- Nov 6, 2009
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I just helped a friend upgrade his income-producing system to a RAID 10. Dan uses his rig to edit videos that he takes, so he wanted faster storage and faster editing than what he had. But what really caused him to make a change at this time was that his Adobe Premiere hardware acceleration (CUDA cores) could no longer be hacked to support his Nvidia 260. He had to move up to a 400-level video board. So he go a 470. He decided that since he was upgrading video, he would upgrade his storage, since that was long overdue.
Dan decided on a RAID 10 so he could have both speed and redundancy. He has been getting nervous about losing his projects -- you can't go back and re-shoot a wedding, for example. He backed up frequently, but if a drive went down in the middle of something, he was cooked. He was living on borrowed time and he knew it.
Dan got an Adaptec 6405e RAID controller, four 2-TB WD drives (Caviar Black) and a used Nvidia 460. I got in on the project when he asked me if I knew whether his airflow would cool his drives. I suggested we get together and see. If his case couldn't cool the drives, I had several cases he could use instead. So he brought his gear over and we brought his case to the garage.
First thing we did was use some fireplace matchsticks to immobilize his fans, then used a MetroVac ED500 to blow out all the dust. Then we went down to the basement and vacuumed the bits we hadn't gotten with the blower. Took the ED500 and blew off some last bits, and we were ready to go.
First we removed the pair of RAID 1 drives that had been connected to the motherboard for a motherboard-controlled RAID. Then we put the four identical 2-TB drives in the HD cage. There was somewhere from 1/8-inch to 0.5cm between the drives. Not sure it would be enough, but they fit right up against the front fan, so maybe. Plugged in the SATA power plugs from the PSU.
Then we installed the Adaptec 6405e card. It has an SAS cable with four SATA III cables attached . . . and one cable that terminated with what looked like the kind of plug you see on cables running from the USB II ports in the front of a case. The plug would have fit beautifully into one of the motherboard USB II headers. So we looked it up in the Adaptec documentation, both print and PDF. Nary a word nor a diagram. Finally we decided to roll it up and ignore it. But this was the first documentation lapse.
Plugged the four SATA III plugs into the four drives, and turned on the rig. POSTed fine. As described, The Adaptec card had its own POST, so we pressed ctrl-A to get into the 6405e's BIOS. We followed the instructions in the BIOS to set up the RAID 10. Straightforward. Not a problem.
But this involved Adaptec's second documentation lapse: although RAID 10 was mentioned in the marketing materials, in the paper setup instructions RAID 1 and RAID 5 were discussed, but not RAID10. Perhaps this is because RAID10 is really RAID1+0, but it did cause us confusion. Worse: Dan was afraid that he would not be able to install RAID10 the way he wanted.
Third lapse: Adaptec's setup documentation said you could start using the RAID array immediately, while it was still building. R-i-i-g-h-t. Windows never saw it to use it until after a number of steps later.
Fourth and fifth lapses: Adaptec's setup documentation was silent on how long it took to build an array. And there was no mention of how to monitor your progress. We spent a lot of time trying to find the array in windows before I dug into the array management functions and found that the progress could be displayed as a 2-digit percent. It took a long time to change from 14% to 15%, so we went to bed and let it work overnight. Bottom line: it takes an overnight job to build an 8-TB RAID.
Next day we were still unable to see the array in Windows, neither with Adaptec's RAID nor with Windows Disk Management. So, remembering the Bad Old Days(TM), I went into Device Manager and installed drivers. Now Windows could see the array. Adaptec's sixth lapse. (BTW -- the documentation did say there would be a Windows message asking for drivers. We never saw it. Also, if you boot from their DVD the mouse driver is hypersensitive, hard to click on something. And you can make a floppy, but not a thumb drive. Luckily there are other ways to get drivers, like the web.)
So now we turned to the Adaptec RAID Manager. It could finally see the drive controller, and correctly identified it as an Adaptec 6405e, but the array was not yet ready. Seventh lapse: no hint on what to do next.
We went into Windows Disk Manager. Found the array. We clicked on the drive. There was an option to create a simple drive, and when we did that there was a 2-TB limit. 1.7 TB was unusable. Eighth Adaptec documentation lapse: how to get all 3.7 TB of the array?
Luckily, the Web gave the answer: create a GPT disk. But right-clicking on the disk did not give us that option. It turns out that you must click to the left of the "disk" in the description section. Ninth Adaptec lapse.
We created the array as a GPT disk. Bingo. Formatted with a quick format, opened it up and stored a mini-project on it. Edited with Adobe Premiere. It worked Glory Hallelujah!
Now we shut down, pulled the Nvidia 260 and replaced it with an Nvidia 470. Worked fine.
Now Dan has an i7 920 with a fully populated bank of RAM. He does not overclock, since this is a production machine. He does run AntiMalwareBytes and AVG. The OS is on a Samsung 840 connected with SATA II, since that is all this x58 MB has.
We ran Windows Experience index. The score was 7.4. And that was from the CPU. Everything else was higher. And it felt snappy as we ran the rig through its paces.
The hard drives felt reasonably cool -- no hotter than low- to mid-30's.
Overall, the installation would have gone much more quickly if we could have known the answers to our questions in advance. Adaptec documentation really lacks a lot. If you decide to install one of their controllers, read the entire RDF manual. The tenth Adaptec lapse is that they tell you in the paper document how to install a Windows OS, as if we would all put our OS on RAID, instead of using the RAID as a data set. Adaptec does not mention in their paper guide anything about installing the controller where your OS is already in place. A single sentence would have done it.
Well, I had an opportunity to have an extended visit with an old friend. But we had many unnecessary worries. The Adaptec controller may be a good piece of hardware, but their instructions are woefully inadequate.
Dan decided on a RAID 10 so he could have both speed and redundancy. He has been getting nervous about losing his projects -- you can't go back and re-shoot a wedding, for example. He backed up frequently, but if a drive went down in the middle of something, he was cooked. He was living on borrowed time and he knew it.
Dan got an Adaptec 6405e RAID controller, four 2-TB WD drives (Caviar Black) and a used Nvidia 460. I got in on the project when he asked me if I knew whether his airflow would cool his drives. I suggested we get together and see. If his case couldn't cool the drives, I had several cases he could use instead. So he brought his gear over and we brought his case to the garage.
First thing we did was use some fireplace matchsticks to immobilize his fans, then used a MetroVac ED500 to blow out all the dust. Then we went down to the basement and vacuumed the bits we hadn't gotten with the blower. Took the ED500 and blew off some last bits, and we were ready to go.
First we removed the pair of RAID 1 drives that had been connected to the motherboard for a motherboard-controlled RAID. Then we put the four identical 2-TB drives in the HD cage. There was somewhere from 1/8-inch to 0.5cm between the drives. Not sure it would be enough, but they fit right up against the front fan, so maybe. Plugged in the SATA power plugs from the PSU.
Then we installed the Adaptec 6405e card. It has an SAS cable with four SATA III cables attached . . . and one cable that terminated with what looked like the kind of plug you see on cables running from the USB II ports in the front of a case. The plug would have fit beautifully into one of the motherboard USB II headers. So we looked it up in the Adaptec documentation, both print and PDF. Nary a word nor a diagram. Finally we decided to roll it up and ignore it. But this was the first documentation lapse.
Plugged the four SATA III plugs into the four drives, and turned on the rig. POSTed fine. As described, The Adaptec card had its own POST, so we pressed ctrl-A to get into the 6405e's BIOS. We followed the instructions in the BIOS to set up the RAID 10. Straightforward. Not a problem.
But this involved Adaptec's second documentation lapse: although RAID 10 was mentioned in the marketing materials, in the paper setup instructions RAID 1 and RAID 5 were discussed, but not RAID10. Perhaps this is because RAID10 is really RAID1+0, but it did cause us confusion. Worse: Dan was afraid that he would not be able to install RAID10 the way he wanted.
Third lapse: Adaptec's setup documentation said you could start using the RAID array immediately, while it was still building. R-i-i-g-h-t. Windows never saw it to use it until after a number of steps later.
Fourth and fifth lapses: Adaptec's setup documentation was silent on how long it took to build an array. And there was no mention of how to monitor your progress. We spent a lot of time trying to find the array in windows before I dug into the array management functions and found that the progress could be displayed as a 2-digit percent. It took a long time to change from 14% to 15%, so we went to bed and let it work overnight. Bottom line: it takes an overnight job to build an 8-TB RAID.
Next day we were still unable to see the array in Windows, neither with Adaptec's RAID nor with Windows Disk Management. So, remembering the Bad Old Days(TM), I went into Device Manager and installed drivers. Now Windows could see the array. Adaptec's sixth lapse. (BTW -- the documentation did say there would be a Windows message asking for drivers. We never saw it. Also, if you boot from their DVD the mouse driver is hypersensitive, hard to click on something. And you can make a floppy, but not a thumb drive. Luckily there are other ways to get drivers, like the web.)
So now we turned to the Adaptec RAID Manager. It could finally see the drive controller, and correctly identified it as an Adaptec 6405e, but the array was not yet ready. Seventh lapse: no hint on what to do next.
We went into Windows Disk Manager. Found the array. We clicked on the drive. There was an option to create a simple drive, and when we did that there was a 2-TB limit. 1.7 TB was unusable. Eighth Adaptec documentation lapse: how to get all 3.7 TB of the array?
Luckily, the Web gave the answer: create a GPT disk. But right-clicking on the disk did not give us that option. It turns out that you must click to the left of the "disk" in the description section. Ninth Adaptec lapse.
We created the array as a GPT disk. Bingo. Formatted with a quick format, opened it up and stored a mini-project on it. Edited with Adobe Premiere. It worked Glory Hallelujah!
Now we shut down, pulled the Nvidia 260 and replaced it with an Nvidia 470. Worked fine.
Now Dan has an i7 920 with a fully populated bank of RAM. He does not overclock, since this is a production machine. He does run AntiMalwareBytes and AVG. The OS is on a Samsung 840 connected with SATA II, since that is all this x58 MB has.
We ran Windows Experience index. The score was 7.4. And that was from the CPU. Everything else was higher. And it felt snappy as we ran the rig through its paces.
The hard drives felt reasonably cool -- no hotter than low- to mid-30's.
Overall, the installation would have gone much more quickly if we could have known the answers to our questions in advance. Adaptec documentation really lacks a lot. If you decide to install one of their controllers, read the entire RDF manual. The tenth Adaptec lapse is that they tell you in the paper document how to install a Windows OS, as if we would all put our OS on RAID, instead of using the RAID as a data set. Adaptec does not mention in their paper guide anything about installing the controller where your OS is already in place. A single sentence would have done it.
Well, I had an opportunity to have an extended visit with an old friend. But we had many unnecessary worries. The Adaptec controller may be a good piece of hardware, but their instructions are woefully inadequate.
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