List of real SATA RAID Cards for Linux

I am looking for a real RAID card for my Linux server, which will act as a RAID 1 for two SATA drives. It turns out that many of the cheap RAID cards are “fake raid”, and their manufacturers are trying to hide this fact.

So I decided to do a quick research on the internet about available RAID cards for Linux

What is a “fakeraid” card?

A fakeraid card means that it is essentially a 2 or 4 port SATA card with additional hardware and BIOS code. In order for the operating system to use the RAID feature of the card, a driver has to be installed, which will do all or part of the RAID logic on the mainboard’s CPU. This means that what you get is actually a software RAID, and not a true hardware solution.

So if you have a fakeraid card on your Linux box, you better off using Linux’s built in software based RAID feature.

Since there is not once place on the net that has a list of true RAID cards, I decided to put my own list here. Please feel free to send information about additional cards.

List of true RAID cards for Linux

Following is a list of 100% hardware based RAID cards, that are supported under Linux.

Manufacturer

Model

PCI

SATA

SAS

Internal ports

External ports

drives

RAID levels

Cache

Hotplug

NCQ

Battery backup

Adaptec

2045

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

0

1

4

0, 1, 1E, 10, JBOD

128MB

Y

Y

N

2405

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

1

0

4

0, 1, 1E, 10, JBOD

128MB

Y

Y

N

2805

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

2

0

8

0, 1, 1E, 10, JBOD

128MB

Y

Y

N

3405

PCIe 4

3 GB/s

Yes

1

0

4

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50, 60, JBOD

128MB

Y

Y

Y

3805

PCIe 4

3 GB/s

Yes

2

0

8

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50, 60, JBOD

128MB

Y

Y

Y

5405

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

1

0

4

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50, 60, JBOD

256MB

Y

Y

Y

5445

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

1

1

8

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

Y

5085

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

0

2

8

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

N

5805

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

2

0

8

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

Y

51245

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

3

1

16

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

Y

51645

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

4

1

20

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

Y

52445

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

6

1

28

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

Y

5405Z

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

1

0

4

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

Flash based

5445Z

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

1

1

8

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

Flash based

5805Z

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

Yes

2

0

8

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

Flash based

6405E

PCIe 8

6 GB/s

Yes

1

0

4

0, 1, 10, 1E and JBOD

128MB

Y

Y

N

6405T

PCIe 8

6 GB/s

Yes

1

0

?

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

N

6405

PCIe 8

6 GB/s

Yes

1

0

?

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

Flash based

6805E

PCIe 4

6 GB/s

Yes

2

0

8

0, 1, 10, 1E and JBOD

128MB

Y

Y

N

6805T

PCIe 8

6 GB/s

Yes

2

0

8

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

Flash based

6805

PCIe 8

6 GB/s

Yes

2

0

8

0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

Y

Y

Flash based

LSI

MegaRAID 8888ELP

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

2

2

8

0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60

256MB/ 512MB

?

?

Y

MegaRAID 8880EM2

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

0

2

8

0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60

512MB

?

?

Y

MegaRAID 8708EM2

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

0

2

8

0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60

256MB

?

?

MegaRaid 8704EM2

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

0

1

4

0, 1, 5, 6, 10

128MB

?

?

3ware (LSI)

9650SE-2LP

PCIe

3 GB/s

N

2

0

2

0, 1, JBOD

128MB

?

?

Y

9650SE-4LPML

PCIe 4

3 GB/s

1

0

4

0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD

256MB

?

?

9650SE-8LPML

PCIe 4

3 GB/s

2

0

8

0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD

256MB

?

?

9650SE-12LPML

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

3

0

12

0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, JBOD

256MB

?

?

9650SE-16LPML

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

4

0

16

0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, JBOD

256MB

?

?

9650SE-24M8

PCIe 8

3 GB/s

multi lane

0

24

0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, JBOD

512MB

?

?

List of real RAID chipsets

• Adaptec AAR 2400, 2410, 2410SA, 2120S, 2200S, 2810SA (8-port), 21610SA (16-port)
• Adaptec Adaptec AAR 2420SA (4-port) and AAR 2820SA (8-port) PCI-X cards
• 3Ware Escalade 8xxx, 9xxx and 95xx families.
• LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA 150-4 (four ports) and 150-6
• LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA 300-4X 4-port and 300-8X 8-port SATA-II PCI-X cards

References:

• Adaptect’s web site.
• LSI (and 3ware) web site.
• http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html
• http://web.archive.org/web/20080305164412/http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html

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