Areca ARC-1200 2-Port PCI-E x1 SATA RAID Controller


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http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250672382890

 

This is a great compatible RAID card for unRAID.  The cost is higher then for normal x1 two port cards, but it has a great valuable raid environment on the card.

It is a caching controller, so even a single parity drive on this should see a performance boost.

You can run two drives JBOD, or a RAID Set.

 

I run two 1.5TB Seagate 7200RPM drives in a Volume set.

I created two raid sets, 1 a 2TB RAID0 set between two drives.

1 a 350GB RAID1 set between the remaining space. I use this for cache.

 

I get up to 43MB/s dd tests on the local system using this drive.

I'm really happy with this SAFE RAID1/RAID0 Hybrid setup.

 

The card can go upwards of $300 new.

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There's a second one out there as well...

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/Areca-ARC-1200-2-Port-PCI-E-x1-SATA-RAID-Controller-/250664235233?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a5cc0b0e1

 

I jumped on this one as a caching PCI-E x1 controller would be VERY nice for my higher end machine and being able to RAID the parity might also be interesting down the line. Lord knows I have a bunch of smaller drives I might like to put to use! Features like a buzzer to warn of a drive failure are also of interest. Might be a little while before I get this into my array however as I'm about to move. when installed I suspect it will join a Supermicro AOC-SAT2 MV8 and be quite speedy  ;D

 

Thanks for the heads up, I'd read about your use of these not long ago and was interested and at this price point it's worth a shot! Anything I ought to be aware of firmware wise etc.? This one is used and so may not be updated....

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Thanks for the heads up, I'd read about your use of these not long ago and was interested and at this price point it's worth a shot! Anything I ought to be aware of firmware wise etc.? This one is used and so may not be updated....

 

Mine was too, but it worked right off the bat.

The trick is to set up a "volume set" of multiple drives.

Then set up a RAID Set of within the drives.

I really like having RAID0 parity / RAID1 cache.

It did increase my parity create speed.

With RAID1 cache, I can put files there (even backup /boot) and feel safe.

 

I moved all my /home directories from other systems onto the RAID1 cache drive into /mnt/cache/.home

and backup /boot to /mnt/cache/.boot/

One of these days I'll get around to installing grub4dos and being able to boot from it. For now I'm good.

 

Also the raided drives do not spin down from emhttp, but they can spin down from firmware.

Not everything is available in emhttp, but it works, works well and with improved performance.

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