Can you use IBM server RAID cards in a normal PC?

[XMan]

Or are they proprietary in some way?

http://www.computergiants.com/items/one_item.asp?part=61126&aff=1

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=ibm&lndocid=MIGR-4JGUDY

 

[XMan]

http://www.scsi4me.com/?menu=menu_scsi&pid=75&display=4L.htm

Cool, looks like I answered my own question . . . now I just gotta find drivers . . . any ideas.

 

[Peter]

In principle, yes. But the measly 32-bit 33 MHz PCI bus will choke them until they turn green. (wait ... they already are )

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: Peter
In principle, yes. But the measly 32-bit 33 MHz PCI bus will choke them until they turn green. (wait ... they already are )

How's that different from any other PCI-X SCSI RAID card, though? Short of buying a new motherboard anything I get is going to be go in a 32-bit slot . . .

 

[Peter]

Right. But don't dream about nice throughput from SCSI RAID - the latest generation of _single_drives_ outperforms the PCI bus you have there. Thus, an inexpensive $50 card like the LSI U160 will do - unless you're after the extra safety from mirror or RAID5.

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: Peter
Right. But don't dream about nice throughput from SCSI RAID - the latest generation of _single_drives_ outperforms the PCI bus you have there. Thus, an inexpensive $50 card like the LSI U160 will do - unless you're after the extra safety from mirror or RAID5.

Well, for an extra $25 bucks I got an Ultra 160 hardware RAID card, so RAID it is . . . I already had the drives, so I guess I won't complain too much about the lack of performance.

 

[Peter]

What card did you get? Link please!

 

[XMan]

http://www.ptusainc.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=37L6091

Got it from here. Got my tracking number today. They're not on Reseller Ratings, but they're on a few other places with favorable ratings. They even have free FedEx ground shipping for this particular card!

Here's the IBM page with the software and drivers:

http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-56811

 

[XMan]

Answer to my question . . . yup, you sure can!

Got my card today. I had some troubles getting it to setup from the get go . . . first of all, when buying a full-length PCI card, make sure that your case can accept one . . . doh! The end of the card ran right into the hard drive cage of my Ahanix X195. After some creatice work with pliers and sidecuts I made enough room for the card to go into a slot.

Then, when I tried to run the IBM setup CD, it could never find the RAID card to update the firmware . . . the latest on IBM's site is 7.10, my card came with 6 something. The card would initialize fine, but you need the setup CD to initialize logical disks and create arrays. When it works, it's cool, but when it don't it's a pain in the butt. Quick answer - the card doesn't like to share IRQ's. I juggled some cards and got it up and running. The firmware updated pretty quickly and I proceeded to configure the RAID array. With that done, I plugged in my Windows XP CD. Hit F6, installed the drivers, and held onto my seat . . . XP installed in about 15 minutes (!).

So all in all, I'd say $75 for a hardware Ultra160 RAID card is a pretty smokin' hot deal. I'm using a pair of Maxtor Atlas 15K's in RAID0 and the performance is pretty sweet even being bus-limited by PCI.

Did you end up buying one, Peter?

PS - XP boots up in like 10 seconds.

 

[XMan]

I'm not sure if this is an issue with the card or not, but my hard drives seek a very small amount every time I scroll the mouse wheel in IE . . . I've got a gig of RAM, surely it can't be running out of memory?