PCI Bus throughput (for HDD controller)

[Fun Guy]

Okay, I have a UDMA/66 HDD controller to which I will be hooking up two Western Digital WD1000BB 100GB 7200RPM hard drives, one on each channel, software striping them for digital video production. Someone said I would saturate the PCI bus with this setup.

If so, I guess I could get the 3Ware Escalade EIDE RAID product and use a 64-bit bus, since I have 64-bit slots on the motherboard (Tyan S2567). However, I don't want to spend extra money needlessly.

Will I in fact saturate the but with two of there drives? Any knowledge, experience, or input?

 

[Beau]

Software striping is not exactly the most efficient way of parity/striping. You'd be better off spending ~$80 to get a real hardware RAID card like the Promise IDE RAID here. This will not tie the PCI bus up by processing the striping/mirror on the card itself.

 

[Fun Guy]

I am not worried about efficiency, I have two 1Ghz PIII's that I am not afraid to use to process tasks.

What I am worried about is saturating the PCI bus. Would those knowledgeable in this area please lend their assistance? Thanks.

 

[spidey07]

check general hardware. stay away from software striping.


<< I am not worried about efficiency, I have two 1Ghz PIII's that I am not afraid to use to process tasks >>


you should be.

 

[Fun Guy]

Yo Spidey -

Buzz off. Next time you crap on a thread of mine I will report you to a moderator. Got it?

Bye!

 

[spidey07]

Yes I got it.

I provided helpful information.

 

[Kartman]

<< check general hardware. stay away from software striping.


<< I am not worried about efficiency, I have two 1Ghz PIII's that I am not afraid to use to process tasks >>


you should be. >>



Making general comments without offers a reason, explanation, etc. for the comments is of little or no use to anyone. So, do you really know something or are you just playing with this poster? Please explain your responses so that others can determine the magnitude of your skills and arguements therein.

 

[Mday]

<< Software striping is not exactly the most efficient way of parity/striping. You'd be better off spending ~$80 to get a real hardware RAID card like the <a class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.googlegear.com/ggweb/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=130430" target=blank>Promise IDE RAID here</A>. This will not tie the PCI bus up by processing the striping/mirror on the card itself. >>



that kind of ATA raid controller is SOFTWARE RAID. as opposed to hardware RAID. Hardware ATA RAID cards cost $300.

The built in ata controller on motherboards uses the 32bit, 33MHz spec. from which your performance will be hindered by the limitations of the pci bus (133MBps) since everything else pretty much runs on the pci bus. If you can spend the money, you will get the most bang out of a 64bit pci ata controller (should one exist). software or hardware, unless the controller is on that 64bit bus, you will get slowed down.

To be honest, the real risk you are running is corruption on the RAID array should you implement one. And RAID0 doubles your risk of data loss. And increases your chance of data corruption. sure you are not made of money, but the best solution is RAID5 via a true hardware ata RAID controller. However, software raid will do.

summary:
PCI bus wise 32bit is not as good as 64bit
software RAID will do but hardware RAID is better
RAID 0 alone is dangerous since if one drive dies, you lose all your data or damage to your data

I suggest going with what you have now. if you find it fine, then let it be.

 

[Mday]

btw, you can have 4 drives in raid 0, which will surely um... saturate the channel

consult www.storagereview.com since they reviewed the escalade products.