RAID Trust Issues — Windows Or a Cheap Controller?

NicApicella writes "My new system has two sparklin' SATA drives which I would like to mirror. After having been burned by a not-so-cheap, dedicated RAID controller, I have been pointed to software RAID solutions. I now stand in front of two choices for setting up my RAID: a Windows 7 RC software RAID or a hardware RAID done by the cheap integrated RAID controller of my motherboard. Based on past experiences, I have decided that only my data is worth saving — that's why the RAID should mirror two disks (FAT32) that are not the boot disk (i.e. do not contain an OS or any fancy stuff). Of course, such a setup should secure my data; should a drive crash, I want the system up and running in no time. Even more importantly, I want any drive and its data to be as safe and portable as possible (that's the reason for choosing FAT32), even if the OS or the controller screw up big time. So, which should I choose? Who should I trust more, Microsoft's Windows 7 or possibly the cheapest RAID controller on the market? Are there other cheap solutions?"

Comments

Re:You are asking the wrong question.

[jon3k]

"RAID is only marginally valuable."

Please explain to me how I can get 50,000 IOPS and 20TB of disk space for a SAN without RAID. Then explain how I maintain 99.999% uptime when I have a disk failure and have to restore everything from backup. Performance. Availability. That's it. That's the purpose of RAID. No one is saying RAID is a replacement for backups. RAID is for performance and availability.

You have clearly not worked in anything that anyone could possibly misconstrue as a medium-large scale "deployments".