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Looking for a cheap controller to support 3 drive Raid 0

mrgstiffler

mrgstiffler

[H]F Junkie
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Dec 20, 2000
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As the title says, I'm looking for a cheap controller that will allow me to set up a 3 drive Raid 0 array. Any recommendations?
 
cheap is relative
I assume IDE? PATA or SATA?
you wont find a three channel, but there are plenty of 4 channel cards
however a 3 or 4 channel RAID 0 could have two potential problems

1. its going to impact your CPU if it doesnt have its own processor
and
2. it might be bottlenecked by the PCI slot (depending on the HDDs and the access pattern) @ 132MB/s (Based on a 32bit 33MHz PCI slot)

what is the application?
 
Thanks for the response, not sure why I didn't include more info there. Here is the system it's going into:
3GHz P4
1GB PC3200
3x 160GB Maxtor ATA133

This is going to be used for storage of large files, around 400MB-4GB, and is going to be a dedicated fileserver. I found out that the controller I had planned on using only supports a 2 drive Master/Master Raid 0 Array. I understand that it's going to be a bottleneck on a 33MHz PCI slot. I really do not want a Software RAID option, but it's looking like that's all that there is in my price-range: < $70. Would a SoftRAID solution affect performance that much on this machine? If not, what are the big differences between the $30 options and this guy: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=16-118-007&depa=0 ?

So, basically what I'm looking for is a hardware based RAID controller that supports a 3 Drive Master/Slave/Master RAID 0 setup and also costs less than $70. Unless, a Software based solution would be okay, considering the 133MB/sec limit of the PCI bus and the 3GHz CPU...

EDIT: Forgot to mention that the best Hardware Raid controller I can find is this guy: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=16-115-003&depa=0
But that's right at my limit, and I really don't want to spend that much.
 
well I think those cards just have a controller not a processor, but if its a dedicated server, you have plenty of CPU cycles to spare

the point here is that there really isnt much difference between software and hardware RAID without the extra processor, however the impact from striping is nothing compared to parity calciulations that would be involved with a higher RAID level (3 or 5)

since this is a dedicated server, the PCI bottleneck probably isnt an issue anyway, even with Gigabit LAN your at 100MB/s

you do realize of course the increased probability of data loss by adding stripes to an RAID 0 array
(MTBF of HDD x number of HDDs + extraneous factors)
 
So you'd recommend that I go with a JBOD array instead? Nothing is really mission critical, mostly just TV episodes and movies from my DVD collection, so drive failure or data loss would just piss me off, but would not cause any real damage really... Thank you for the reply.
 
a true JBOD array is nearly as prone to data loss, though technically you should be able to rescue data off of any drive that hasent failed, whereas with the RAID 0 failure of any HDD kills the whole thing, there is no need for a RAID 0 if all your doing is serving media, I thought you where trying to edit it real time :p

Thats why you might consider a RAID 0 array
consider this your DVD player is at UDMA mode 2 (33 MB/s) :p

Id say your not looking for a RAID card at all unless you want to go RAID 5 (a good idea IMO)

just get a IDE controller card with 2 channels supporting master and slave on each channel

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...410&manufactory=1640&DEPA=0&sortby=14&order=1

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...410&manufactory=1119&DEPA=0&sortby=14&order=1

If you do want to go RAID 5, we should talk some more ;)
 
I guess that makes sense, thanks. Is there any to have Windows treat multiple drives as one in a JBOD like fashion?
 
yeh, but its not really a good idea,
complicates the hell out of things

see the Data Storage FAQ > Advanced HDD Issues > Dynamic Disks Section, Read all the links

any particular reason you couldnt just use 3 partitions? or mount the other drives to folders in one partition?

Dynamic Disks suck
 
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