Software Raid 5 (XP) - experience/benchmarks

[Batistuta]

Am considering a software raid 5 solution under WinXP Pro, with IDE drives (Barracuda V's probably). I know any hardware Raid5 solution would almost certainly have better performance (like the Promise Fasttrak SX4000, which I'm also thinking about).
Probably 4 drives will be used.

The array will be used for many things, some being accessed frequently, others once a month; games, pictures, mp3s, movies etc. will be here. OS will be on separate drive, as will a few applications with many or heavy writes, as I guess these operations are the slowest on a Raid5.

Any experiences / benchmarks / suggestions will be much appreciated.

Thx.
B.

 

[Smilin]

I used a Fastrax 4k and couldn't get the OS to load. Tried 2000 server and XP pro. I may yet have an issue with the machine and I have to do some more research as well. It's quite possible I don't have enough power for four extra drives.

It's quite the affordable raid 5 controller and all benchmarks and reviews I've seen are favorable. I'll sell you mine at a reasonable price - it's got low miles!

 

[Batistuta]

Could it be, that the OS need to be on a drive NOT connected to the SX4000 (or that your bios just won't let you boot from the SX4000?)

I might be interested in bying your SX4000, only problem is, that I live in Denmark (which u probably don't...), so the sum of hassle+money with money transfer, shipping and VAT (in case you live outside the EU) and warranty issues will probably be too high?!
You could make an offer...

Thx. anyway for your reply.

B

 

[buleyb]

3ware makes nice Parallel or Serial ATA RAID controllers, consider them too

 

[chizow]

I just picked up a 3ware 7000-2 b/c I'm only using my comp as a high-end gaming rig/multimedia workstation, and nothing I do on it is work-related or irrecoverable. That stuff is all on my ThinkPad.

Anyways, there was a very extensive review over at Tech-Review; I found it by going to Promise's site and clicking on a review link. It has a nice comparison between the entry-level hardware RAID cards that will suit your needs at an affordable price: Promise Fasttrak SX-4000, 3ware Escalade 7500-4, and the Adaptec 2400A. It also throws in the Highpoint Rocketraid 133, arguably the highest performing softRAID IDE card on the market. From the reviews, the 3ware and Promise performed the best; the Adaptec was lagging badly and the Highpoint performed exceptionally well in RAID 0. For RAID 5, I think the 3ware performed best, but it also costs a good $100 more than the Promise. One other thing I noticed was that the Promise's CPU utilization was extremely high on some applications.

I also found a review of just the 3ware Escalade 7500-4 in RAID 5, I think it was at Pimprig.com. Name doesn't lend much credibility, but the benches were done very well IMO. Compared single ATA devices, as well as RAID 0 and 5 with different disk array sizes.

Chiz

Edit: I don't know of any softRAID 5 solutions; I think the parity calculations necessary would be enough to slow many cpus to a crawl.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Batistuta
Could it be, that the OS need to be on a drive NOT connected to the SX4000 (or that your bios just won't let you boot from the SX4000?)

I might be interested in bying your SX4000, only problem is, that I live in Denmark (which u probably don't...), so the sum of hassle+money with money transfer, shipping and VAT (in case you live outside the EU) and warranty issues will probably be too high?!
You could make an offer...

Thx. anyway for your reply.

B

No, the OS can be on the boot drive and it recognizes drivers during setup (after hitting F6 and all that stuff) it just locked up a bit later in setup. It could quite possibly be a vid card issue or an insufficient power issue. I had problems for sure but I'm no where near the point in troubleshooting that I can blame the raid controller yet. I've got another PC to try it on but I just don't have the time to fool with it right now. The controller has been sitting in the box gathering dust for about a month.


I sell all my used stuff at a standard rate: 75% of the best price you can find on pricewatch. You'll have to cover the shipping on this one though

 

[Batistuta]

Chizow, You probably mean THIS review, at Tech Report.
Yeah I saw that one, but thx. for the info on the pimprig(..no comment..) one .

What I'm after, is someone who have tried the software RAID5, or know some benchmarks - because even if a hardware RAID5 IDE controller has a dedicated chip to do the XOR calculations, I expect it to be quite a bit slower than my P4@2,4GHz (I'm I wrong here, because the chip has a special design for this sole purpose??)

B.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Batistuta
Chizow, You probably mean THIS review, at Tech Report.
Yeah I saw that one, but thx. for the info on the pimprig(..no comment..) one .

What I'm after, is someone who have tried the software RAID5, or know some benchmarks - because even if a hardware RAID5 IDE controller has a dedicated chip to do the XOR calculations, I expect it to be quite a bit slower than my P4@2,4GHz (I'm I wrong here, because the chip has a special design for this sole purpose??)

B.

Well, I'm not an expert on hardware RAID by any means, but not only do the hardware RAID cards have a dedicated math coprocessor designed soley for XOR/Parity calculations and RAID striping/mirroring calculations, they have dedicated onboard RAM. I'm guessing the onboard RAM provides benefits similar to having onboard RAM for a video card, with faster memory accesses b/c it doesn't have to access system RAM throught he already bottlenecked PCI bus.

There is some discussion about the benefits and applications of a hardware RAID card in this thread in hot deals.. I think some of the key topics broached were reliability, cpu usage, price, and performance. Also, a hardware RAID 5 array would rebuild the array using its own coprocessor, which is important if you don't want a prolonged hit to CPU cycles in a software RAID 5 config. After its all said and done, I don't know how much of a performance benefit you would get from RAID 5 over a RAID 0+1 software RAID solution.

Chiz