FAQ

Does my EVGA motherboard support RAID 10?

Last Update: 2010/08/01

Does my current motherboard support RAID 10?

Short answer:  No.  No motherboard made by EVGA including current X58, P55, H55 or our current Xeon platform support raid 10, nor do our older board form the NForce 400-700 series.  That type of functionality would require a RAID controller.

 

Long Answer:  Please do not confuse RAID 10 with RAID 0+1, some will say they are one and the same, and they would be wrong.  All current boards, and most older NVidia based board support RAID 0+1.  The difference being, 0+1 is 2 stripe sets (2+ drives) mirrored together giving performance and redundancy.  RAID 10 is 2 or more mirror sets being striped together. 

This can sound almost identical, btu the difference comes in from actual data impact, rebuild times, and the scaling above baseline 4 drive arrays.  When you lose a drive in 0+1, one stripe set has failed and you are running off of the backup.  Now you still have your data, but one of the sub arrays is completely destroyed at this point.  Now the controller can rebuild this when you replace the drive, but you have no fault tollerance (on the remaining array).

When a drive fails in RAID 10, one strip set is degraded, and there is NO data loss at any level.  Also due to the nature of the stripe set being based off of mirrors, the rebuild process is typically faster, with less overhead on the system. 

Also, when you scale the array upwards, RAID 0+1 just increases the strip size, whereas 10 adds another mirror set.  This will improve fault tollerance.  Unfortunately, this option is only available on a 3rd arty controller.

Keywords

RAID, RAID 10, RAID 0+1, Intel RAID, NV Raid, 58966