actually, according to a review done by anandtech it's actually faster to use software raid (like this card). the cpu's today are very powerful that they can do the calculations much better than the actual chip without much hit in performance. so if you want speed, go with software raid. unless you're doing raid 5 or stuff, for which you need a hardware raid processor
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USB2.0+1394+UltraATA RAID $50 - $10 Coupon
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actually, according to a review done by anandtech it's actually faster to use software raid (like this card). the cpu's today are very powerful that they can do the calculations much better than the actual chip without much hit in performance. so if you want speed, go with software raid. unless you're doing raid 5 or stuff, for which you need a hardware raid processor
Alright, let me clear this up for dclive:
Kellybrf wants to start with:
Drive 1: 20+100 (2 Partitions)
Drive 2: 20+100 (2 Partitions)
to create with RAID card:
OS Partition: 20+20 (20GB partitions from both Drives 1 and 2, in RAID)
Partition 2: 100 (From Drive 1 ONLY, not RAID)
Partition 3: 100 (From Drive 2 ONLY, not RAID)
In other words, Kellybrf just wants to RAID a PART of each drive, and leave 100GB of each drive OUT of the RAID array.
Tell me how that is possible with RAID dclive. I'd like to know.
Kellybrf wants to start with:
Drive 1: 20+100 (2 Partitions)
Drive 2: 20+100 (2 Partitions)
to create with RAID card:
OS Partition: 20+20 (20GB partitions from both Drives 1 and 2, in RAID)
Partition 2: 100 (From Drive 1 ONLY, not RAID)
Partition 3: 100 (From Drive 2 ONLY, not RAID)
In other words, Kellybrf just wants to RAID a PART of each drive, and leave 100GB of each drive OUT of the RAID array.
Tell me how that is possible with RAID dclive. I'd like to know.
Hardware RAID does not support this, AFAIK. If you really want to do anything like this, just get one of the deals of the week for a third smaller drive, like a 40GB drive for <$30 for your OS.
The main problem with this approach is that you cannot copy the existing "larger" drive to the smaller, or at least I don't think you can. (Never tried, so don't know) You can copy the smaller drive to a larger one, then break the mirror and play with the partition sizes if you wish.
Software RAID will do what you're talking about, but it's only available in MS server OSes since NT4. I believe there's probably a hack out there somewhere if you own copies of NT4 and your current OS where you may be able to pull out the appropriate FS files and apply them to your current OS (NT variants only), but that might have been broken by the NTFS upgrades with 2000 SP3 and XP.
Personally - don't mess with software raid, just pay the $20 plus another drive.... much easier, and much more powerful.
If you wind up reinstalling your OS - play with the RAID controller first - copying contents of drives, creating breaking mirrors and RAID sets, etc. (Use non-criticial drives for this, as your data will get destroyed on at least 1 drive, if not all of them. Recovering files from a broken RAID0 set is painful, especially under Windows....)
BTW, I used to spec RAID systems for a few years... and 4 of my home systems are RAIDED, 3 SCSI, 2 IDE. (That's right - 1 system has both - don't ask....)
Stefan2000
Member
I actually have one of these cards. I've never really used the 1394 and USB2 ports on it that much. So, I can't really comment much on the performance of those, but the ATA raid controller on this card uses the CMD (later known as Silicon Image) 649 chip. One of the positive aspects of using a card based on this chip is they will usually work well with ATAPI devices like CD and DVD burners. Right now I have a Sony DRU500A DVD burner and a 40x24x48 Lite-on CDRW drive attached to the channels on this card and they both work fine. Some other IDE raid cards are only recommended for use with harddrives and not ATAPI devices. This is especially true with CD and DVD burners and if you use such devices attached to those cards your CD or DVD burning software may not see these devices and be able to access them. So, if your like me and have lots of IDE devices (including several ATAPI devices) in your system, this card can simply be used as a non-raid card for adding more IDE channels.
Why not, for the second time?
Slice and dice. Use the RAID hardware to RAID the two drives together, than format a 40G and 200G volume. That's exactly what he wants. He's getting 20G off of each drive for the OS (hence 40G) and 100G off each drive for data (hence 200G. )
Please explain your objection.
SIIG cards in themselves aren't bad, as far as I can see. There's two definition of software RAID that people are using now days, since Windows started supporting dynamic drives and RAID within the OS. Original def for software RAID was what this card does, which is driver level RAID. It does use system resources to do RAID calculations, but since this is RAID 0, 1, or 0+1, the calculations are minimal. You really can't expect hardware RAID, which would have an onboard proc to do the calculation, for this price level. Cheapest I've seen in a Highpoint 4 drive setup, with the best performer being Promise SX4000 with 256MB cache.
Now the catch is, if you plan on only doing RAID 0 or 1, most bench tests have found that these software RAID cards actually perform better because you are using a (usually) much faster proc to do the calculations, as opposed to ~200Mhz procs that usually come with the hardware RAID cards.
Even with RAID 5, OS level RAID has been found to be faster in some cases because, again, you are usually using a proc that is MUCH faster and has the resources left over to run faster.
InverseOfNeo
Diamond Member
Damn I want hot chocolate😛
Would this be a good card eve if I dont use the RAID capabilities?
Would this be a good card eve if I dont use the RAID capabilities?
My friiend and I both jumped on the ATA 133 version which Siig's store has for just under $65 shipped. We are getting this card because we want to free up a pci slot and get extra ports while we are at it. We both have our OS's on one SCSI HD and need lots of ATA storage capability. No raid. We both imagine this card should get the job done under Windows 2000, which doesn't usually present IRQ conflicts. The Siig site did says that both the ATA 100 and the ATA 133 models will function as regular controllers if RAID is not desired. The ATA 133 model is supposed to support DMA, as well.
I searched and searched a couple of days ago, before ordering, but could not find one review or testimonial anywhere. My buddy and I figure it like this, we are buying directly from a reputable manufacturer. If the cards don't work, we'll return them.
If this thing does what it is supposed to do, we are all going to be very, very happy. It is undoutably a great price, which I am sure everyone has already determined by now.
Am I the ONLY one seeing the most obvious NEGATIVE aspect of this all-in-one? You have all those options (usb 2.0 - 480mbps, firewire - 400mbps, and raid - max based upon devices) but all having to bottleneck through ONE pci slot! The max a pci slot can even take is 133MBps....seems kinda ridiculous.
Stefan2000
Member
Well, first of all the limit is not "per PCI slot" but is per PCI Bus. So the limit your talking about would still be present if you used 3 separate cards (One USB2, one firewire, and one ATA100), unless you were using a motherboard that had multiple PCI buses. Some modern high end boards do have multiple PCI buses. My dual Xeon Supermicro P4DC6+II has multiple PCI buses, but many ordinary desktop class motherboards don't have multiple PCI buses and thus all the PCI slots are on the same PCI bus and share this limited bandwidth anyway. So, using idividual multiple cards would make no difference. Even if you did use a motherboard that had multiple PCI buses, in order for the cards to not share bandwidth youd have to make sure you placed them in the appropriate slots such that all of the slot they were in were on separate PCI buses and then youd have to make sure that you had no other devices on those PCI buses. That would be difficult to achieve even on a board that does feature multiple PCI buses as even those boards don't have a separate PCI bus for every PCI slot and every onboard device. That would require alot of separate PCI buses and perhaps make for a very complicated design. My P4dc6+II that I mentioned earlier, for example, has a PCI bus for the onboard devices, a PCI bus for the 2 64bit 66Mhz PCI slots it has, and a PCI bus for the 4 32bit 33Mhz PCI slots. So, If I want to ensure that no 2 PCI cards shared a PCI bus I'd have to install on in one of the 66Mhz slots and one in one of the 33Mhz slots and then use no other slots. So having each device on it's own PCI bus and not sharing bandwidth wouldn't be practical or possibly not even achieveable even on a board that does have multiple PCI buses.
Secondly, since this card is a combo USB 2, firewire, and only 2 channel ATA100 card the issue of bandwidth sharing may not be that significant here. USB 2 and Firewire are not really high bandwidth devices or at least not when we're talking in terms of PCI bus bandwidth. Remeber litle "b" is bits per second, while big "B" is bytes per second. That means USB2 is only 480 "megabits" per second or somewhere around 60 megaBytes per second and Firewire is only 400 "megabits" per second or about 50 MegaBytes per second. So they really aren't as high bandwidth as they sound. Most importantly, however, the bandwidth sharing would only matter if all the devices were actually competeing to use the bus all at the same instant and this would probably be very rare and not happen very often in most systems. Even when a device is being used is don't mean it's actually transfering data over the PCI bus at every moment. Think for example about a harddisk controller. A hard disk controller probably spents a great deal of time waiting for the hard disk attached to it to spin around into the right position before it can actually begin transfering data to it. So, many devices may have alot of idle time during which they really aren't transfering data over the PCI bus. During that idle time other devices may be able to use the bus.
THX Stafan2000, most informitive, indeed.
Hey, my ATA 133 version Card just got here. It is a lovely looking unit, 3.5" High x 7" Deep. It has the Siliocone Image 0680 Raid chip in it. I have two cards with that chip and they are fine performers. I really GTG right now, but I'll report back later tonight once I've given it a whirl.
Hey, my ATA 133 version Card just got here. It is a lovely looking unit, 3.5" High x 7" Deep. It has the Siliocone Image 0680 Raid chip in it. I have two cards with that chip and they are fine performers. I really GTG right now, but I'll report back later tonight once I've given it a whirl.
Stefan2000
Member
Not only is the deal still alive, but it appears as though it just got a little warmer. If you click the original link to the card above there seems to be a new 30% discount code available on items that feature the turkey icon as opposed to the previous discount code which was only 20%.
StormRider
Diamond Member
How does the discount coupon work? I typed in the code (TK30) and filled in all the info to get to the point where I submit the order but the price did not reflect the 30% off discount. Therefore, I decided not to submit the order. Are we supposed to submit the order to see the discount applied?
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