SCSI RAID... can't do Adaptec 2100s so how about Mylex?

[schmoe]

After reading a review on www.amdmb.com on the Atto UL3D and the forums on storagereview.com, I decided to not buy the 2100s from Adaptec.

So what now? I'm willing to spend 70 bucks more for a Mylex AcceleRAID 170(very similar to the 2100s, but hopefully faster).

I plan to run a RAID 0 setup with 3 Altas 10K II drives (9.2 GB).

I haven't heard anything bad about Mylex (some good) but no reviews on it either. I'm not touching ATTO because it's not a pure hardware SCSI solution and I don't want my CPU utilization to go higher if I have one more drive than they had.

Commments?

 

[schmoe]

You mean to tell me nobody has an opinion on a SCSI RAID solution???

Please... I know some of you guys are out there that are willing to give me some idea of what to get

 

[Hermann]

I don't have any experience with their Raid Array but their regular cards are easy to set-up. No problems for 2 years!

 

[Radboy]

This prolly isn't the best forum for SCSI RAID. Don't think anyone here uses it. But there are a few at SR who have it, which is where u oughta be.

I researched it once. Heard that Mylex made the best. How true that is, I dunno, as I have no experience. They have no W9x sppt .. only NT & W2K .. which is prolly what u want if u want SCSI RAID.

I know that IBM bought Mylex ~ a year or so ago. Not sure if that's good or bad.

As far as running an OS & apps, u'll be hard-pressed to beat the perf of a single Cheetah X15 on an LVD/U160 controller .. as RAID does nothing to improve access times, which are the key factor for those apps.

 

[schmoe]

Thanks for the comments and suggestions Radboy and Hermann.

I plan on using Win2k, but is there support for Linux as well?

My main concern is load times on games/databases/view of files...

I'm getting tired of waiting 2 minutes to load a map in a game or windows explorer taking awhile to display a lot of files.

So what I'm looking for is fast data transfers. Plus the access times will be at least quicker than my Seagate Barracuda and Quantum Viking that I have now.

I'm off to the SR forums

 

[jose]

Take a look at the 3Ware ide raid setup.

I'm using the 8 port card w/ 7 ibm 45g drives & 1 60g drive.

I have a combination of raid10 w/ 1 hot spare & am using the 60g drive for
system backups instead of tape.

It has RH. 6.2, 7.0 drivers. Frankly you wouldn't be able to tell the diff.
between the 2100s & Mylex cards unless you run benchmark software.

Going the Ide route has cut the cost in half. Now don't get me wrong , the scsi w/ 10k atlas2 drives are faster, but at what cost. In 3 years you
could upgrade again.

Now if you have to have raid 5 then go scsi.

Regards
Jose

 

[kombatmud]

I have a SCSI RAID running on an Adaptec 3200S controller. If you can tell me where I can find a free benchmarking program that will run in win 2k, I'll run some benchmarks for you.

 

[schmoe]

Try using HDTach in WinBench

IO Meter:
ftp://download.intel.com/design/servers/iometer/iometer.zip

WinBench 99:

ftp://ftp.zdnet.com/pub/zdbop/winbench/wb9911.exe

 

[Dameon]

http://www.ami.com/support/doc/express500_spec.pdf

I'm a big believe in AMI cards. Too many probs w/ adaptec cards.