why do people think they need hardware raid for a NAS?

[RottenMutt]

with modern low end dual core processors you have plenty of power for software raid!

If you are buying a hardware card please be sure its processor is powerful enough that it will not be bottlenecked and will meet your expectations. Check the raid 5 and 10 benchmarks. To get a good card you need to spend about 600 bucks.

I just don't see any reason for hardware raid in this application. Comment welcome.

 

[thiggins]

Sorry, I'm confused. You say that dual core CPUs have plenty of power for software RAID, then talk about buying a hardware RAID card.

It all depends on how much performance you want and the RAID mode you want to support. The Fast NAS series has shown that even the Intel Atom can produce RAID 1 performance of around 35 MB/s write and 60 MB/s read.

What RAID performance have you achieved using a dual-core based machine running software RAID? Details, please.