Software RAID controller | Hardware RAID controller |
1. Lower price in general. 2. The basic RAID levels are supported by many operating systems. 3. The RAID levels are limited. If you want your hard drives to support RAID 3 and RAID 5, you need to purchase additional software. | 1. The hardware enclosures with built-in support for basic RAID levels are relatively affordable. 2. You still need to pay more money for the hardware enclosures that support advanced RAID levels and more hard drives. |
Software RAID systems | Hardware RAID systems |
1. Perform adequately for basic RAID levels. 2. Performance may be affected by complex RAID levels. | 1. Performance equals to software-based systems for basic RAID levels. 2. Outperform the software-based systems for advanced RAID levels. 3. Rebuild mirrored RAID data much faster than software-based RAID systems. |
Software RAID controller | Hardware RAID controller |
1. Offer the most flexibility to have each drive configured in an enclosure. | 1. Work as a single disk to the host operating system. 2. It is easy to move an enclosure between computers and operating systems. |
Hardware RAID | Software RAID |
Pros: 1. Better performance for more advanced RAID configurations. 2. More RAID configuration options to choose including hybrid configurations that may not be available with some certain OS. 3. Compatible with different OS including Windows and MAC. | Pros: 1. Low cost of entry. 2. Can easily handle RAID 0 and RAID 1 processing. |
Cons: 1. More cost in the initial setup. 2. When using some flash storage arrays, you may encounter inconsistent performance for certain hardware RAID setups. | Cons: 1. It’s often specific to the OS being used. So, it cannot be used for the RAID arrays that are shared between operating systems. 2. The RAID levels that the specific OS can support will be restricted. 3. Not suitable for more complex RAID configuration. |