However with a quick search I am seeing host based and software RAID grouped into tha same cat, but to me its something different
I'm sure, but the reality is that Intel 'host based' RAID does not do anything in the hardware. If it does, they haven't bother letting anyone use it on a non-Windows platform, which is both stupid and not like Intel.
For example, a RAID5 volume on Intel ICH will get ya oh somewhere in tha neighborhood of 20-30MB/s writes on ICH7 or greater
Nice low numbers, there.. I can pour >100MB/s into my software RAID-5 on this machine, and it's bottlenecked by old drives.
Well im not lieing to ya, I tried, figuring dam well I was wasting my time, to make a 4 drive RAID5 set when I bought this Z77 motherboard, I didnt get no 100MB/s writes, oh ya reads are fine, but ICH just isnt powerfull enuff to cal tha parity writes.. If I remmber correctly it was like 30 MB/s or something.. OH well, my RAID5 volumes are all handled by tha Highpoint 4520 I bought, it has a 900MHZ Marvell 88RC9580 chip to handle all tha parity cal, and SAS 6G, 128 devices with expander.. Its a full hardware solution, and I can create and initialize RAID5 volumes right in its bios, and watch them happen there, go play some dos games, reboot and see were tha volumes at, no drivers needed, no os needed..