For those who got in on the Maxtor Staples deal, FREE RAID Controller

[tkhater]

If you got in on the deal to get a Maxtor HD and Fast Ultra ATA/100 controller from staples, here is a link to convert your controller to a RAID controller, free.

Japanese conversion of U100 to FT100

http://www.kurabu.co.jp/yobara/yossy/kai/ul100-01.html

This is in Japanese, so you will need to use the AltaVista translator.

There are some English versions of this floating around, but I cannot find them now, and this modification is the most elegant (albeit the most difficult, too).

I have successfully done this, BTW.

 

[greg]

Just out of curiousity, does anyone actually use their RAID? I got one a few years back but APP after APP showed little or no difference. I know its nifty to have, but how many of use are areally utilizing them?

Great link however..

 

[bigdoggy]

Second that Greg, I converted a card to raid somtime back, I notice no improvement, it is laying in a drawer somewhere.:great find raider fan. tweakhardware.com

 

[gogeeta13]

Your title is misleading.

 

[HKSturboKID]

This is too risky. If you mess up, you'll lose both your ata 100 card and no raid controller.

 

[bighammer]

about 5%
if your cracking or such it helps but for everyday stuff it doesn't do squat


new article from a guy who knows his stuff
here

 

[tkhater]

1) My title is NOT misleading. You can modify your ata/100 controller to a RAID controller for free, if you got in on that other deal. Yes there is risk, but there is also risk with purchasing with a credit card over the internet, not getting rebates, etc etc etc.

2) RAID has multiple applications. RAID 0 Striping can be used to increase performance, but may not give a world of difference. RAID 1 - mirroring, is nice for on-the-fly backing up.

The reason I did this was for RAID 1, since I need to have servers running that I cannot afford to lose. If others on the forum have this or other needs, this is a free way of acheiving those needs. This really works well, but it is not a major performance enhancer for most home users. If you have a special need for on-the-fly backups, though, then this deal can't be beat.

 

[bargenner]

May be this should be in General Hardware Forum. Anyway, here is the translated link

Link

--bargenner

 

[SinMen]

I thought I am going to get another FREE RAID controller, oh well....

 

[larrymoencurly]

This is one of two UT100 modifications described at Tweak Hardware.

 

[beamrider]

You guys aren't saying that you see no difference between one drive, and two striped? You've got to be kidding, I hope.

 

[yodayoda]

yeah, RAID is pretty damn useless for normal users. i'm content to use my hard drives in a JBOD configuration. these cards and my RAID board (Abit KT7A-RAID) don't even support RAID level 5, which is some cool stuff.

for the record, RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks and JBOD = Just a Bunch Of Disks. with RAID, it creates a single logical drive while JBOD is a term to describe separate logical drives.

 

[phamtastik]

Raid 0 is nice if you deal w/ alot of large files.
I tend to unrar 600 megs file and there is a big difference between Raid and non raid.