Adding RAID 0 to my PC

happydude13

I'm just wondering if anyone has advice on
RAID and whether it's worth it.

2 of these drives in RAID 0

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=179773

and this controller as the mobo doesn't support it

http://komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=117187&cks=PRL

The intention was to run the OS and slow programs/data on it

and keep stuff like MP3s etc on another SATA Disk plugged into the mobo.

Seems reasonably cheap as I'll get extra storage (80GB)
and a faster machine hopefully.

I considered getting 10k RPM drives but.... is it worth it

Any thoughts on above, or installing windows on a RAID 0
setup.

Is mise...

po0k

No point getting 10K rpm drives, they'll just go to waste most of the time.
ANd that controller is pretty piss-poor.

SwampThing

Not worth it mate. Controller's not up to much and the drives aren't too hot either.
You'd be better off with a stripe in XP/2000 to get your combined space and leave the RAID till another day.

I'm setting up RAID 0 on my own PC - first investment is the drives - 2 250GB 16mb DiamondMax 10 SATA drives. The mobo is an Intel PBZLK 875i and had raid capabilities but I'll eventually buy a RaidCore controller.

gline

SwampThing wrote:

Not worth it mate. Controller's not up to much and the drives aren't too hot either.
You'd be better off with a stripe in XP/2000 to get your combined space and leave the RAID till another day.

I'm setting up RAID 0 on my own PC - first investment is the drives - 2 250GB 16mb DiamondMax 10 SATA drives. The mobo is an Intel PBZLK 875i and had raid capabilities but I'll eventually buy a RaidCore controller.

u got a link to the raidcore controller, im assuming its a good one??

happydude13

Cheers for the feedback.

Intention was to stripe the 2 SATA II drives using win XP
software RAID, with the card being used so that they would be
on different channels.

What card would you reccommend ?

eoin.

SwampThing

gline wrote:

u got a link to the raidcore controller, im assuming its a good one??

Check out [HTML]http://www20.tomshardware.com/storage/20031114/[/HTML]. You'll get a good idea of what you migh need from this review.

There is a company in the UK selling the Raidcore 4-port card for about £200STG - a bit pricey. If you're interested, I'll get you there details - they don't have the card on their website - I had to ring them for the price.

gline

nah thats a bit too pricey,thanks anyway

SwampThing

Well, I got my 2 250GB drives and am happily working away with a 486GB C drive, RAID 0.

I do notice faster drive access - not mind-blowing, but worth the investment I'd say.
It's hard to test exactly without having a second similar HDD config to test transfer rates etc.

Inspector Gadget

Is it redundant to point out that spanning disks using RAID-0 means that your odds of losing everything to any single disk failure increase a lot? I don't know, but I hope you're backing it up often...

Gadget

SwampThing

Yeah , bigger risk but faster performance - trade-off!

Strange thing this evening. Each of those two 250GB drives came with a re-badged Promise TX200-Plus SATA 150 controller. So, I tried hooking up my existing Seagate 120GB SATA drive to one of them. No joy.
The software that comes with it is proprietary Maxtor and it can't/won't see the Seagate drive. Tried drivers from the Promise website but they don't seem to want to update the driver for the controller. It's listed in Windows as an 'A347SCSI SCSI Controller'

Anyone any ideas? Anyone else using this packaged controller? I don't even see a BIOS boot screen from the card at power-on and no conflicts in Device Manager.

Apologies to the OP for the hijack!

Inspector Gadget

I think I have the same card (came in a "kit" with a 160GB Maxtor PATA drive I got from the US) - though I think it's a rebadged Promise TX2plus I've got (might be wrong here, mind)

My one currently has that 160GB Maxtor (PATA) and an 80GB IBM/Hitachi 7K250 (SATA) attached to it, with no problems.

(However, I was never able to attach a third drive (of any flavour, including Maxtor) to the controller and get it to see it, which apparently I should)

I seem to remember the A347 device being something installed by Alcohol (some percent or other)?

Gadget

happydude13

Seeing as how I didn't need huge capacity I decided to go for
smallish drives.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=83

with this adapter.

http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/product/proddetail.html?sess=no&language=English+US&cat=%2FProducts%2FAAR-1210SA&prodkey=AAR-1210SA

running RAID0

And maybe at some point I can upgrade to 10000rpm drives

Anyhow I suspect the next trauma will be reinstalling windows.

SwampThing

Inspector Gadget wrote:

I seem to remember the A347 device being something installed by Alcohol (some percent or other)?

Gadget

Makes sense - I've Al. 120% installed. So, have you any idea what's the problem here? Can you see the card in Device Manager? How did you get it to see the Hitachi drive? Am I going mad?

Thanks in advance, just to put a bit of moral pressure on ya!

Inspector Gadget

My card shows up in the device manager as "Maxtor Win2000 SATA/150 PCI Card" (or something very like that; I'm not near that computer right now) in the "SCSI & Raid Controllers" section. Have you installed the driver (hunt around on Maxtor.com)?

Does your _DISC_ (the Seagate) show up in the device manager? Also, are you using two of those controllers at the same time???

Gadget

SwampThing

The device is not showing up at all - nothing in the controllers section except the Alcohol thingy and the on-barod raid controller. I downloaded software from the Maxtor site last night - no joy. I even took some drivers from the Promise site, searching for the chip number. Still nothing. Maybe a dodgy controller?
I was going to ask you for your drivers but if XP isn't even picking up a device, drivers aren't much good to me.

Inspector Gadget

Hmm... you do have two of them, yes? That should allow you to rule that possibility in or out as appropriate, shouldn't it?

Alternatively, try the card other PCI slots in case you have an interrupt/IRQ/some-other-weirdness problem...? (can you check it from your BIOS?)

Also, try the PowerMax drive diagnostic tools from Maxtor (not MaxBlast, PowerMax... I know, holy trademarks, batman...) - it's bootable, and can (from my experience) identify the controllers if they're available to the system (as a PDC20375, the Promise chip on the controller, but nonetheless...) - i.e. if the BIOS can see them - and see the drives attached to them. It may help rule out a Windows-related issue?

Gadget

SwampThing

Thanks Inspector, I'll give it a go over the weekend and let you know how it goes.

Inspector Gadget

SwampThing:

I checked there a minute ago, and there IS a BIOS screen for the Maxtor controller! Sorry if I misled you...

Gadget

SwampThing

Hmm, I just booted my PC and behold! a Maxtor BIOS, shows the 120GB drive. Boots intop windows and with a bit of arseing about, I'm up and running.

Thanks for sticking with me on this one Gadget - it's good to bounce the 'what the f@*k' questions off someone. Cheers.

Inspector Gadget

Happy to oblige - anyway, what goes around comes around in places like this

Have fun filling those drives...
Gadget

happydude13

In case anyone is wondering,

Installed the array and then installed winxp on.

Supplied cd didn't work so had the create the driver floppy on another pc.

Otherwise all went well.

Read Throughput seems about 70% better than a single drive,

but I've only used hdtach so far, which is maybe not too accurate.

Anyhow.

SwampThing

What is good benchmarking s/w for HDD performance?

** Edit **

Here's a SiSoft 2005 Lite performance report for my HDD

BloodBath

Pcmark2004 will give you a semi accurate HD score.


BloodBath