IDE RAID - different disks?

[AbRASiON]

I have a problem need some help asap.


I've helped "fix up" a business which was using a single IDE drive (quantum CX) to having a Seagate 20gb and the 6gb in NT4 server software raid (6gb partition, same size as the smallest disk)

Anyhow.

The machine makes the most horrible head crashing sound I've ever heard after about 20 minutes being on using both of these disks, I am unsure if it's some kind of "spin down" screw up due to the P/Supply (the tape drive was spinning at the same time too) or if the disks don't work together, or maybe just the 6gb CX is dying.

(believe it or not it boots back up fine, but the sound is like one full length stroke of the disk heads moving, I also can't tell which disk, but I'm assuming it's the CX)


I need to know if I can use a 20gb Maxtor, WD, etc disk in hardware raid mode with this segate, as long as the partition sizes are identical (perhaps 19gb?) as both disks won't be 100% identical in size.


If I can do this, what is the best recommended IDE hardware raid controller (PCI) that is compatible with NT4 (I'd prefer a card which was seamless with the OS - being hardware raid n'all) - or do they all need drivers? - it's a BX6 board, P3-450, 256mb PC133, 7200 rpm Segate Barra 3, NT4 server SP6a.

If one of the disks does break down, how do I tell with a hardware raid setup, will it tell me, etc etc? I mean being hardware raid shouldn't the OS never actually know one has broken down, and if that's the case does it not boot or something? (shrug?)


This machine is NOT needed for performance, the most it will ever push out is about 1.2mb a second so speed is not a concern, I need raid 1 (redundant, I think it's 1) not raid 0. (or vice versa)

I realise the "ide raid" "fad" has been over for about a year, but this is actually needed for a business, not so someone can post 60+ mb a second hddtach scores

Anyone know also why the disk heads would be doing that, I even thought it might be a compatibility issue (20gb Seagate = disk 0 ide 1, 6gb CX = disk 1 ide1) -40x cdrom (acer) = disk 0, ide2 and ide tape backup as secondary (8gb (compressed, actually 4, I think it's a Seagate also)


Anyhow it was like that, so I moved it to 20gb to primary / 1 and cdrom to primary / 2 then moved the tape to ide 2 / secondary and the 6gb to master on the secondary.

So the 2 ide disks are on diff channels, but still an IDE thrash - not good at all.


Thank you very much for any help offered - you can email me as per the email in my profile, message me - or of course reply.

appreciated in advance (thanks)

 

[Workin']

Well, that's a lot to look through there...

Anyway, you can get 40GB 7200 RPM ATA100 hard drives for less than $80, so I would just get 2 new drives and start over with lots more space. As far as a RAID card? They all need drivers. NONE of the inexpensive cards is a true "hardware RAID" card - they have no processing power built-in. A "real" RAID card will cost at least $250 (Promise SuperTrak SX6000) - and that's massive overkill for what you are looking to do, I think.

Here's what I would do - use the existing 20 gigger for the OS. Chuck the old Seagate into the trash. Surf over to newegg.com and get a $22 Promise PCI ATA100 IDE add-in card and two $79 Western Digital WD400BB 40GB 7200 RPM drives and set them up using NT's software RAID 1 with each drive on its own channel. There you go - $180 (OK, maybe $200 with shipping) for 40GB of redundant storage. And an additional bonus is your OS is now separate from your data.

 

[mcveigh]

For ide raid I love 3ware they have excellent tech support!

 

[AbRASiON]

Price
Price of an iwill ata 100 raid card in .AU$ (eyo.com.au)


I can get that card for only around 60$ US delivered (trust me that's cheap) the promise cards = 220$ .AU or 110$ US.

Review
Anandtech Raid roundup including Iwill review

Manufacturer page
Iwill's page on the hardware raid card


Workin:



<< Well, that's a lot to look through there...

Anyway, you can get 40GB 7200 RPM ATA100 hard drives for less than $80, so I would just get 2 new drives and start over with lots more space. As far as a RAID card? They all need drivers. NONE of the inexpensive cards is a true "hardware RAID" card - they have no processing power built-in. A "real" RAID card will cost at least $250 (Promise SuperTrak SX6000) - and that's massive overkill for what you are looking to do, I think.

Here's what I would do - use the existing 20 gigger for the OS. Chuck the old Seagate into the trash. Surf over to newegg.com and get a $22 Promise PCI ATA100 IDE add-in card and two $79 Western Digital WD400BB 40GB 7200 RPM drives and set them up using NT's software RAID 1 with each drive on its own channel. There you go - $180 (OK, maybe $200 with shipping) for 40GB of redundant storage. And an additional bonus is your OS is now separate from your data. >>





I'm in Australia, and it's not my money, they only need 20gb for the next 5 years, this company types out work documents at most - I want to keep the costs down - a 40gb is 250$, a 20gb is 170$, plus 20gb of a 40gb would be wasted.

I thought PCI hardware raid cards did the job properly, meaning you can run any operating system and the raid set will be maintained without drivers?.
Will it run in "pio mode" or something under Windows 3.11 but still maintain the mirror set as long as I'm using the card? I don't mind drivers, but I DO want my raid set maintained by the card not by ANY kind of software.

What good is a PCI raid card that requires drivers to maintain the raid set? - I think you mean they need drivers to keep the card working with the machine @ full speed / being properly identified, but I distinctively want my disks to be mirrored by the card sending the data twice to each disk (raid 0) NOT Windows NT 4 sending the data twice, once to each disk.

As for "throwing away" a brand new 20gb 7200rpm disk - sorry no thanks, that's just wasting money as far as I'm concerned.

The entire point of my post is to NOT use Windows NT 4's software raid, it's a very poor implimentation, for a START the data is slightly different, have you actually used it before?
When disk #1 (primary) is taken offline (testing the raid set, simply unplug disk 1) - guess what happens - Windows NT WON'T BOOT! - you need a special "fault redundant boot disk" which will enable you to access the second disk.

I don't want that - that's a crap implimentation, I want 100% identical bit for bit data per disk so I can boot from the primary disk, but the second disk reads the data if / when the primary dies (and vice versa)

No offence meant, but I'm specifically looking at a NON software solution, I don't care if the PCI raid card uses CPU time, I just don't want the system to know it's a raid set in ANY way (how a true hardware raid solution should work on a PCI card)

Actually after re-reading your post, I can see why the card you list is only 22$ - it's a non raid IDE card, why not just use the IDE ports then on the board if I'm going for software I'm not - I want a RAID controller card.

 

[AbRASiON]

P.S Please don't take offence, but you have basically replied with exactly the opposite of what I want, anyone else got any opinions on that Iwill card and mixing disks in raid for redundancy?

 

[cleverhandle]

I think that what you want should be possible, though not perhaps with the beauty that you expect. AFAIK, every RAID array has some amount of "software" interaction - at the very least, the OS has to know that there's a storage device accessible on PCI slot X and how it can write to it. That requires drivers. It's simply not possible to have the OS know, without anything else, that a PCI device is actually a storage device. But, using some kind of hardware RAID, the partitions on the array can be accessible by multiple OS's - you'll just need to maintain separate partitions for each OS and one partition for shared data. So, say you've got Win3.1 (assuming it supports a RAID card - you should check) and NT4. Then you need 3 partitions on your array - 1 Win3.1 boot, 1 NT boot, and 1 for data. Just make sure that your data partition is formatted with a filesystem that all your OS's can understand. If you're using 3.1, I guess that will mean plain old FAT16 (blech). Since performance is not important here, a run-of-the-mill Promise Fasttrak TX2 should do the job for ~$75. There may be some issues with multi-booting off a RAID 1 array as well, but I don't quite remember. But basically, you just need to read up on how to multi-boot to RAID 1, then add an extra partition for your shared data, and you should be all good.

 

[AbRASiON]

What I thought happened with Raid is the card says "Hi I'm one 40gb hdd" to the computer and then when data comes in to go to the one 40gb hdd the card sends it to both.

Hence the OS treats 2 hdd's as one disk, but unlike NT4's STUPID software system, if a disk goes down, you don't need to fiddle about, you just disable one of the drives and be done with it.
right?

 

[AbRASiON]

BTW, it's an NTFS Windows NT 4 server setup, I just want the one drive letter, I don't mind drivers as long as as stated before, she can boot off the other disk without a stupid recovery floppy, that kind of thing - bit for bit identical data.

 

[Workin']

Sorry I gave you the opposite of what you were looking for earlier. At least I can serve as a negative example - been that way most of my life


<< What I thought happened with Raid is the card says "Hi I'm one 40gb hdd" to the computer and then when data comes in to go to the one 40gb hdd the card sends it to both.

Hence the OS treats 2 hdd's as one disk, but unlike NT4's STUPID software system, if a disk goes down, you don't need to fiddle about, you just disable one of the drives and be done with it.
right? >>

Right. Sort of. You still need a driver to get NT to recognize the controller card. But in DOS it would look like a single drive.

I think you missed the subtleties of my earlier advice - (although I said chuck the seagate drive I also said to keep the 20 gig - so sue me for not keeping your brands straight!) The purpose of the add-in IDE card was to put each drive on it's own IDE channel, vastly improving performance for very little money. And keep the OS and data separate, which eliminates some problems that could crop up.

The iwill RAID card is based on the HighPoint HPT370 controller chip. You can go ahead and mix drives for redundancy without worry, they say the drives "should" be identical but I know for a fact they don't "have" to be.

 

[AbRASiON]

So has anyone actually used the IWILL raid card at all?

I'm curious to find out, as I'd like to consider getting on very shortly?

I would like to know if it's as simple as this.


Step 1, backup 20gb disk via ghost to a spare 30gb disk I have.
Test 30gb disk - see that it boots NT no problem.
Insert raid card into machine - install drivers get it working in NT4.
(while working off the 30gb disk on the NORMAL ide channel)

place 20gb disks into machine, format both using some kind of tool from the raid card - 64kb stripes, tell the RAID card to make both disks a raid 1 mirror so I only get one drive letter EVEN IN DOS (is this possible?)

Re-ghost data from 30gb -> back on to the 20gb disk (raid 1'd now)

boot Windows NT 4 server.

All working - hardware raid 1 (well kind of software because it's not one of the cards with a hardware controller)

Anyone?

 

[cleverhandle]

Geez, thought the original post looked kind of familiar... then I saw my month old reply

The exact details will likely vary depending on the card. Some cards will take a disk with an existing installation and mirror it "on the fly" when you move that disk to the RAID controller and set up the array in the card's BIOS. That would save you the extra cloning in the middle, though the first one is certainly prudent. Only way to know for sure is to look for a manual on the manufacturer's site.

 

[AbRASiON]

Thanks, excellent idea, I'll do that tonight (now in .AU)

 

[ChefJoe]

Has anyone seen a test or example of where someone used non-matched HDs in an IDE raid setup? Can it be done and how much does it affect performance? How big a hit would he take with adding one more modern drive that's a slightly different size (and likely to have fairly different heads/platters)?