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Windows 7 is becoming ubiquitous and offers a simple software RAID solution within the OS. Modern desktop Linux distros have good software RAID capability as well.
But mid to high end motherboards still ship with fake RAID chipsets.

Responses to an old post mostly recommend the Windows RAID over the fake RAID, and this post mostly says there is no advantage to fake RAID.

So why are these multi-billion dollar hardware companies wasting money developing and building fake RAID chipsets?

Do situations exist where the fake RAID is useful or even desired? When would you ever want to use the motherboard's on-board RAID?

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My best reason for my psudo hardware raid, With Split Raid (0) is it Stays together, today tomorrow , in linux in xp in win7 , and even in win98 :-) I would not care if the windows version of it was 10% faster, it would not help if it does not Stay together from the bios foreward. I am 99.9% using windows, but the integrity of my data exists for that last .1% For Mirror raid only , I would want to analise how often people were getting the rebuild. everytime I hear the word rebuild I can imagine how painfull that must be. Comparing or Copying 1T at todays speeds, uggggg. – Psycogeek Oct 9 '11 at 13:28
I once had a fake raid controller fail and recovered all the data using R-studio, which took 30 minutes of reading the manual to configure, then about 24 hours running unattended to recover 2TB of data. Nightly backups make recovery even easier. I am interested in performance benefits. – steampowered Oct 9 '11 at 13:53
Being overly cautious (ok paranoid works:-) I always ended up modding my raid cards, both real and faux. I do an extensive thermal analisis, and if my finger hurts afterwards :-) I Feex it, put heat syncs on. Controllers get no respect, and neither does that sata chip on the motherboard. I have run 5 real and 3 fake raids at different times, and didnt lose a byte. But how could i i had a backup :-) – Psycogeek Oct 9 '11 at 13:59
@Psycogeek your comment does not relate to performance – steampowered Oct 9 '11 at 14:02
Your right, and I am making the comments messy. The faux raid chip is working, doing a job, for raid0 there is minimal processing required. A "Real raid" advantage is processor and ram, with raid0 it isnt used much, the Controller is where the work is. The faux raid highpoint (pos) is 2 controllers , it has some advantage, even IF the OS is the one using them. Does the OS become a controller? So it is hardware raid :-) even if the OS is going to do the parity? If it is Raid0 where is the parity? Where is most of the work being done, either way? Unless data is to be processed. – Psycogeek Oct 9 '11 at 14:21
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closed as not constructive by Keltari, Linker3000, Nifle, Diogo, Gareth Oct 9 '11 at 14:17

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It looks good on a bullet list of features, it works across operating systems, and it makes operating system installation to a RAID array simpler.

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