To RAID or not to RAID? Highpoint or Promise?

[in2speed]

It's flame the newbie time. I have 2 new Maxtor (rebadged Quantum) ATA100/7200/30gb harddrives.

Question #1: Should I go with a RAID system? My computer will be used for burning music CD's, including converting SHN's to WAV's. It's also used as a home office and Internet surfing machine.

Question #2: I am getting a new motherboard very soon. Is onboard RAID better than getting a cheap IWILL or Epox RAID card??? Those cards go for $28 to $45, so it would be cheaper to get an onboard RAID controller.

Question #3: I am leaning to buying a Soyo Dragon Plus board, which has 4 channel Promise RAID. I am also considering Abit KR7A-R, which has a HighPoint controller. Which one is better???

Question #4: Does anyone have experience with the cheap RAID cards by IWILL or Epox? I can combine these with, perhaps, Epox 8KHA+ or another cheaper motherboard. Would this be better than the onboard RAID solutions?

Question #5: What stripe size would be best for the uses outlined above?

Question #6: Should I avoid RAID? Are there disadvantages, other than the trivial risk of failure?

Question #7: I am hoping to get a real-time boost of 10% + with RAID. Is this realistic? Will there be situations where RAID is slower?

 

[Armitage]

Take a trip over to storagereview.com
They have good articles on RAID and lots of reviews.



<< Question #6: Should I avoid RAID? Are there disadvantages, other than the trivial risk of failure? >>



Depends, are you talking about RAID0?
Considering the number of drive failures I've seen, I wouldn't consider doubling your expected failure rate to be trivial.

 

[MasterHoss]

man...to read or not to read...research that stuff in the forums and reviews found all over the Internet.

 

[in2speed]

I have read the reviews at StorageReview, but they don't adequately address the new onboard controllers. I am hoping for up to date advice and personal experiences.

 

[valiant]

hmm well to answer some questions...i have an Epox 8k7a+ motherboard with onboard Highpoint Raid. I have 2 IBM deskstars in Raid0 (75gxp =x, 7200 ata100 40gb). Which means they are used as one big fast 80gb drive. I actually don't see a use in this setup. I play games, burn cd's, surf net, play dvds and music, and i can safely say that there is no real need to have Raid in that type of computer. Ergeorge is right...it just doubles the failure rate. I would doubt that u will see a 10% boost in overall speed either. I suggest just getting a motherboard with raid and use the extra controllers, but not in a raid Array. As soon as im away from school im going to take apart my raid array just to be on the safe side of things. The other good thing you could do with a raid is mirror or copy your data on 2 drives so if one dies you have a decent backup, but it dosen't sound like what you are looking for. Hope this helps...

 

[poppasp1ce]

<< Question #1: Should I go with a RAID system? My computer will be used for burning music CD's, including converting SHN's to WAV's. It's also used as a home office and Internet surfing machine. >>



it really depends on the application. obviously if the majority of your work is disk intensive, then yes, you'll see the advantages of raid. but if question #1 is all your doing then your probably not going to notice any difference with raid0. the only time i notice a 'human detectable' increase is when im a) compressing minidv or b) exporting illustrator files. the OTHER 90% of the time, i can't say that its faster than my old maxtor 40GB 7200ATA100. fyi, i have 8K7A+ with HP370A.

on the other hand, since you already have two harddrives its not like it would cost you much more to just do it. i suggest you buy a board with raid, then use the raid when you feel comfortable. just because you bought a board with raid doesn't mean you have to use it right away. you'll feel better that you have raid in case you want to use it, rather than not having onboard raid, and now you have to go buy a raid controller.

 

[kjmcdonald]

Hi.

There's another thread a few days back called 'Let's talk about RAID' (sorry I don't know how to link in a thread.)
I posted a message there that goes into many of the trade offs between the different RAID Levels. Using RAID 0
to combine 2 disks into one may boost your performance on really disk intensive tasks, but you should also
understand that it is also twice as likely to have a failure - If either diskdrive goes bad you lose *everything*.

Now, I don't know of any reason why RAID on the MB would be any different than RAID on a PCI card - As long
as the MB and PCI card both use the same RAID chip it should perform identical. It all works out to being wired
up the same way really. The only advantage I see with the PCI card is that some of them come with 4 IDE
connectors in stead of the 2 found on most MotherBoards.

As for which brand of chip is better, I don't know. I don't have much experience with PC IDE RAID. All my RAID
experience is with large UNIX arrays. I would think that you would want to make sure that the RAID chip will
support booting from the larger RAID device. This will mean that the BIOS and the OS shouldn't be able to
tell that it's not all one disk, and should amke sure that it works with most if not all OS's. If the RAID device isn't
visible to the computer until after the OS boots, and some driver for the chip is loaded, then you may be
limited in your choice of OS's either now or in the future. I'm pretty sure the Highpoint will boot off the Array
(I know it will also let you use it as 2 plain regular IDE controllers also,) I'm not sure about the Promise one.
(I'm looking at getting the KR7A-RAID also.)

I hope this helps answer at least some of your questions.

-Kyle

 

[goog]

Linked

Just copy and past the URL using the http button above the reply box, and after clicking ok type what you want the linked text to say.

Edit:
BTW I have a KT7RAID with a Highpoint controller and haven't had any problems with it, I don't think it makes much difference if its Highpoint or Promise, course the new Highpoint is ATA133, not that it really matters.

 

[eplebnista]

Hello,

I have used the Iwill Sideraid100 w/ two Maxtor 40gb 7200rpm for a while and have had no problems with it.

My 2¢,
eplebnista

 

[Jasmine]

I would get SCSI

 

[in2speed]

Here are some quotes from the now-dated Anand Article (June '01): By the way, the article refers to software RAID as the lower cost chips and cards with HighPoint and Promise controllers; this does not mean the Win2K total software variety of RAID.

"Software RAID chips like the ones tested here are found integrated on a variety of motherboards. In addition, PCI software RAID cards have been falling in price for some time now and can be purchased for a rather good price.

"There is no question that a software RAID 0 IDE array will make your computer run faster, as the Content Creation Winstone 2001 scores clearly showed. Performance gains on the order of 13% are not negligible Just be sure that your software RAID chip is set to use its optimal stripe size, which we found in previous sections. The difference between a good stripe size for your card and a bad one can mean the difference between being faster than a single IDE drive or being slower than it.

"Don't let the speed increase that comes with a RAID 0 array fool you into thinking that you can use older drives and get the same performance. The fact of the matter is that unless your IDE drives in the array are fast, the array simply won't perform well. The same can be said with mixing fast drives and slow drives: the performance of the array will go down.

"Of the three software RAID cards tested, the Iwill SIDE RAID100 and its Highpoint HPT370A chip provided the best RAID 0 performance, offering a bit more speed than the competing chips."

Thanks for the comments and for the reference & link to the AT article. However, I would still appreciate more input.