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Drunkula
Apprentice
Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 257
Location: Denton, TX - USA
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 Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 1:30 pm Post subject: IDE hardware RAID - worth it or not? |
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I just acquired a dual Athlon board that has a Promise RAID controller built-in. Without getting into the ins-and-outs of the different RAID levels (I know them already) should I bother setting up a RAID 0 array? Or should I just stick with discreet drives?
Is the potential increase in performance worth the potential hassle? Just curious because I've never dealt with RAID on IDE drives before!  |
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lbrtuk
l33t
Joined: 08 May 2003
Posts: 910
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| Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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| If you are going to make a raid array, ignore the fact that the controller claims to be a 'raid controller'. It's almost certainly fakeraid and you'd get much better reliability & performance with linux software raid (md). |
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Drunkula
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Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 257
Location: Denton, TX - USA
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| Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 4:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Fakeraid? I dunno. It's a Promise PDC20276 controller if that means anything... |
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lbrtuk
l33t
Joined: 08 May 2003
Posts: 910
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| Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 5:03 pm Post subject: |
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| It'll be fakeraid. I'm not sure promise even make hardware raid controllers. Besides, software raid is better than hardware raid for many reasons. |
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Drunkula
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Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 257
Location: Denton, TX - USA
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| Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 10:33 pm Post subject: |
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Don't take this the wrong way. I appreciate your offering advice! However I find it difficult to believe that a software RAID solution would be better than hardware RAID. I mean with hardware at least the CPU[s] would not have to handle the task of doing what the dedicated hardware is supposed to do. Now I must admit I never heard the term fakeraid until today. Maybe that is, more or less, the same as software RAID but on a chip?
I do know that with this controller one of it's drawbacks is that you can't change the stripe-size. It's set at 64K. That sounds like it may be bigger than I would have hoped for. Oh well. I really didn't buy this mobo for it's RAID capability! |
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Pasketti
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Posts: 109
Location: Austin, Texas
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| Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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If the hardware RAID controller is hung off the PCI bus, then you're limited to PCI throughput.
Software RAID is usually preferable because of that. |
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Drunkula
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Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 257
Location: Denton, TX - USA
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| Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 11:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Pasketti wrote: | If the hardware RAID controller is hung off the PCI bus, then you're limited to PCI throughput.
Software RAID is usually preferable because of that. |
My guess would be PCI since it's integrated and claims to be ATA-133. |
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lbrtuk
l33t
Joined: 08 May 2003
Posts: 910
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| Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 11:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Drunkula wrote: | | Don't take this the wrong way. I appreciate your offering advice! However I find it difficult to believe that a software RAID solution would be better than hardware RAID. I mean with hardware at least the CPU[s] would not have to handle the task of doing what the dedicated hardware is supposed to do. |
http://spamaps.org/raidtests.php (it seems to be down at the moment)
And this test is for a card that is actually 100% hardware raid, the controller you have will be about 90% software and 10% bios. The software will be implemented in a proprietary windows driver or a difficult to get working and unreliable binary linux driver.
Something can be as hardware bound as it likes but that won't save it if it's inefficient. |
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Drunkula
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Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 257
Location: Denton, TX - USA
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| Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 12:11 am Post subject: |
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Alrighty then. I will take your advice. After all that is the reason I came here! Thanks. If I end up doing raid I guess I will go with the kernel's implementation. More than likely I won't, though.
So it's more or less analgous to winmodems in the modem world, eh?
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lbrtuk
l33t
Joined: 08 May 2003
Posts: 910
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| Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 1:39 am Post subject: |
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| Drunkula wrote: | | So it's more or less analgous to winmodems in the modem world, eh? |
Bingo. Only when you're doing this, you've also got the integrity of your important data at stake. |
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The New Guy
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 06 Feb 2005
Posts: 136
Location: Behind you...
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| Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 1:42 am Post subject: |
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| Drunkula wrote: |
So it's more or less analgous to winmodems in the modem world, eh?
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Ugh... winmodems. *has flashbacks of the horror*
I still wake up screaming at night because of those things. |
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Kernel & Hardware
