Hardware Reccomendation: RAID

po0k

In the next 3-6 months I'll be in the market for a 4-channel sATA RAID5 PCI64 / 66Mhz card for around €150.
Anyone have any suggestions?

Needs to be Linux compatible.

joePC

Give this a look, you should be able to pick one

SATA RAID

Heres what you want but not cheap:

Raid controller

spongebob

Abit will probably support it off the motherbord, maybe Asus too.

Promise technologies have been doing these for a long time as outboard cards.

a 4 channel IDE Raid, even if S-ATA is probablyt a bit dodgy, I would only use it for raid 0+1 meself which means that 4x 150Gb drives only gives you 150Gb of storage but 4 drives which are mirrors of each other. That is high fault tolerance which is a good idea with s-ata drives which have a really high failure rate relative to scsi drives . Many mobos will give you raid 0 straight off the mobo, 2 mirror drives .

a 5 Channel or 6 channel would be better for storage. 5 drives including the parity drive gives you an effective 4x 150Gb = 600Gb , the 6 channel gives you an additional warm swap drive when one of the 5 fails and the raid controller has to rebuild the container. It should mean you need not reboot to rebuild the container which would take an hour or two anyway..


M

po0k

Muck: The reason I want a slap-in PCI card is so that I can migrate the array to another box when the time comes without having to worry about incompatibilities.

Also, I'm looking for RAID5 if possible, so for that purpose 4 channels is sufficient, though I may consider a 6 or 8channel version.
This will be used in the main part as an FTPd File dump which must be able to serve several clients as fast as possible, so RAID 0+1 is attractive there for the read performance, but the loss in capacity for the cost isn't particularly appealing as the data I'll be storing needs capacity more than reliability.
A hot-spare is out of the question.
It really is a choice between RAID5, RAID0 or at the very end of the scale RAID0+1 in a 4-drive configuration.
All the drives will be cooled and/or spaced out in the case.
As I'm buying the core of the system in the next 3 months with the drive array following 3-6months after that, I have a bit of time on my side for more products to come t market, but my requirements will remain the same, 400-500Gigs of 7200rpm 8megcache sATA storage in RAID5 PCI 64 / 66Mhz for about €600.

Anyone have any idea when we can expect sATAII products out?

po0k

Originally posted by joePC
Give this a look, you should be able to pick one

SATA RAID

Heres what you want but not cheap:

Raid controller

Yeah, I read that Tom's review yesterday evening.
The 3Ware card is nice, but it's a bit expensive, I'm tryiing to track down a supplier for the RAIDCore card at the moment.

spongebob

Originally posted by SyxPak
Muck: The reason I want a slap-in PCI card is so that I can migrate the array to another box when the time comes without having to worry about incompatibilities.

http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productId=112&familyId=2

Promise have been in the off MoBo HD card biz for YEARS and are generally supported by Linux and Windows very shortly after release. They have specialised in IDE not SCSI like Adaptec. Unless there is a reason why not I would go with them. I have used stacks of their cards for various reasons.

As I'm buying the core of the system in the next 3 months with the drive array following 3-6months after that, I have a bit of time on my side for more products to come t market, but my requirements will remain the same, 400-500Gigs of 7200rpm 8megcache sATA storage in RAID5 PCI 64 / 66Mhz for about €600.

4 x Seagate 120Mb SATA150 and a Fasttrak are about that already TBH which is 360Gb of storage. If you add 160Gbs to a series of 120Gbs they will not resize up though.

Anyone have any idea when we can expect sATAII products out?

M

po0k

Choices at the moment:
What I would really like is the 3Ware 8channel 8506-8, but I can't seem to find an irish supplier.
I'd settle for the 3Ware 4channel 8506-4LP, but I'd fill those 4 channels straight away which doesn't leave much room for expansion.
Realistically, I only seem to be able to procure an adaptec 4-channel 2410sa + 4drive enclosure kit for €300

Anyone know of any good sites for this sort of tech?

elara and komplett are very sparse.

On a side note, I'm having a hell of a time trying to track down an Asus A7M266-D dual socket A motherboard.

Catalyst

Not too up to date on raid controllers but hopefully these might help?

http://www.elara.ie/products/results.asp?srch=ata+raid+control&anyallexact=all&manu=

and

http://www.elara.ie/products/results.asp?srch=ata+raid+card&anyallexact=all&manu=

spongebob

Jeez €700 for the serial ATA

M

Catalyst

Try the first link, the second one is a kit

po0k

I've been offered that same Adaptec AAR-2410SA kit for €300

joePC

Found this one your gona like it.......?

4 Port SATA Raid controller €98

You may need to click the link twice....?

Thanks joePC

po0k

Komplett links don't work when pasted.
I assume you mean the Highpoint 4channel RAID controller, it has pretty poor performance
i don't mind spending between €200 and 300 on a good 4-8 channel controller.

joePC

Its the Promise SATA150 TX4, Serial ATA Controller PCI Retail.

Click on the link let it load,

close window,

Click the link again it will bring you to the page.

Thanks joePC

po0k

I'm going to pick up an Adaptec 2410sa or 2810sa card.
Will probably ahve to wait a few months to get more money for the actual drives, but I'm looking at minimum of 4x120Gig WD 8Meg 7200rpm, though if I can source some Hitatchi 120Gig models I'll pick em up instead.
160Gig drives might be cheaper by then, giving me about 520Gigs of storage.
Then maybe 6 or 9 months down the line pick up another 4 identical drives and pop them in.

Thanks for your suggestions guys

SwampThing

SyxPax, how'd this work out for you?