For you who use RAID with highpoint 370, is it worth it (stripp mode)

[DeViSoR]

I'm planning to run raid 0, I want better performance. But as I understand it this is a "great" risc, if data failure accure.

So is real world performance so much better then just running non raid with ata100 then running raid 0 with ata100 disk. Like running 3dstudio, Photoshop, UT.. (time to load)

 

[xtreme2k]

i dont have it done myself (no $ now) but one of my friend got

2* IBM 15G 75GXP
Iwill SideRaid100
running in raid0 mode

and it is pretty fast
he is getting 37000 in Sandra HDD benchmarks

i have a single IBM 75GXP and i am getting about 20000

i think that is excegrated but then still at least 10-20% benefits from raid i just say

 

[DeViSoR]

Thx..

But what about the real performance.. do you notice much difference when loading large files/programs.

 

[xtreme2k]

WELL

i told him to try this

hold down the SHIFT key and click on the start menu
load all the programs he got (nearly)
his programs finish loading just after he finsish clicking

he got a Celeron 566 at 875
windows 2000
256mb

overall i think 10-20% faster at least

 

[Noriaki]

Keep in mind IDE RAID is software based.
The CPU calculates where the stripes are going to go not the controller.
It will improve your hard drive transfer rate, but it eats CPU time.
If you have a really fast CPU and need a boost to disk speed IDE RAID0 might help you some...if you have a slower CPU and don't need a boost to disk speed IDE RAID0 may even hurt your performance.

If you seriuosly need good disk performance, get SCSI. Promise is rumoured to be working on an IDE RAID that's hardware based, and if that's true, then it's cool. But right now IDE RAID is a bit of a gimmick...

 

[PCResources]

There are both up- and downsides to the suggested configuration.

The upside is that disk throughput will increase about 50-75%.

The downside is that the CPU will spend a whole lot of time working with the RAID.

You see, even with a IDE-RAID card the raid is mainly software, so the CPU will have to do most of the job.

The IDE interface in itself is CPU intense, compared to SCSI, SCSI has it's own processor, IDE doesn't, then you add the RAID on top of that, and your CPU will spend a lot of time with your disk configuration.

For RAID, always go SCSI, even the slowest SCSI components are better than the IDE solution.

As for the risks of data loss with RAID 0 (disk striping without parity) well it increases with the number of disks you add to the RAID (from single disk to double the risk increases with 100%).

To resolve your problems, use a SCSI hardware RAID 5(disk striping with parity).

Patrick Palm

Am speaking for PC Resources

 

[xtreme2k]

anyone has any benchmark or anything showing the amount of processor usage on a raid and non raid situation

one thing about scsi - cost
i think for the price of the IDE RAID (IBM 15G *2 + controller cost) is about the same price is a
SINGLE IBM DDYS 9G 10000rpm Ultra160
or a
Single Seagate ST39204LW 10000rpm Ultra 160
drive EXCLUDING a controller cost

i am sure you might want some decent Ultra 160 controllers with those hard disk (US$150+)
for about the same price you could get some 18G 7200rpm scsi drives

what i am trying to say is
for the same price u get 30G of storage(reliable enough for home use) or you get 9G/18G without the cost of the SCSI controller

there is no argument about SCSI being utilising a lot less CPU than IDE, SCSI is king here

the HPoint366 are bad i dont think the 370 are as bad though
some of my friend are using it and seems to have NO issue of them in winNT/2000 platforms

also i think UN-RAIDing ANY drive requires you have a bigger drive that holds all the data (i think) this is not high points problem

 

[ahfung]

Well said PCresources.

What he hasn't mentioned are

1) Highpoint driver sucks, esp in NT4/Win2000, not to mention no working Linux driver for RAID0.
2) Highpoint CS sucks, won't even bothered to reply your little pathetic distress email.
3) You lose all data on stripped HDD. And when unraid it, u'd lose all the data again. It is no return trip.

Now I'm stuck in a very bad situation. I can't unraid my Highpoint 60GB raid0 setup until someone lends me a big ass HDD. :|

 

[brennan]

Is the Highpoint 370 the one on the Abit KT7? Cause I'm gonna buy a Duron 600, and I was gonna buy a KT7 RAID to go with it, and then add a second IBM 75gxp 30gig and stripe it. Is this just a bad idea? Will it slow down the processor to an unacceptable degree? I'm going to be working with large music files (home recording), so I wanted as much HDD speed as I could get. Will it slow down the processor to an unacceptable degree?

-brennan

 

[Noriaki]

yes ABit uses the HighPoint chips...they are bad RAID controllers...
The promise ones are much better.

I'd suggest than an ABit KT7 is a good choice of mobo but I'd be unconcered about RAID, most people wouldn't need it. If you want seriuos disk performance you need SCSI. For most people an IBM 75GXP or a DiamondMax 40+ or a FireBall LM Plus are plently fast. You don't need to worry about RAID.

 

[xtreme2k]

yep the promise are GREAT IDe raid controllers costin 3times as much as the Abit

 

[brennan]

No disrespect intended guys, but just suggesting "go to SCSI" isn't much help. If I'm looking an Abit KT7 and two 30-gig 75gxp's, it's in the neighborhood of $450 for the setup. For a 60-gig SCSI RAID setup, it's like $1100 or so including a motherboard. That's a pretty damn big chunk of cash. And I know it's probably worth it in the end, but it's not even conceivable for me to spend an extra $600 for SCSI. And no, I don't want to wait for a few months to save up.

But, the assessments of IDE RAID's usefulness (or lack thereof) are appreciated. So if I *do* decide to go with it anyways, am I better off, speed or CPU-usage-wise, going with a modded Promise Fasttrak 66 (ATA/66), or with the ATA/100 RAID onboard the KT7 RAID?

-brennan

 

[Noriaki]

I didn't mean SCSI raid. I meant a single SCSI drive.

But I didn't expect you to go for it anyways, I say no on the IDE RAID. not worth the extra cash. Just get a 60GB 75GXP and no RAID.
Save yourself a few bucks.

 

[xtreme2k]

for those saying no ide raid and go for single IDE
i bet you guys wont say the same thing after you really used a raid IBM 75GXP

again the HP370 ARENT that bad at all (but if u listen to those guys, go get the Promise IDE raid controller - it just cost 3x as much as the Abit) problems happens if you Dont configure the HP370 correctly or you have conflict with OTHER devices

my recommendation - GO WITH THE Abit HotRod 100Pro with 2x IBM 75GXP in RAID0

as long as you setup the thing correctly (most people should)
you wont be disappointed by the performance

 

[JaiKnight]

So is there any real performance difference between the Abit HotRod and the Promise FastTrak RAID controllers? Or is one just sold at a higher price? Is anybody else working on a hardware RAID controller besides the rumoured Promise hardware RAID?

 

[xtreme2k]

performance wise the Promise and the HP370 is about the same
price wise ... Promise is 3x more than the Abit/Iwill HP370RAID


seems to me everyone say promise is 'good - much better than High point' but no one actually think of cause it is better, it cost you 3 times as much

overall they all about the same
looks like to me the Abit performs BETTER at the Business DiskWinmarks and High-end diskwinmarks while the Promise performs better at some linear reads

but i think there are PROBLEMS with those linear reads, they say HP370 drivers are optimised for reading normal files and random accessing (which a computer MOSTLY do)

 

[PCResources]

Everyone is talking about performance, but no one is considering that the risk of data loss increases with 100% and the CPU utilization increases with every added disk.

I would rather recommend a single SCSI drive, even a low end one than any IDE RAID system.

Do you want performance, do you want reliability? Buy low end SCSI disks, and a low end RAID-5 controller. Doesn't matter what you buy, anything will be better than a RAID-0 IDE solution.

And if you think that someday you will want to "unstripe" those disks, buy a cheap tape-backup, SCSI of course.

Patrick Palm

Am speaking for PC Resources

 

[JaiKnight]

I don't know if anybody else thinks this way, but the reason I don't care that much about mirroring is that I don't hold any vital information on my HD for long periods of time, I usually just burn stuff if I do need to (which is now a problem since I haven't received my new burner yet, but that's another story that may be heard soon...), but that CPU utilization for software RAID is worrying me, on my lowly P2-400...

 

[DeViSoR]

Thx for the inputs guys..

As I already got my 2*20gb ibm ata100 disk I setup my raid system yesterday. It was actually real easy. Performance was great I was impressed by the hdtach bench scores (sorry no pictures yet). I do not care of data loss as I use my Seagate 17,2gb as backup disk now 1 partition dedicated for ghosting 10gb and the rest for Linux.

When I was running my Seagate before on the ata100 controller hdtach reported 5,7% cpu usage. Now running raid 0 on it hdtach reports around 50% cpu usage. Well testing UT, downloading large files (linux mandrake) I did not notice any "lag". BUT I feel this HIGHPOINT driver I'm running must be unstable. Now my comp can suddenly reboot without any notice. This newer happened to me befoure. I don't know if this is due to my oc or the latest drivers for the highpoint. Have to check it out.