Which Raid Card should I get?

[fusi0n]

I bought a old poweredge server for home use to mess around with. I need a SATA Card to add SATA Hard Drives. This is for a file server only running FreeNAS. I have found a card on Amazon that I like and found a used one on Ebay that looks like it used to be an Enterprise level card but older.. I am using this box for a ESX Data Store

http://www.ebay.com/...=item53f086428b

And the one on Amazon,

http://www.amazon.co...r/dp/B002C0Y5X4

I'm not sure which one I should go with..

[Emil Valsson]

Out of these 2 I would recommend the 3ware. I have 2 3ware myself, 9650SE-4i and 9750-4i) and they have worked great for me.

[fusi0n]

what is the difference in that 3ware and this one?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3Ware-9550SX-12SI-AMCC-12Ports-3-0Gb-s-SATA-II-PCI-X-RAID-Controller-/160924217915?pt=US_Server_Disk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item2577d4b23b

[farmeunit]

You can get a PERC card for about the same amount if you look around. Probably not a big deal either way. I'm not expert on RAID cards, but we've had good luck with PE servers with PERC cards.

3Ware is a good brand, though.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

I have that exact same Syba controller card. I never had any problems.

First 3ware has 6 ports, Syba has 4, second 3ware has 12 ports. About the only difference.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Are any of these cards on the VMWare compatibility list?

[fusi0n]

I don't think so.. However I am using it with FreeNAS then using iScsi to connect to the host

[patseguin Global Moderator]

I've had best results with Intel RAID cards both from a performance and compatibility standpoint.

[SirEvan]

why not get a DELL Perc 6/I?

I bought mine for 17$ on ebay. you can easily find a perc 6, or if you need >2TB support, a H700 for under 300$ or so