Koutech RAID ATA133 now $23+free ship Dealsonic

[LoverBoyJ]

Is this considered a hardware raid or still a software raid? Does this tax the cpu during any operation?

 

[a2k]

Got 2 120's myself... think I'm gonna order one for RAID 1 (I want peace of mind over speed).

Anyone know if you can migrate a RAID 1 array to a RAID 0/1 array just by adding 2 more drives without reformatting/rebuilding/etc? With all these hot deals on hard drives, I could see myself ending up with 2 more 120's.

 

[ThisIsMatt]

Would a promise tx2000 be a better deal at the same price, and does it support non-raided hard drives?

 

[s0ssos]

anyone know how this compares in performance to a promise? or even an adaptec raid controller? i'm guessing it sucks

 

[ElectricLegs]

These are just as fast or faster than any other brand raid card. The only caveat is that this controller doesn't like having 3 drives attached. Speed is fine with 2 or 4 drives though.

Software raid is usually faster than hardware since the onboard cpu's are pretty weak in the processing department. Luckily cpu usage rarely effects OS performance since the cpu seldom is at full load while reading or writing to HDs.

BTW.. try www.pricewatch.com for better prices than this everyday.

 

[HoosierDadE]

Originally posted by: ElectricLegs
These are just as fast or faster than any other brand raid card. The only caveat is that this controller doesn't like having 3 drives attached. Speed is fine with 2 or 4 drives though.

Software raid is usually faster than hardware since the onboard cpu's are pretty weak in the processing department. Luckily cpu usage rarely effects OS performance since the cpu seldom is at full load while reading or writing to HDs.

BTW.. try www.pricewatch.com for better prices than this everyday.

Naturally check Pricewatch before ordering. They confirms this is the lowest price they know of

 

[s0ssos]

software raid is faster than hardware? i don't know that much about raid, but from what i know hardware is always faster than software

 

[ozone13]

Originally posted by: s0ssos
software raid is faster than hardware? i don't know that much about raid, but from what i know hardware is always faster than software

Not necessarily. The onboard processors on hardware raid is much slower than modern cpu speeds. The only way I would even consider going with hardware raid is if the server is expected to have very high cpu loads or if you have a slow computer.....otherwise, the cpu handles the calculations faster than the onboard processor.

edit: please note there are two different software raids: strictly windows-based software raids and a pci software raid card. I am speaking about the pci card. The windows-based software raid WILL be the slowest of them all.

 

[HoosierDadE]

Got the card and it doesn't say Koutech anywhere on the borad, box or documentation. Plus it doesn't look like any card on the Koutech site. It does match the picture at Dealsonics though so its not a mix up.

The box and card have a part id of IO-PIR133. Also printed on the card is: SIL 0680 Rev E which is the chipset.

WTF is this thing.

Also FWIW it doesn't appear to be flashable.

And regarding the discussions about this being a Windows only device, how do you make backups and restore your logical drives? Ghost and Drive Image run in DOS. The extra speed isn't worth much if you can't backup and restore your drive letters.

update: This thing looks a lot like this Syba card (but without the large rectangular horizontal chip/socket: http://www.syba.com/us_product_browse.php?site=sy&action=details&pid=209

 

[DocOverclock]

I bought the same card and received it today. Stuck it in my Epox 8RDA+ ,attached 2 WD 80 Gig
drives and set up a Raid 0 array in Windows XP Pro . So far everything is working great!! not bad for 23 dollars delivered.

Be warned the documentaion stinks and is incorrect. You must remove the appropriate driver from the cd and install it
to a floppy since that the only location XP will look for additional drivers during a fresh install.


new update:: Yesterday everything went smooth. Today upon boot-up Corrupt files!! Managed to get XP running by loading the defective file (HAL.DLL) Time will tell

 

[lobadobadingdong]

Originally posted by: pecel
Is it gonna work with 200 gig HD?

Since I have 2 200 gig HD laying around here

ata 133 cards should support up to 144 petrabytes using its 48-bit addressing scheme. I think a puny 200 gig drive should be no problem. if the card adhears to Maxtors specs for an ata/133 interface device.

White sheet on ATA 133 from the Maxtor website.

 

[Sbrowne]

If this is the same as the Silicon Image 680, it runs fine under Linux with a 2.4.x kernel. I'm using one right now under Linux Mandrake 9.1 (2.4.21 kernel), which detects it automatically.

Steve
sbrowne@ix.netcom.com

 

[Sbrowne]

Text

Yes, it will run under Linux with kernel 2.4.x.

Steve

 

[Dravic]

new update:: Yesterday everything went smooth. Today upon boot-up Corrupt files!! Managed to get XP running by loading the defective file (HAL.DLL) Time will tell

Thats been my experience with IDE raid solutiuons..

used to use a highpoint raid controler on an abit board.. every few months or so..BANG dead on boot up.. corrupted files..

i figured if i ever go raid again it will be 1+0 or 5(non ide) much like the raid configs i used to admin. raid 0 is just not worth the potential instability IMHO.

 

[marklp77]

used to use a highpoint raid controler on an abit board.. every few months or so..BANG dead on boot up.. corrupted files..

q]

Have other people had this experience? It's not worth losing all my data!!!!!!

Please post.

Thanks,
Mark

 

[ElectricLegs]

I've been using PCI (hacked to raid Promise 66's) for years with no problems and not a single problem with any of the 3 or 4 onboard Highpoint raids. (4 drives and overclocked too) Easy 10+ ide raid setups without a crash or lost data. Always update the firmware to the best one... not necessarily the newest.

HD's crash, not RAIDs!

BTW... $18 shipped for the same card at pricewatch. Only difference between them is the type of prom. (smaller is usually better)

 

[trikster2]

Originally posted by: ElectricLegs
I've been using PCI (hacked to raid Promise 66's) for years with no problems and not a single problem with any of the 3 or 4 onboard Highpoint raids. (4 drives and overclocked too) Easy 10+ ide raid setups without a crash or lost data. Always update the firmware to the best one... not necessarily the newest.

HD's crash, not RAIDs!

BTW... $18 shipped for the same card at pricewatch. Only difference between them is the type of prom. (smaller is usually better)

RAIDS crashed I've seen it happen.

 

[ElectricLegs]

OK... You saw the gazillion-to-1 odds problem that wasn't caused by a failed harddrive. Don't fly on airplanes either cuz they aint safe!!

 

[rogX]

How appropriate that this card came up here because I was just looking at RAID cards today. I have a couple of questions:
1. Can you boot off of the RAID disks via this card?
2. The Promise and High Point cards are PCI 33/66 but this one is only PCI 33. Does that really make a difference in performance? Will it be a problem for future upgrades of the mb, etc?

Also, thanks to eOlympus for the review article on the three cards.

This site is excellent!

-Roger

 

[ElectricLegs]

These cards are 133 not 33 and yes you can boot from it. Change the boot order in the bios to SCSI before IDE.

 

[ThisIsMatt]

Originally posted by: ElectricLegs
These cards are 133 not 33 and yes you can boot from it. Change the boot order in the bios to SCSI before IDE.

He was talking about the bus speed, not the IDE channel speed.

 

[huesmann]

Can you use two different drives for this kind of RAID? Say you have a Maxtor 80GB and a WD 80GB, can you pair them up in a RAID?

 

[wyattboyuz]

Just to clear up some of those questions. I ordered this card from newegg and installed it on my Dell 4550 that is running XP Pro. I did a Ghost backup to a network drive of my WinXP 40 GB disk, ran the RAID card array configuration, then ran the Ghost restore from the mapped drive to a new 80GB RAID 0 array. One of those 40GB disks is a Maxtor, the other a WD. I had just one 40 GB partition before, now I have a 15 GB one for Windows XP and whatever misc stuff gets left on the C: drive, and a 65 GB data partition for applications and the rest. It booted with no problem. I do see better start up times in games, and things that do a lot of hard drive access like loading a couple thousand song Winamp playlist with ID3 tags set to read on load. I've got another 120GB drive coming in to pair up with an existing one that i have, maybe i will do a RAID 1 with that, haven't decided yet.

I was also wondering if the RAID function of the card is useable in linux, or just using it as an additional ide controller (Which I do know is supported, I've just seen no documentation on the RAID part).

So far, I'm pretty happy with it. (Kind of a pain to set up though, having to use Ghost for the first time and find a boot disk online that would work with the Dell 4550 Intel Pro 100 VE network card, and doing all this after I pretty recently reformatted and reinstalled XP.)

 

[Boogak]

Originally posted by: huesmann
Can you use two different drives for this kind of RAID? Say you have a Maxtor 80GB and a WD 80GB, can you pair them up in a RAID?

Yup, that's what I have now: 1 80gb Maxtor 8mb cache drive and 1 80gb WD 8mb cache drive in a RAID0 array with 64k stripe, works great!

 

[huesmann]

What if one has 2MB cache and the other 8MB cache?