Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
• RAID levels supported. (Most support 0, 1, 5, and 10. A lack of RAID 5 and/or RAID
10 support indicates a very low-end product.)
• Support for four, six, or eight drives.
• Support for 3Gbps or 6Gbps SATA transfer rates.
• PCIe card with onboard controller (provides best performance and future compatibil-
ity; note that low-cost PCIe cards are host-based and rely on the CPU).
Some operating systems include software-based RAID capability; however, I don't gen-
erally recommend using it because of performance issues. Normally if you want both per-
formance and reliability, you should look for SATA RAID controllers that support RAID
Level 5 or 10.
