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Is Raiding 2 IDE (45 IBM DESKSTAR 7200RPM)HDS Not Good?

I'm buying an ABIT KT7A-RAID and maybe 2 IBM's. Now, I was wondering if you see any real performance increase using RAID, have heard otherwise.
 


<< I'm buying an ABIT KT7A-RAID and maybe 2 IBM's. Now, I was wondering if you see any real performance >>


Yes...kinda. The thing about IDE RAID is that it takes up CPU cycles. So while your disk read/write speeds will increase a pretty good amount, you will lose some CPU performance. I personally chose not to go for RAID and just stuck with a single Quantum Fireball LM+ which is one of the fastest IDE drives out there - not missing the RAID any. Now if I did alot of Audio/Video work...
 
I did a test on my KT7A-RAID. I have 3 exact same model WD 30g ATA-100 hd. One connected to the IDE 0 and the other two were stripped in RAID 0 16k block. Under Win98 FAT32, I copy a 1g VOB file from a 12x DVD ROM to each of those set up. The first stand alone hd took ~16m30s while the RAID finished in ~9m20s.

For large files transfer, RAID does live up.
 
Actually two Quantum Fireball LM's would be your best RAID setup. Why? In RAID setups, you never really hit close to even your benchmarked transfer rate. This is the same reason that 4 of the same hard drives is only slightly faster than 2 of the same drive. Sustained max transfer rate is limited to a certain mb/sec. Max transfer rate of two RAIDed 75GXP's won't be much faster than two Quantum LM's however in access time the Quantum LM is significantly faster.

Quantum Fireball LM's undter RAID 0 will be your fastest setup.
 
IDE raid rocks. Got two Quantum 7200rpm drives serving Napster with a promise pci adapter. Getting many thanks for fast uploads from users. Setting stripe sizes lower will increase transfer rates at the cost of cpu cycles. I use a 32kb stripe and a 16kb block size in a fat32 file system. Nine percent cpu utilization. Getting 40+mb's per second max transfers. I will be upgrading to two IBM's soon. I heard the are the best.
 


<< Got two Quantum 7200rpm drives serving Napster with a promise pci adapter. Getting many thanks for fast uploads from users. >>



Dood, you got a HUGH amount of bandwidth to the internet or something?
40MB/sec for Napster transfers?
I would think that serving Napseter would be one of the lease benefits of running RAID 0.
 
I have done the Raid 0 with two Quantum Fireball LM Plus drives, 15 gig each and they spike badly (saw tooth transfer rate), the transfer rate became much smoother when I used one 75GXP and one Quantum drive. Storage review did some articles on this problem.
 


<< Get an Escalade controller from 3ware and enjoy life. 🙂 >>



I'll second that.
Ive had one for a over a month now with 2x 45gb GXP's.
Im running them in quiet mode mirrored (raid1) and its so much faster than a single drive in noisy mode 🙂
The 3Ware boasts near raid0 performance for reading when doing raid1 somehow, but is a tad slower when writing.
You notice it every time you log on as the icons and taskbar stuff appears almost instantly - my downstairs Puter has a single GXP and takes ages to load the taskbar etc in comparison 🙁

I use this mirrored setup as a Server only 🙁 I keep toying with the idea of using it as a workstation as well, but know i will trash it if i do 😉 Its tempting tho'.

Anyone thinking of getting one of these cards - it hates IRQ sharing 🙁 Just bear in mind if u have probs with it like i did. (Damn MSI for no IRQ sharing info in the manual for my mobo)

rockhard =)
 
I'll use it for daily usage and the occational game. Is it worth it 1: price for a RAID compatible board 2: second drive, I mean is the performance increase really noticeable? If not I'll go for a big ONE and buy some other components instead.
Although, it is intriguing...
 
I have two IBM 45GB GXP's running in RAID-0 and I can testify that not only is the response and throughput fantastic, but my wife enjoys playing her MP3's all streamed right from my server box with zero lag time.
 
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