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Intel® RST, RAID
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RAID array with 10 1TB drives

AMarc16
Beginner
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Hi there,

I have acquired 10 x 1TB drives and I am looking for the cheapest and most effective way to make a RAID on my system. 5 are already configured as RAID-5 on my motherboard Intel RST. I'm happy to remove that array to make a new one. I haven't seen RAID cards capable of more than 8 drives and I do not think I can make a bigger array on RST by using a second intel controller?

Besides installing a second controller (either an old RAID card or an intel card which can then be managed via RTS) and having two separate arrays, can you think of a way to make a single big RAID array that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? Performance is not critical, it will only be used for storage.

Thank you!

Tony

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idata
Employee
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Hi, Tony359, Thank you very much for joining the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology communities.

 

 

To answer your question, the quantity of hard drives that you can use will depend on the quantity of SATA ports that work with the Intel® SATA controller, because there might be some SATA ports on the same board that work with a different SATA controller.

 

 

And the best option for RAID, will be RAID 0, because it will allow you to use from 2 hard drives onwards, or RAID 5 because you will be able to use from 3 hard drives onwards. RAID 1 will allow you to use just 2 hard drives and RAID 10 will allow you to use just 4 hard drives.

 

 

Any further questions, please let me know.

 

 

Regards,

 

Alberto
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AMarc16
Beginner
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Hi Alberto,

 

Thanks for your reply.

My MB has 6 ports connected to the Intel SATA controller so the maximum number of HDD's connected is indeed six. I currently have five drives in a RAID 5 array.

My question is: I have 5 more drives, is there a way to create a single RAID out of those 10 drives - I am willing to purchase a card if that makes that possible. Or is that not possible (or not feasible without tons of money) and my only viable option would be to purchase an Intel SATA controller (RTS compatible) and create a second 5 disks RAID?

cheers

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idata
Employee
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Hi, Tony359, You are welcome.

 

 

No, unfortunately there is not an option to create a single RAID with those 10 hard drives. Even if you purchased a RAID card the RAID controller will be different, so it will not work that way. Now, there are Intel® RAID cards, but those cards are validated to work with server boards, in this case you will be combining two different technologies, desktop and server boards, so we cannot guarantee that combination will work for sure, it will depend of different factors, like the BIOS of the board.

Any questions, please let me know.

Regards,

Alberto

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