K
kony
RAID1 is not so bad on an onboard controller since either
drive should be removable and (readable) usable in another
system to get the data off, "if" the motherboard dies.
Otherwise for RAID0 or 5 I would avoid an onboard controller
as the odds of a whole board failing seem quite a bit higher
than a card alone... but then, the cards I use I always buy
at least two of, so I am covered even from a card failure.
Yes, though some onboard RAID can be just as featured as a
separate card providing the onboard isn't a "lite" version
like sometimes used on (Promise for example) certain
discrete chips. With some of these solutions there were
alternate bios available that end users took apart and
replaced the lite raid bios with a full raid bios. No idea
if such was available for your board.
What makes you feel you need a "true" raid controller?
The onboard is wholey sufficient except no raid 5. If you
want RAID 5 then check out the offerings at your favorite
reseller, perhaps http://www.newegg.com
Depends on how much $ you want to invest I suppose, as a
hardware raid card is by itself as expensive as a 400GB+
HDD, so unless you are adding a lot of capacity there will
not be a great return in gained space, nor speed since the
drives' transfer rate and that of the gigabit lan will
dictate the performance, for each significant increase in
performance the cost goes up quite a bit. IOW, it could
cost $30 to do it on an old PC or over $300 just to get 30%
more performance as you soon find it takes a PCI Express or
separate channeled Gigabit card, or faster PCI bus as on a
server board. These things may be more cost effective for a
business or heavily used server rather than a backup device.