I f I have one with 2 physical ports, can I hook up 4 drives for a raid 0 array, or do I have to have a 4 port, will most 4 ports hold 8 drives?
ata133 cards, not sata
ata133 cards, not sata
PCI raid controller cards
- Thread starter gabemcg
- Start date
The 4-port cards will usually only hold 4 drives with a controller chip for each drive. This is to get max performance per drive.
The 2-port cards usually can do 4-drives but they will have to share the IDE chain which can reduce performance. Some 2-ports only do 2 drives though...just read the documentation on them.
The 2-port cards usually can do 4-drives but they will have to share the IDE chain which can reduce performance. Some 2-ports only do 2 drives though...just read the documentation on them.
Yes you can although there might be a performance hit...best to give each drive it's own channel (port) with the drive in "master" mode.
Yes, 4 ports will hold 8 drives. (1 Master / 1 Slave per port).
Yes, 4 ports will hold 8 drives. (1 Master / 1 Slave per port).
It's not going to matter either way because the PCI bus is going to piss on any benefit RAID0 would offer
4 ports will not always hold 8 drives. Some of the promise controllers (I had one) have 4 single-channel ports.
Going RAID for performance with drives sharing a channel is really not a great idea. Going RAID on a normal PCI card isn't the greatest either. In an ideal world where you have sata drives on a controller not restricted by the pci bus, RAID0 is faster for some things and doesn't show a lot of boost at others. Introducing two bottlenecks is probably going to eliminate any chance for being faster at anything while increasing chance of failure. RAID0 is also pretty pointless if you are RAIDing older drives, newer single drives will probably offer better performance any way.
Thanks for the quick replies.
I'm using an nforce 3 ultra 250gb chipset w/ an athlon 64 2800+ newcastle.
This is my file server, and the 4 SATA ports are runinning a 4x300gb raid 0 array
I also have 8x160 gb drives laying arround...
Thats why I'm wondering if I can hook them all up to my 4 port promise PCI raid controller, as one big array, I'd like to do raid 5 if the card supports it, but I was always under the impression that each drive had to have it's own channel. I'm not concerned so much about performance on that array, as I am reliability. It would be a good option to back-up the important stuff from the 1.2 TB Sata arrray.
I'm tempted to just hook them all up to the 4 port card I already own (thats running 4 drives A.T.M) that will keep me from having to buy another 4 port card for $90 on newegg.
Plus I think that running 2x4 drive arrays on 2 cards on the same pci bus might do some heavy-duty sturation! Thus negating the benifits of raid 0...
I'm curious as to what you all think...
I'm using an nforce 3 ultra 250gb chipset w/ an athlon 64 2800+ newcastle.
This is my file server, and the 4 SATA ports are runinning a 4x300gb raid 0 array
I also have 8x160 gb drives laying arround...
Thats why I'm wondering if I can hook them all up to my 4 port promise PCI raid controller, as one big array, I'd like to do raid 5 if the card supports it, but I was always under the impression that each drive had to have it's own channel. I'm not concerned so much about performance on that array, as I am reliability. It would be a good option to back-up the important stuff from the 1.2 TB Sata arrray.
I'm tempted to just hook them all up to the 4 port card I already own (thats running 4 drives A.T.M) that will keep me from having to buy another 4 port card for $90 on newegg.
Plus I think that running 2x4 drive arrays on 2 cards on the same pci bus might do some heavy-duty sturation! Thus negating the benifits of raid 0...
I'm curious as to what you all think...
Wow, you are the bravest person I ever known.. 4x300 in raid 0
I had a 7x146 raid 5 failed when 2 drives went and raid 5 only allows 1 drive to go at a time.
How are you backing that up ?
If it's for a personal file server forget about the RAID0. You could consider RAID5 or 1 for data safety, but a single sata drive can hit 60-70mb/sec sustained transfers, you'll be limited by your network first.
If the card does not support raid 5....
but does support 2 drives per channel...
move it to linux, where SW raid is very decent, and reliable. (IMHO).
Raid0 is crap, you will (eventually) be crying because of it. I don't want you to have to post for goatse sites when your collection is lost!
but does support 2 drives per channel...
move it to linux, where SW raid is very decent, and reliable. (IMHO).
Raid0 is crap, you will (eventually) be crying because of it. I don't want you to have to post for goatse sites when your collection is lost!
RAID 0 is not crap... It has it's purpose (althought many question whether striping across multiple drives can be considered RAID since there is no redundancy...maybe should be called an AID.). If you are transferring large files (1 GB or more) to or from a RAID 0 array, it will be much faster than a single drive or a RAID 5 array (with comparable number of drives). Yes, with RAID 0 you have no redundancy, but if you are doing regular backups to other media (other drive(s), DVD, tape, etc.) then the chances of losing data are slim.
Backup, now this is a question that I've been reluctant to address. I have no clue how to do it in a cost/time effective manner. The most important data on the server will be my Music/Movie collection (400gb mp3) (600gb divix movies) but how do you back up a 1 TB of data efficently? If I did DL DVD, it would take me FOREVER, and I'd need like 111 DL DVD's
I guess thats the best solution I have, but There has to be a better way...
Obviously you can see why I need such a high capacity server. I'd love to use the other 1.5 TB for backup, but it will be used for DVR recordings batch uploaded from my Media Center PC, every night @ 3:00am... Also for video editing source media...
Network congestion should not be a problem, all devices are 10/100/1000 except for the xbo360 (witch will be streaming SD and HD video from the server, or from my MCE PC)
This linux File Server Idea is intrigueing, but I know next to nothing about linux, and I'm not sure I have the time/commitment to pony up and learn... allthough I've heard good things about unbutu (sp?)
As far as conventional raid goes, I don't think I want to afford raid 5. my mobo does not support it, and no 2 port (4 channel) cards support it...
I could step up to a 4 port (4 channel) card that supports raid 5 (~$90) and just use that partiular array to back up the important stuff, and have a second array on the 2 port 4 channel card...
aarrggghh! I'm going to bed....
I guess thats the best solution I have, but There has to be a better way...
Obviously you can see why I need such a high capacity server. I'd love to use the other 1.5 TB for backup, but it will be used for DVR recordings batch uploaded from my Media Center PC, every night @ 3:00am... Also for video editing source media...
Network congestion should not be a problem, all devices are 10/100/1000 except for the xbo360 (witch will be streaming SD and HD video from the server, or from my MCE PC)
This linux File Server Idea is intrigueing, but I know next to nothing about linux, and I'm not sure I have the time/commitment to pony up and learn... allthough I've heard good things about unbutu (sp?)
As far as conventional raid goes, I don't think I want to afford raid 5. my mobo does not support it, and no 2 port (4 channel) cards support it...
I could step up to a 4 port (4 channel) card that supports raid 5 (~$90) and just use that partiular array to back up the important stuff, and have a second array on the 2 port 4 channel card...
aarrggghh! I'm going to bed....
Exactly, it's not RAID, hence the zero. But striping is very much a part of other raid levels, and trying to distinguish purely striped sets from other levels by a different name would just add confusion.
And RAID0 isn't crap at all. I have a RAID0 with drives you could stomp on (as in physically.. with your foot) while operating and I wouldn't be crying at all. Of course they are solid state with no moving parts and only contain operating systems and office programs.
I do concur that unix soft-RAID rocks.
Yes, I would say you are in a real pickle trying to backup that much data. I am will soon be running a 1.2 - 1.7 TB NAS and I plan to back up the data to 2x 500GB drives in removable HDD enclosures. I am using the removable HDD enclosures since I don't need the 500GB drives spinning when I am not doing backups...the chances of backup drives or online RAID array failing at the same time is very remote. I think for you (and for me) that is the most cost efficient solution.
You could also buy a Areca 1210/1220 or Promist EX-8350 RAID controller and run RAID 6. You could then lose up to 2 drives in your RAID array without losing data. At the same time though you won't have any backup against your RAID array becoming corrupted.
Decisions, decisions....
Well, I made my decision,
I found a Card that has 4 dual channel ports on it, so an 8 drive capacity... It's made by highpoint.
ROCKETRAID464 PCI
It's more than I wanted to spend, but it has an onboard proccessor to handle write caching... something that will be important if we try to capture DV to it over gigabit lan... (may not work anyway because of 32 bit PCI bus)
but it looks like a solid card, and it fits my needs:
8x160gb RAID 5 = 1120 GB Unformatted, but with complete parity, so If one drive fails, the entire array can be rebuilt by inserting a new one... awesome! I think raid 5 is the greatest thing ever, speed and your capacity loss is only equal to the size of the smallest drive on the array!
thanks for all the input!
- May 13, 2003
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Just making sure you realize that if the RAID 5 array fails, you can still use the array (albeit with somewhat of a performance hit), but it is no longer redundant. If you lose two drives, the array is dead. When the array fails, you install another disk and let it rebuild so that you regain redundancy... I lost a lot of stuff (graphics & music) because I was rebuilding, and another drive went down. And I'm still bitter about it. So just letting you know.
My next fileserver is going to be RAID60. Up to 4 simultaneous drive failures without dying. 3 on one side of the stripe would still kill it though.
- May 13, 2003
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- 81
No, ECC is Error Correction Code. Some memory can enable ECC, and help prevent errors. It's used primarily in servers. It's also beneficial to hd RAID controllers...
oh, ok, any Idea why the driver for windows xp from the manufacture's site, doesnt work with xp MCE 2005??? I think I'm going to have to "buy" xp server 2003
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