SATA Raid Controller Question

[wtdedula]

Hello All;
If I have a built-in 4-port SATA RAID Controller on my ASUS motherboard (The manufacturer is Silicon Image), is there any reason or advantage to getting an external RAID controller card from a company such as 3Ware ? Thanks.

Tim

[Pete Draves]

some motherboard drivers are on an internal 16bit bus.
The 3ware controller is a full 32 bit buss and you will see a significant in crease in speed.
Pete

[prospector]

I have an Asus also with onboard SATA raid and am getting 267 MB/s with 4 raptors (75gig ea). I tried 3 different controller cards and it dropped to under 100 for some reason. Never could get it any higher after a month of trying different combinations and settings.

Mine has the NVidia onboard raid.
tried cards for the PCI slot, PCI-E slot and the PCI-X slot.
Never could get any to play nice with mobo.

Can only say give er a go.

If that helps.

[John Perkins]

Pete is correct. Your mileage may vary.

I had one motherboard with a SIL RAID that couldn't get over 40MBps even though a single drive on other controllers could do more.

It's well worth a shot before buying another controller though.