Controller Cards

What is a controller card? A controller card is an add-in PCI or PCI-Express card that enables IDE, SATA or SCSI devices to be connect to a computer. They often offer superior RAID performance for high performance hard drive arrays offering data redundancy and other complex features. What do I look for in a controller card? When buying a controller card it is worth checking it has all the features you want or may want in the future. There are several types of RAID and not all controller cards support them. Different models of controller card will offer different levels of performance. As a general rule PCI-Express cards are quicker than their PCI equivalents. What is the difference between a software RAID card and a hardware RAID card? A hardware RAID card is the more costly and almost always superior solution. By using a dedicated processor and memory they do not cause any significant overheads to the other components in the system, offer better performance and increased reliability. For mission critical workloads such as servers...