechanical HDD. The Intel ICH can handle a total throughput of 650MB/s, so you have plenty of performance left, with no need to worry. Simultaneously using all three drives at full pelt would also be rare, and the controller has methods of sorting out queueing data etc.

Wow...based on this, I am going to connect everything to the intel controller (dvd-r, blu-ray, 2 drive raid array, single sata drive) and disable the gigabyte controller!

[Psycho101]

Re: X58-UD5 New setup: RAID 0; Blue or White?

That's exactly what I currently do.

If you find that you need a lot more storage, then you can re-enable the Gigabyte controller and use it just for Optical drives. Note that sometimes, when flashing firmware, for example when I flashed my intel X25 SSD (on the Intel Ports) the flasher would not see the drive if the optical was on the gigabyte port. This is what prompted me to move it to the last port of the Intel ICH and completely disable the Gigabyte ports.