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best RAID setup for this?

D

dboy

Golden Member
I have a cheapo RAID card (this one I'm pretty sure... just PCI w/ 2 ports, 0,1,0+1 support)

I'm using it in a Dell P4, 2.53ghz w/ 512 meg ram, running Server 2003. I use it for file and print server at home, plus video editing (Pinnacle Studio 8 is much more stable and happy on server2003 than XP!)

My current drive setup : 30 gig C:, a cdrw, and then a pair of 80gig Maxtor 8meg cache drives in raid0 on the controller, with one connected to each port. I use that array for my video editing needs.

I got in on that dell 200gig deal w/ 2 drives. What would be the best way to config them? What I'd like to have is the pair of 80s in raid0 for file server space and video backup, and then the 200s in a raid0 for video workspace. There wouldn't often be heavy demand on both arrays at the same time, unless I was copying from one to the other which I wouldn't be as worried about performance in that situation.

I was thinking put an 80 and 200 on each of the 2 controller ports, and then config them as the pair of arrays. That seems like it'd split the load between the 2 ports most of the time that way. Would that work, or would it gripe about doing it that way?
 
If you have a cheap controller, you may or may not be able to run more than one array at a time on it. Also, RAID 0 is a very bad idea for something that you're going to be storing data on, as the reliability decreases when the stability of the array depends on two disks at the same time, instead of one.
 
I'm not worried about the higher risk of raid0 - nothing irreplaceable will be on there. The performance is most important to me.

(besides, I'm using brand new special edition drives - not 75gxp's 🙂)
 
Originally posted by: dboy
I'm not worried about the higher risk of raid0 - nothing irreplaceable will be on there. The performance is most important to me.

(besides, I'm using brand new special edition drives - not 75gxp's 🙂)
Click to expand...
Well, as long as you have backups, then we don't need to worry about that aspect. 🙂

Then, it basically comes down to the hardware limitations of your controller. If the controller can support two drives per channel (as I assume it can if it supports RAID 0+1), then see if it can make two arrays with one drive of each array on each channel (as you describe in your post); in theory, that should give you the best performance.
 
That's what I figured... my new drives aren't here yet, so I can't try it. Hopefully it'll work!
 
I'd probably do the following

1---A---B
2---A---B

Where 1/2 = Raid card channels
A - Array 1, 80gb drives
B - Array 2, 200gb drives

That will give you the best peformance 🙂

Edit: Someday I might read the whole of the thread before replying...basically do it as you thought 😱


Confused
 
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