3Ware 9650SE comparable

[ZooBeeque]

I have had this card for a great many years and I know eventually it will go the way of all things, the blue smoke will escape and it's done.
Is there another card that is more current ie: will not be EOL for a year or 2 that will not necessitate me having to back it all up and restore it? A momentous task with 10 ish Tb of accumulated flotsam.
Thank You
Sj

I have read all the other threads about this card but no answer was forthcoming even with similar titles.
As an aside, i bought this card when 750 gb HDDs were the biggest thing out there so attaching 8 only carved up the drives into 2TB sizes2 or 3 of them in R5 ( i think) easy to manage.
Nowadays 3x3 Tb drives gets carved into, a lot and I dont want to have to search across 5 different drives and I am wondering if itsa good idea to use windows to span the carved drives or make them dynamic. As a home user this goes beyond my experience but I can imagine spanning to be not good for raid cards.
Thank You

 

[j_h_o]

It's possible that the 3ware 9750-8i will import those arrays from the 9650. But even the 9750 is EOL, and I don't think there's any newer card than that from 3Ware.

Assuming you don't want to make any other changes, I'd just pick up an Intel "RSP3" generation RAID card now (which are LSI rebrands - but can be found cheaper), with a BBU, attach 3 or 4 new drives, and migrate your data to the new array. (These current LSI cards will NOT import the legacy 3Ware array!)

Why do you want to carve up the containers into such small pieces? I don't think this is necessary any longer; you can just let the RAID card create a large 6TB container and expose it to Windows as 1 giant GPT partition.

 

[ZooBeeque]

I'm fairly certain the 9750 will import, I went from an older card to the 9650 and it picked up the array.
Thanks for the Intel tip, I'll check that out.
I don't want to carve up the disks but the 9650 is set to auto carve and I thought it was a limitation of what the card could do/see/use otherwise I would have left it.
Thanks

 

[j_h_o]

MBR-based disks cannot exceed 2TB in size. With a modern OS, with GPT, you can present the RAID as a giant disk to the OS.

If you're in the US, I have a used 9750-8i and possibly an 9750-4i4e I can ship you if you want it -- if you pay for shipping.

 

[ZooBeeque]

Yes MBR, again that was before I knew anything about GPT or how to deploy it, not that I know a ton more now but I see your point. Looks like I'll need to do some more research into the how-to on GPT.
I am in the US and that is an incredibly kind offer and I will absolutely take you up on.
PayPal?
Thank You so much,
sj

 

[j_h_o]

I'll dig it up this coming weekend, time permitting and message you directly

 

[ZooBeeque]

Much obliged kind sir. I know what kind of chore digging tech out of the junk box is
Not time sensitive at all.
Enjoy the week.
Sj