A few RAID questions...

[LickEmSmack]

First off, using the Promise Fastrak 66 mod, can you boot off a RAID 0 Array? What I mean, is can you set-up the array to be the primary HD that the OS runs off of? Also, what sort of drives do you suggest for this type of set-up? I have heard that Maxtor drives won't work with the modded card. I have been looking for some sweet deals on IBM Deckstars cuz I heard they rock, but they're pretty expensive. What about Quantum? I am looking for 2X 15 or 20 GB... Most likely 7200, but if 5400 is really cheap and won't kill the performance, why not use that because they are so much cheaper? Anyway, what's your set-up? I am looking to spend like $250 on this.

 

[Ulysses]

mebbe chek http://www.gamepc.com revus

 

[Pariah]

Let me say first, if you are going RAID, don't half-ass it, especially if you don't know what you are dealing with. Forget modded Promise controllers, you're just asking for problems. If you are expecting RAID to be some miracle performance cure, it most likely is not for your usage pattern. Unless you work with video editing, high level photo editing, or work with very large files on a regular basis, don't expect any significant performance increase. RAID increases sustained transfer rates which rarely is the bottleneck in everyday computing. Access time is far more vital and not effected by RAID. Using 5400RPM drives will simply magnify the problem due to their horrendous access time. 10k and 15k RPM SCSI drives will dust an IDE RAID under the majority of circumstances.

To answer your original question, you should be able to boot off of any hardware RAID setup, by setting boot off SCSI in the BIOS.

 

[Double Trouble]

To answer your question, yes, you can set up a striped or mirrored raid array as your boot device, provided your motherboard has the option of booting from SCSI.

I wouldn't mess with the modded Fastrak's though, since it appears promise has been adding some 'thorns' into their latest bios upgrades to make it not work with the modded ones.

Make sure you stay away from the Maxtors if you're getting a promise cards, I've had really good experiences with both the Seagate Barracuda II's and the IBM GXP 75's. Get yourself a couple of identical drives and set them up in a striped array for a good performance boost.

Pariah is right about not expecting any major results unless you do a lot of big file transfers. For just every day processing, it won't do much for you at all.

 

[LickEmSmack]

Yeah, I have been waffling on the decision to RAID or not. It seems like a real tight thing to do to my computer, and I just love the fact that I can mod a cheap device to do what I want. These were my impetus for thinking about the RAID set-up. Although I don't do much of that sort of large file transfer stuff, I think that RAID would still be a cool thing to have in my system. Although from what you guys are saying it seems to be a kind of headache to use the modded Promise cards. Maybe I'll spend less on my HD and more on my memory and processor. Got any good leads on the IBM GXP 75's? Are these the fastest HD's in terms of acess times? I guess I have more reseach to do. I still got till Spetember, cuz that's when I'm building my next system.

 

[Double Trouble]

The IBM GXP 75's are excellent drives, and you can pick up a 15.3 gig one for about $110 - $120. Combine those with a nice Fastrak 100 or Fastrak 66 controller, and you have an excellent storage subcomponent with a lot of room to grow. If you want to add more storage space later, just buy another 2 drives and add them to the raid array.

 

[TrEEcH]

i'de like some info on RAID to!
(RAID 0 actually)

i know i can have =>2 drives apear as 1 unit (g), but can i have them split up in more units ? (g,h,i)
10 gigs each or so if i wanted to that is... ??

 

[mikepeck]

The IBM drives are great.. I have two of the 15 gigers in a RAID 0 right now and it is quite speedy. I do some work in Photoshop and that is where I notice the most speed increase. Programs seem to boot up a little faster also. I bought my drives at buy.com with a coupon and got them for 180 bucks for both, it was a great deal. You can format and repartition the RAID anyway you wish, just like a normal drive. I do agree with most people here that say RAID isn't a big performance boost, but it certaintly doesn't slow your system down, and when you do work with large files, then the performance increase is quite noticable. The ability to have redundancy is a plus also (there or more drives). That way you never have to worry about losing data or backing up regularly. I have not worked with the modified cards, but I know the card that I had was a booger to setup with win2k. But with the new drivers and bios, it was a piece of cake.
Good luck and happy Raiding..

 

[Pariah]

Despite the acronym, RAID 0, commonly called striping, offers no data redundancy making it more volatile and susceptable to data loss than just having 2 seperate drives. If one drive crashes in your stripe, you lose the data on both/all drives.

 

[mikepeck]

You are correct in that statement Pariah.. I was not trying to say RAID 0 had data redundacy, rather RAID 1 and 5 have that feature. I know the promise cards support both modes, and for that reason, Raiding is a good deal.

 

[Pariah]

If you're really concerned about data integrity and redundancy, you aren't using a $25 hacked RAID card. Which goes back to the point in my original post. If you are really serious about RAID and the benefits you can get from it, don't cut corners using cheap, low quality components. RAID 1, aka mirroring, doesn't provide any speed improvement, all it does is copy whatever the main drive has on it to the 2nd drive. RAID 5 is also not as fast as striping since parity data needs to be written to the drives for writes, and the parity data needs to be skipped during reads, exacting a performance penalty that would negate most of the little performance increase you would have gotten in the first place.

 

[randypj]

Pariah--Just curious, what have you seen to be the problem with the modded cards, other than you gotta "workaround" the newer Promise BIOS updates?

BTW, if you are really concerned about data integrity and redundancy, in addition to mirror, you'll also periodically backup to removeable media, with a rotation setup, storing a dupe of the removable offsite. I'm just anal enough to do it.
--Randy

 

[Vinny N]

http://arstechnica.com/paedia/r/raid-1.html

Some good reading on various RAID.

 

[SharkB8]

LickEmSmack, don't let 'em scare you out of using a modded Promise Ultra66. As long as the mod was done correctly they work just fine. I have one in my WIN98SE system with (4) WD 20.5gig 7200rpm on RAID 0+1 and I have had no problems whatsoever. My system started out with 2 drives mirrored then I converted to mirrored and striped with a substantial increase in performance. It is flashed with latest posted BIOS on the Promise site and I'm using the latest drivers. I have had my machine running as it is now non-stop for the last 6 weeks with my PIII 550 oc'd to 687 You will see the most performance out of 7200rpm ATA66 drives. To make it worth your while, use these. And yes, Maxtor drives do work with RAID because my neighbor has done it successfully. You just have to jack with jumpers on the drives to find the correct setup.
The only drawback to using a modded a card is that you can't call Promise for support and .pdf manual you can download from them leaves a lot to be desired. But none of that really matters because there is wealth of knowledge on RAID right here in these forums. Hope this helps, good luck.

 

[randypj]

SharkB8--Thanks for the confirmation of the experiences of my family with modded cards. I thought we were just dumb lucky. Yeah, my Dad had to diddle with the jumpers on his Maxtor's. I think it finally helped when he popped a WD into the mix. Course, I sold him all my Maxtor's and now have only WD's. Thanks Dad.
--Randy

 

[Double Trouble]

SharkB8: There's nothing wrong with a modded fastrak, so long as you know what you're getting into, and you know that there might be limitations.

As for the maxtor drives, they do NOT mix well with the Promise Fastrak. There's a wide range of well documented 'issues' on this particular combination. A lot of people do get the maxtor drives to work with the fasttrak, only to find that when they benchmark the drive with threadmark and other utils, the drives perform slower than a single drive would. I'm sure someone will post "but I have it and it works fine!" -- well good for you, but I would encourage someone's who's considering setting up a RAID system to stay away from the Maxtor drives.

 

[SharkB8]

tagej- Yes, I agree with you that Maxtors are probably not the ideal drive for setting up a RAID system. My neighbor had his share of problems, the biggest being that 2 or 3 drives showed up DOA. That had nothing to do with RAID. However, for using with RAID 1 (mirroring) they work fine. RAID 1 is not for performance but only for redundancy so only the reliability of the drives used are the concern here.
RAID 0 (striping) on the other hand is for performance so a WD, IBM, or Seagate 7200rpm would definitely be a better choice. That's not to say that I didn't have my share of problems setting up my WD on RAID but WD are kinda unique anyway. I know a guy running Seagate Barracudas on RAID 0 and had an easy setup and no problems at all.

LickEmSmack- My advice to you would be to set your system up with all identical drives. Use either WD, IBM's or Seagates of the 7200rpm, ATA66 variety. Drive prices are coming down with ATA100 on the horizon and as mikepeck said, you should be able to come up with a coupon to make it even more price efficient. You can get away with only 2 drives on RAID 0 as long as you don't keep anything on you system you fear losing or be a backing up fool. If this is your primary and only system and you want to stripe, go with 4 identical drives and go RAID 0+1. Let us know how it goes.

randypj- Not a problem, anytime.

 

[randypj]

SharkB8--you know my family has had almost two dozen maxtor's...both /33 and /66 7200. They sure do seem to crap out. I've sent at least 4 in, and I think my Dad has sent that many in. I don't mean, just "we decided they were bad", but, ran MaxDiag, talked to the Max tech supv, even by email. They pronounced them bad. Only a couple were actually toast, though. The others just seemed to get flakey. My Dad doesn' overclock.

I was told by Maxtor, on the phone, that NONE of their drives had issues with Promise /66, RAID, or non. I dunno if I believe it.

My Dad sent me a FAQ on installing Promise/66 (modded Fasttrak) in a dualboot W98/W2K setup (Abit BX6, rev.2). If anyone is interested, I would post it. He is an engineer and very precise. He just wrote the FAQ for my brother and me. I figured it had probably been beaten to death, but wanted his "expertise". BTW, two months ago he didn't know what CAT5 was....but he's a very quick learner.
--Randy

 

[SharkB8]

randypj- Yes, I am very interested in the FAQ you referred to. My next horizon is to dual boot my 98SE with WIN2K and, as I've said, I am using a modded Ultra 66. If there is an issue here, please clue me in.

Thanks much.