Buying a hardware RAID controller

[jeorge_kabbi]

i have this motherboard MSI Global – Mainboard - 790FX-GD70 and 2 SSD 128GB hard drives connected to the motherboard in RAID0 used as a C drive. i have another i TB hard drive used for data.

my problem : Linux and many other boot disks does not "see" the hard drive because it is a "software raid" thus a driver is needed.

my proposed solution : buy a 4-port sata3 hardware RAID controller (i think its also known as thick raid) so that:

1- i can connect my 2 drives and have the option to expand that to 4 drives in the future (rebuilding the raid needed i know).

2-the sata 3 will be backward compatible with sata2 (both front and back ends) so i can use the same RAID controller in my next computer.
3- it will work with "anything" without any drivers. in other words the motherboard will think that it is simply a single hard drive is connected to it.

my question is :
is #1 ,#2 and #3 mentioned above true ? and if so shall i get your kind advise regarding what controller i could buy (budget around 400 USD)

thank you

 

[Indigo]

If you're using the motherboard's RAID, it's not software RAID, you just need the requisite drivers for Linux to get it to work. If there's no drivers for your board in Linux for that RAID setup, then buying a discreet card will be fine, as long as it has the required drivers.

Yes, you'll have to rebuild the array on the new card.

SATA 3 can work on SATA 1 if you had to. Obviously it would be limited to SATA 1 speeds in that case

A single drive on the motherboard set to IDE mode or AHCI should work fine in just about any OS.