new array design

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tiebird321

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 6, 2004
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I took a server out of production last week
(MPC netframe 3400)

in it sitting unused was a Promise FastTrack SX4000 Raid card
there are no records why it was in the machine so my boss told me i get to have it since i found it.

the card is the older (better?) non lite version of this card.

the info i can find about it says that its a 4 channal card that can take up to 4 ata drives
I figured if it was going to have normal ide channals on it, it would have to support 2 drives per channel
so i plugged 7 random HD's i had sitting around into it (ranging from 6-160gb)
it registered all of them and it would let me create 7 different single drive raid arrays
but complained that drives had to be the same size to make raid 5 arrays

I just put together a new server to act as my apartments media machine
Dual MP 1600's on a tyan 2469 mobo
2gb pc2100 cl2 ram (at $80gb figured might as well fill it out)
36gb 10k u320 boot drive
radeon 9800 all in wonder
4U rack mount server chasis with 780W triple redundent PS

i was origionaly thinking of just putting some $99 seagate 200gb SATA's on a cheap controller card

if it comes down to it i could use linux or server 2003 etc. so i could have a software based raid 5 array

now that i have this card i was thinking that i might buy 8 of these and build a 2tb raid 5 array out of it so i dont have to do as much playing off of DVD's as i was worried about

this would simplify my life a bit because I could just start storing everything on the one machine and not have it randomly placed on 8 machines round the place like it is now.

i wanted to know if there was a good reason i shouldn't be running this for the simple use of media storage (shared for the apartment). the promise website says the card is only suposed to work with 4 drives but i have clearly found otherwise. is there a reason i shouldn;t trust it with running 8?
 
Your performance will stink if you are trying to run RAID5 on drives that are in a master/slave config. Best bet would be to get 4 larger drives and go that route.
 
It is against best practices to use master/slave setups in RAID5... big NO NO.

If there is ever a problem with one drive.. with Master/Slave configs there is a good chance of the second will have issues as well (not major issues but communication issues).

Since RAID 5 allows for one disk to be lost but not 2 you would be up a creek with out a paddle and would be in the same spot if you used RAID 0.

Though it may be possible to replace the problem disk (if you know which one it actually is) and communication MIGHT come back to the 2nd.
 
all the data that is going to be on the HD's is fully backed up on CD/DVD in 2 locations
aka my anime and movie collection
the point was to be a giant jukebox of sorts so i didn;t have to find the disc amoungts 1000's when i wanted to watch something

the card is only 32bit 33mhz so i was expecting about 1gig minute of transfer speed
the stuff i'm going to be watching only requires 10MB minute of transfer speed so i wasn;t going to be fussed about the performance

the system is non critical to be up 24/7 so if i was to lose a drive and couldn;t recover it wouldn;t be the end of the world at all
just means a week of swapping dvd's out of a rom drive to get everything back onto the system

clearly i shouldn't be using it in a production system
but i just felt that using the raid 5 would give me a better chance at stability than a strait raid 0
would having a software based raid 5 system be better than having it based on the card?
 
tiebird321 said:
all the data that is going to be on the HD's is fully backed up on CD/DVD in 2 locations
aka my anime and movie collection
the point was to be a giant jukebox of sorts so i didn;t have to find the disc amoungts 1000's when i wanted to watch something

the card is only 32bit 33mhz so i was expecting about 1gig minute of transfer speed
the stuff i'm going to be watching only requires 10MB minute of transfer speed so i wasn;t going to be fussed about the performance

the system is non critical to be up 24/7 so if i was to lose a drive and couldn;t recover it wouldn;t be the end of the world at all
just means a week of swapping dvd's out of a rom drive to get everything back onto the system

clearly i shouldn't be using it in a production system
but i just felt that using the raid 5 would give me a better chance at stability than a strait raid 0
would having a software based raid 5 system be better than having it based on the card?
Click to expand...


I am going to give you the best advice anyone will ever give you. Sell the promise card on Ebay and buy a threeware card. Save yourself from the headaches, low performance, horrible drivers, and non existant support.
 
Eickst said:
I am going to give you the best advice anyone will ever give you. Sell the promise card on Ebay and buy a threeware card. Save yourself from the headaches, low performance, horrible drivers, and non existant support.
Click to expand...

if this was anyform of production machine where i cared at all about the data i would agree completly
at this level i'm only caring about basicly using it as a cheap 4 port ide adapter for the machine
 
Well if you don't need redundancy I would stay away from RAID5... I have had problems in the past and have since reverted to using my raid card at a 4 port ide controller just like you are thinking...

If a drive ever goes I only have to replace the data on that drive... it would be some work but not nearly as much as when my raid5 went POOF!
 
I had to think about this for a second, but you're right. The lack of disconnect/reconnect ability on the same channel would indeed kill RAID 5 performance.

-Larry

brycejones said:
Your performance will stink if you are trying to run RAID5 on drives that are in a master/slave config. Best bet would be to get 4 larger drives and go that route.
Click to expand...
 
Listen to this guy :)

I just did this myself.

3Ware 9500S-8 Card.
Six 300GB Seagate Sata 7200.8's.
New Antec 550w Power Supply.
A few misc adapters.

About $1600 from NewEgg.

-Larry


Eickst said:
I am going to give you the best advice anyone will ever give you. Sell the promise card on Ebay and buy a threeware card. Save yourself from the headaches, low performance, horrible drivers, and non existant support.
Click to expand...
 
If you don't care about the data, skip the RAID5. You're wasting drive space for no reason. Remember, you lose the equal of one full drive with RAID5.

-Larry

tiebird321 said:
if this was anyform of production machine where i cared at all about the data i would agree completly
at this level i'm only caring about basicly using it as a cheap 4 port ide adapter for the machine
Click to expand...
 
A) You've linked to SATA drives for a PATA controller ;)
B) Buy your HDDs at ZipZoomFly, even if they cost more there.
C) Many RAID controllers do not support RAID arrays larger than 2TB. The conventional MBR does not support volumes larger than 2TB. You will need to use Dynamic Disks to work around this limitation in Windows.
D) RAID-5 is still he way to go. Rebuilding from optical backup really sucks. You'll want some fault tolerance to protect uptime, even if you don't are about the data. You won't mind the performance hit in your application.
 
DougLite said:
A) You've linked to SATA drives for a PATA controller ;)
B) Buy your HDDs at ZipZoomFly, even if they cost more there.
C) Many RAID controllers do not support RAID arrays larger than 2TB. The conventional MBR does not support volumes larger than 2TB. You will need to use Dynamic Disks to work around this limitation in Windows.
D) RAID-5 is still he way to go. Rebuilding from optical backup really sucks. You'll want some fault tolerance to protect uptime, even if you don't are about the data. You won't mind the performance hit in your application.
Click to expand...
A) fixed linky $126 shipped instead of $135 ;)
B) i will probobly buy them locally to support my town
C) 8 drives raid 5 = 7 total drives, 300gb actualy means ~279gb, 279x7 = 1953gb so i'm still under 2TB by a safe margin
D) agreed, though do you think going with the hardware card or software over it is better?
i really only want to load everything onto it once ;)
 
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