Looking for a good <$100 SATA RAID controller

[electron]

Is there such beast? I don't require many channels, I am more interested in reliability than anything else, but my budget is $100 for this controller. Thanks!

 

[Micah]

What kind of interface are you looking for? PCI, PCIe, PCI-X? IVB turned me onto a beast of a motherboard the other night that does onboard RAID5. It's ~$150 or so which was a surprise considering how expensive many RAID controllers by themselves cost but isn't much above your price point, assuming you have hardware compatible with it.

 

[Steve]

Unless I am missing something, or the word 'good' means something special, there are are least 25 of them sub $100 at NewEgg .
Or you can try this,
this, or
or this refurb.

Sorry for the format, I just spilled a big glass of ice water all over the kbd and myself while typing this

 

[electron]

I forgot to mention PCI, sorry about that. I want it to be an external controller, in case something happens to the motherboard. NewEgg does carry some, but I don't know which one is the better one. I have a Highpoint on my current board, and from what I have read, it is not one of the better ones.

 

[Micah]

I've got a Highpoint RocketRaid 2220 and it works just fine. It's also PCI-X but I don't know what bearing that has on the quality of the card.

I don't have any complaints with it. It just sits there and does whatever it does to make my little Raid5 array work.

Is there any reason why your swapping out the Highpoint?

 

[electron]

I just mentioned the Highpoint as my only experience with SATA raid controllers. It is part of my main pc mobo, the controller I am looking to buy has to go into a server.