Do I need a RAID card?

  • Hi, I am looking at building my own NAS and using OMV. If I want to use RAID, should I buy a RAID card, or is it good enough to have the HDDs plugged into the non-RAID motherboard?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Depends on why you want raid. Many people are successful at running software (mdadm) raid with the drives connected to the motherboard. Others use raid because they think it is backup which it is not.

    omv 7.0-32 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.9 | compose 7.0.9 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    There are many comments all over the place about why one is better than the others. I have used both and don't see a major difference. If you have enough ports for the drives you want to use I would lean towards mdadm. ZFS has some interesting features too. If you might want that in the future be sure the raid card will act as an hba card too.

  • Depends on why you want raid. Many people are successful at running software (mdadm) raid with the drives connected to the motherboard. Others use raid because they think it is backup which it is not.

    Doesn't that depend on the kind of RAID you are using though? I believe it's RAID 1 that it's the one where the data is mirrored on two drives.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Doesn't that depend on the kind of RAID you are using though? I believe it's RAID 1 that it's the one where the data is mirrored on two drives.

    Definitely not. Raid gives you redundancy so you can keep using the server if a drive fails. With RAID 1, if you delete a file accidentally, do you have a backup?

    omv 7.0-32 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.9 | compose 7.0.9 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Why RAID 0 on a NAS?

    Some people may not know about mergerfs (unionfilesystem plugin) and use it to pool their drives.

    omv 7.0-32 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.9 | compose 7.0.9 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • I was going to use RAID 0

    But do you know, if one drive fails you lose all your data of both drives? With RAID 0 you can enhance the performance but double the risk of data lost.
    You should think about @ryecoaaron´s advice instead.

    OMV 3.0.100 (Gray style)

    ASRock Rack C2550D4I C0-stepping - 16GB ECC - 6x WD RED 3TB (ZFS 2x3 Striped RaidZ1) - Fractal Design Node 304 -

    3x WD80EMAZ Snapraid / MergerFS-pool via eSATA - 4-Bay ICYCube MB561U3S-4S with fan-mod

  • Using RAID 0 on a NAS is pointless. The bottleneck will always be the network, not the drives.

    Actually, my current network speed is 100 megabits/s, and I was going to upgrade it to 1 gigabit/s soon. From my own testing on a local machine with a 7200 rpm HDD (granted, the HDD is 80% full, so it might be slowed down because of that), I was only able to get speeds of up to 320 megabits/s. That's about 1/3 the speed I could get with the upgraded network.


    However, after some thinking, I've decided that maybe I won't do RAID 0, but a higher RAID. Just not sure which one yet.

Jetzt mitmachen!

Sie haben noch kein Benutzerkonto auf unserer Seite? Registrieren Sie sich kostenlos und nehmen Sie an unserer Community teil!