Good deal on IDE RAID card

[mjquilly]

I'm not sure how good of a performer this card is, but I know IDE RAID configurations are getting pretty awesome. It's the IWILL IDE RAID controller from CompGeeks.com. It's listed at $17 + shipping, the next closest price on PriceWatch.com is $60 + shipping.

 

[Souka]

It "only" ultra-66. Also, IMHO, I would only go with Promise.

If I remember right, Promise was more compatible and stable than Iwill, but slightly slower.

There have been Iwill vs Promise comparisions....


My Two Pesos..

But at $17, that's nice.

 

[Rosebud]

There are no HDs that can take advantage of ATA 100 yet. It was designed for upcoming technologies. According to techtv geeks anyway. Yes, there are ultra 100 drives out, but the performance is not any (or not noticable) increase in porformance over ultra 66.

 

[cbass98]

I bought this a month or two ago, and I like the card very much. I put 2 maxtor 20 gig 72k ultra66 drives in doing raid 0 setup, and I couldn't be happier. Setup is a snap; just hit Ctrl-H or whatever to get into the BIOS to set up your RAID. I didn't even have to read the instruction manual.

 

[crapito]

I bought this card for my FTP server, and it is a great find. $17 for a PCI ATA/66 RAID card with 2 ATA/66 cables. the cables alone are ~$6 each on most websites. very hot deal, especially with older motherboards that have large hard drive limitations, like my P133 server's motherboard, as the card's built-in BIOS can override the motherboard's so you won't need multiple <2.1gb partitions.

 

[Binar]

I think is a good deal.I've bought one 2 days ago.I didn't received it yet though.Itwas $22 shipped.

 

[CLiu]

2 questions:
Do I need 2 identical HD to use RAID? Will 2 HDs with ~ same size but from different manufacturers work?

Can I use RAID card as regular ATA IDE card?


Thanks,


cpliu

 

[Binar]

First you don't need 2 identical size hd's to make a ride.Let's say you have one hd of 1gb and another one of 2gd.Your 2nd disc will use in raid only 1 gb the rest of it will work at regular speed.Dosen't matter the size but is preferable to use hd's with identical specifications. If one is 5400rpm and another one is 7200rpm both will work at 5400rpm.And yes you can use the raid card like a regular IDE card with up to 4 hd's.
Just a thought

 

[punkrock]

I've got an IBM ata 100 HD and an asus mainboard that supports ata 100. IT detects it as DMA mode 5 and yes its about 11% faster when bench marked reading data over the same brand same rpm udma 66 HD. writing data was only a 6% increase, but any improvment is still improvement!

 

[CLiu]

Binar, Thanks for the explanation.

Happy holidays!!


cpliu