Promise IDE Raid Controller - Should I?

[Peterson]

Hello there, i have been reading about this and it seems very complicated to set up.

Is using this techology to my benefit?

if so, can someone explain to me (in layman's terms) how it works and any precautions i should be aware of?

Thank you.

 

[Hender]

The short answer is no; it's a pain the set up, your potential for data loss now rests on two drives rather than one, and the performance difference really isn't that great with IDE drives. RAID is only necessary in high-performance servers where data is constantly being accessed and data is mission critical. That is usually done with SCSI drives, though, because SCSI is a superior disk technology to IDE. IDE just isn't high-performing and reliable enough to do good RAID. The advent of IDE RAID on motherboards is to appeal to the techno-sapiens among us, who want to squeeze *every last drop* of performance out of a PC, whether it matters or not. My advice is to skip IDE RAID, you won't notice or care that you did in the end.

 

[Peterson]

Awesome response Hender;

I do appreciate your Kandiness!!!

hehe, nice spelling eh?

Thanks again.

 

[cleverhandle]

Well, let's play devil's advocate, shall we?

1) Setup is not a pain if you RTFM. Really. If you want high tech with no effort, then RAID is probably not for you. If you can bring yourself to sit down and read a manual for 20 minutes before you play with your shiny new hardware, you'll be fine.

2) Failure possibility: first of all, the above comments apply only to RAID 0, not RAID 1. Second, the failure rate is very low on most modern drives. Yes, you double your failure rate, but that's still going to be pretty safe. Third, your data may or may not be difficult to backup. If you have 20GB of carefully selected MP3's to store, then no, you probably don't want to put it a RAID 0 array. If you only have a gig or two of personal stuff, then just back it up to a CD in the event of a failure - something which you should be doing anyway.

3) Performance: AFAIK, the *difference* (percentagewise) between a single drive and an array is no different between SCSI and IDE. SCSI, of course, is quite a bit faster to begin with, so it remains the "best" choice for performance, if you can pay for it. According to the benches I've run, my RAID array runs a bit slower than a single SCSI disk. But the cost is much less, especially considering the capacity. Getting 60-80GB of high-performance, non-RAID, SCSI capacity will cost well over $300, if not more. 2 IDE disks plus the extra bit for a controller is closer to $200, especially if you use an onboard solution. Is this difference noticeable? Most of the time, no. But you could say the same thing about buying an XP1900 over an XP1500, or a 24x burner over a 16x burner. Computer enthusiasts are not buying the bare minimum in any part of their systems.

Don't get me wrong - you may not want/need the extra performance, or care to learn how to configure the array. Fine. But I think Hender's characterization is a bit one-sided.

 

[Amused]

Good gawd some people are fatalists.

Setting up my Iwill SideRAID 100 was this easy:

1. Install the card in a free PCI slot

2. Hook up all four drives (mstr/slv mstr/slv) and make sure the jumpers on the drives are set correctly. If using two drives, put each drive on it's own channel and be sure to set the jumpers as "single drive."

2.5 Hook up the HDD light cable to the RAID card (gotta see that light)

3. Boot into the RAID BIOS and set up the RAID using a VERY easy GUI (Promise is a little less easy than Highpoint, but not hard at all).

4. Boot to my CD, format the drives and install my OS.

It's really that easy, and the performance increase IS noticable.

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

Ditto - was easy to set up and my Sandra score is 40,000. I forget what it was before I went RAID 0 - but it wasn't the best in the list, and now it is .

Of course I do wonder what a "real" IDE RAID card with 128MB cache would be like, but for now the promise controller built into the Soyo Dragon + has been good enough.

 

[Hender]

Well, it's not a matter of being a fatalist. Peterson was aksing a simple question, and from both this and his other post asking about memory tyoes, I could tell that he's not too comfortable and familiar with the wack world of computer hardware. I gave him an answer I thought was best suited for him. I know people who are just entering the world of computers who try and overclock and I warn them not to, despite that many motherboards manufacturers make it so easy to overclock your CPU and RAM, as well as apps like PowerStrip to OC your video card settings. Why do I do this? Because they're new. They don't know the ins and outs. Sure, they could crank up their CPU, but have they compensated for the extra heat by getting a better HSF? Do they have adequate airflow through their case? What happens when they start getting errors? How do they UNDO things? For the average user, RAID is useless. It's like turbo-charging and putting nice rims on a Toyota Tercel. Unless you need RAID for mission-critical stuff, RAID is just for bragging rights to your techno-friends, speed increase or not. For Peterson, it sounds like a bit too much of a headache for even a small, likely unnoticeable drive speed increase.

 

[tcrosson]

I've had IDE and SCSI raid for years. It's not hard to set up at all - if you want IDE RAID just get it. However, I'm getting away from RAID. There's just no use for it. There's just nothing out there that can strain a single, modern hard drive (say a 100GB WD w/8MB cache) that can strain even two of them in RAID 0. If you ask me, after all my years of having RAID, it's just a waste now-a-days (I can see using RAID 1 for the super paranoid people out there )

That is, however, if you're doing some serious video/audio/big picture editing. If you'r doing any of these then RAID will probably help you out. I know in video editing just a few minutes off of a render is a life saver. If you just playing games, browsing the net, doing Excel, or any everyday use then just buy 1 or 2 big drives and use them as normal.

Maybe if you tell us what you do with your PC and what type of RAID you plan on using we can be more specific?

P.S. Check out the latest Maximum PC mag. They have a great article in there which involoves benchmarks of many different RAID configurations (RAID 0 vs. RAID 1 vs No RAID) which should help you decide. Also don't forget to have a look at StorageReview.com (a great site - too bad funds ran out) for their benchmarks either.

 

[PH0ENIX]

Well here's my 2 cents, guys...

I too, have used RAID for years - starting with NT4's software striping, and it doesn't get much easier than that.

Like others have said, RAID is pretty overrated if you dont need incredible disk thoroughput - such as video editing or even DVD ripping / Divx encoding, all that funky stuff. However, I wouldn't say it's pointless. Even thing like Windows XP's Disk indexing service and the much hated system restore simply vanish from your problem list, once your system is fast enough to cope with these sorts of background services on top of whatever else you're doing.

I've seen plenty of people whinge here about XP making their drives read/write constantly, usually caused by indexing, having super fast disk setups does seem to make this a little less noticeable...

Also, Im of the firm belief that you dont learn anything if you dont f**k about with it!
If RAID seems like an interesting venture to you, and you can afford the components, why not? You could not only learn something useful, and perhaps gain the ability to help other people with RAID questions on this forum, but you may be pleasantly surprised at your systems performance.

The fact is, your CPU, your memory, basically your entire system is going to be faster than your HDD, is it not?
If the disk ever sits there thrashing away for more than a few seconds, how can anyone say that there would be no benefit from a faster disk setup?

In laymens terms, I guarantee you that your system can process information faster than it can obtain it from the disk - in almost 100% of cases.
So although the performance difference may be small because of the speed of todays drives, it will still be noticeable.

If I noticed it, moving from a single SCSI disk to a SCSI array, then technically you should notice it, moving from single IDE to an IDE array.

Your HDD is used in almost everything you do. That alone should make you contemplate a faster setup.

 

[tcrosson]

<<I guarantee you that your system can process information faster than it can obtain it from the disk>>

Very true. Hard drives are the slowest link of data to your CPU (minus CD/DVD's of course). The faster they can supply data the faster your computer (theoretically). However, I don't think it's noticeable. Again, if you're doing tons of video editing, it probably will be.

Peterson, if you really want to try out RAID go for it. The Promise cards aren't expensive at all. Additionally if you don't like it, like Phoenix said, at least you've learned from it. So if you don't like it you can just take the Promise card out and run the drives as C: / D:.

You do know though that in RAID 0 - if one drive fails you will loose all of your data from both drives. So make sure you back up often since the risk of a failure is technically twice as possible! (Most would agree that two drives in RAID 0 is just as safe as one stand alone drive with regular back-ups, so don't worry about that )

Good luck!

 

[Peterson]

Thank you all for your input, I think for now, I will get a motherboard that does not incorporate the RAID. Then at a later time if I want to learn (as was pointed out) then I will buy the card and install it.

My question was directed at learning if The NEW motherboard I buy will incorporate the RAID or not.

I did learn alot from this thread;

So Thank you once again one and all.

 

[RichardInLA]

Instead of the Promise adapter, I installed the ACARD 6880. Much cheaper than the Promise, and supports ATA/133. Have two ATA/133 drives (40GB Maxtor 7200rpm) and this significantly outperforms my IBM LVD SCSI drive.

RAID can improve program load times. I also use the RAID for Photoshop scratch disk. Consider RAID also for database, especially dbs that are large and have complex searches. Also RAID is good for storing and viewing large image files.

Since RAID is a reliabilty exposure, I do frequent (and automatic) backup to another large (non-RAID) IDE drive.

 

[tracerbullet]

I just have to get my two pennies in here. I have an MSI with RAID built in. I recommend a RAID board, but I?m gunshy on using it. Let me explain:

I have two IBM Deskstar 45GXP drives. These are notorious for a real or perceived defect in data handling. (A techi would have stated that better). Either way, they don?t like being hooked up RAIDed together. It lasts for a few days, then slowly things cash and data disappears. The drives make this scratching sound trying to sort themselves out, and then boom you?re done. I reformatted and redid several times, all with the same results. Later on, I inserted one drive, made it do a single disk RAID (which is obviously not RAID but the BIOS was happy with having something attached). Next I unplugged it and did the same for the other one. So I have two drives set up like you normally would have two drives. I have run this way for about 9 months with no problems whatsoever. So ? I won?t use IDE RAID again anytime soon myself.

Now ? I HIGHLY recommend getting a board capable of it. Here?s why ? Extra IDE ports! I have two large hard drives, one backup drive, a DVD player, a high speed CD ROM, and a CD burner all hooked up simultaneously right now (Yeah, a 400W power supply too). I can run all 6 of these items at once, instead of the usual 4. To me, that?s totally worth the 10 bucks to get a new piece of equipment and not have to try and figure out what I lose to open a new spot.

 

[Peterson]

I thought about doing the same thing, as in running the 3 HD's that I have as normal Drives.

Good point.

 

[CocaCola5]

I have a MSI 694X raid board and the raid slots won't operate with cdroms(any atapi devices) so you have to read the specs as some don't work as perfect ide slots. My opinion is its well worth it as it can nearly double your transfer speed, great for loading games and booting up w2k(I suggest to stay away from onboard raid). IMO, ide raid should be best used for video editing where high transfer speed and large capacity is the premium, for the main OS and apps though I would go with a fast SCSI drive since capacity is irrelevant and low access time is the premium.

 

[tracerbullet]

<< I suggest to stay away from onboard raid >>



Why?

I just bought a pair of 80 Gig WD's (Office Max this weekend - $199 - $80 rebate = $119 only! (Well +tax of course)). Anyhow I will be setting these up tonight, putting my OS's on, etc. I can't decide whether to RAID or not either.

I just bought an Empeg player, so that will back up most of my MP3's (I ripped 1/2 my collection already, will finish it up soon too). As for the rest, it will be too much to back up on disk (1000+ scans of pictures I've taken, progrmas I bought and downloaded, etc.) All in all it's about 30 Gigs worth of stuff, and I expect it to increase. Not to mention I hate reinstalling my OS. I'm fast at it, but it's still a weekend down the drain to get all programs and games up and running again.

Guess I just convinced myself not to RAID it. I'm not really worried about the drive itself going bad, but am very worried about the RAID controller not doing it's job. (Again last time I lost everything may have been because of the IBM drives, but ever since I broke the RAID stripe it's all been great again. Maybe I just answered my own question, but I'm curious why you said to stay away from it as well.

 

[CocaCola5]

The onboard version of anything whether ATA100 or ide Raid "seems" to suffer a 5-10% performance hit, if you can go with all pci card base, whether SCSI or IDE.

 

[Jfrag Teh Foul]

My 2 cp...

I have a MSI board with the Promise IDE Raid built-on and did configure it for Raid-0 for a while, but it wasn't very good for the application that I was using the system for... which is namely, gaming.

Raid is a cool thing, no doubt. In Raid-0 the write times are far improved over writing to one disk, but the performance hit was mostly in the read times... It got wayyyy slower on just retrieving my data to start a game, play mp3's, or whatever. So, I went back to the standard master/slave disk set up.

I agree with the above statement that the Raid built-on is a good thing for the reason that you do have extra expansion if you need it later. You could use it for just storage then. If thats the way you would want to go then I would probably just use Raid-1 (mirroring) for the safety of keeping the data.