X15 SCSI question

[sharkeeper]

I have three X15's and a 29160 that I intend to put in my system. I want to boot off one drive and set the other two up as dynamic disks and have Windows 2000 stripe them for faster read/write performance. Has anyone tried this before?

After reading numerous reviews about problems with hardware RAID controllers (Mylex, ATTO and Adaptec) achieving good results on AMD/VIA platforms, I'm thinking that buying the RAID controller is a waste. I'm definitely not reverting back to an INtel platform just for that. :Q

I would put the boot disk on one channel and the other pair on the other. Is the 29160 up to the task to do this?

Cheers!

 

[rlism]

the 29160 can do it fine...
more pertinent question: is your cpu/memory up for software raid? if you've got x15's and 29160's, i'm sure the rest of yer system is on par. it'll work fine. you'd probably see better numbers with hardware raid though.

 

[Rellik]

If I understood u correctly, you want to use the built in software raid or w2k for setting up a striped array with 2 X15 U160 disks.
I don´t know if there is anything to prevent u from doing this,(only heard about it being performed with ide disks) but since you have the resources for an 29160 and 3 X15 drives, why don´t get a SCSI RAID controller. Software raid is pretty cpu intensive and a better way would be to just use your 3 drives normally on your 29160. It is a cool setup and sure to beat any IDE solution in real world apps.(yes even IDE raid, as it isn´t even remotly able to effectively multitask)

 

[sharkeeper]

The system this is going in is an AMD Athlon 1.2 running at 1.4 with 768 MB of RAM.

Here is why I don't want to spend $600+ for a SCSI RAID controller:

ATTO vs. Mylex vs. Adaptec

Since this is a KT133 system, it seems have a problem with these cards. I've striped disks before with Windows NT/ 2000 and it works fine. Striping isn't technically RAID and there isn't need for parity calculations so I'm not really worried about CPU utilisation for the striped pair. I just want the fastest possible seek times on the main drive and have a "scratch" drive with read/write capacity exceeding 60 MB/S sustained.

Cheers!

 

[Strafe]

I have 3 X15's running on a 19160, Windows 2K Pro, 1 is the boot drive and 2 are in Software RAID 0 for data. Works great and the CPU load (P3700@933) is minimal. In this type of configuration I think a hardware RAID controller is overkill.

 

[fkloster]

This is the biggest drool thread of all time me thinks

 

[sharkeeper]

<< I have 3 X15's running on a 19160, Windows 2K Pro, 1 is the boot drive and 2 are in Software RAID 0 for data. Works great and the CPU load (P3700@933) is minimal. In this type of configuration I think a hardware RAID controller is overkill. >>



That's precisely what I want to do! I bet it runs better than my pair of 75 GXP's on the HPT-370!

The reason why I was considering a SCSI RAID controller was to be able to use just two X15's striped right out of the box. Then I saw some dismal performance figures, especially with the 2100. These adapters are really tuned for reliability (and should be) rather than performance. That's kind of a good thing since 98% of the people buying them are using them for servers. Many people with the 2100 have reported that a single X15 performs better than two striped! If that were the case, one would be better off using JBOD. :|

After talking to Mike at Hypermicro, I decided to get the 39160 card. This has dual UW-160 channels so I will truly get the best performance from this set up.

Looks like I'm gonna have to reload Windows 2000 for this one! All my Ghost images have the HPT-370 controller and I'm seeing the dreaded INACESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE STOP error.

Lemme see, do I keep FAT32 (and be stuck with 512 BYTE allocation units if I convert later) or do I convert to NTFS on installation and have 4096 KB allocation units???

Decisions, decisions.

That's what makes it fun. (well, sort of!)

Cheers!

 

[esung]

IMHO, those folks at amdmb should done a better job testing the RAID.. IMHO those syntheic bench couldn't reflect a RAID cluster's performance, simply because those bench are not designed for it. and most people use those high end RAID will not just use RAID 0(striping), more likely to be using either RAID 3 or 5(probably). because RAID also provide you with fault tolerance in addition to performance. to testing a RAID, you might need something like TPC(probably overkill) to stress the HD a little more

sharkeeper: for your need, getting a RAID controller is probably overkill. but you might want one in the future if you decide to add more HDs in the array.

 

[sharkeeper]

My original intent was overkill. We were going to use fiber channel drives and have the drives in another room. Good for noise reduction but it is too expensive! Not to mention we do have a server downstairs with 960 GB of storage that is connected at 1000 mbps.

Cheers!