raid card choice. (esata)

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codegrinder

[H]ard|Gawd
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Does anyone use them? I'm looking for one to pair with this enclosure.

But I can't seem to find one that supports a port multiplier and use an x8 or x16 slot the as the 1x is not enough bandwidth.

Is this a bad solution? I have 8 320s left over and this looked the cheapest to get a backup server going.
 
why pay over $300 for this 8 bay unit when u can get something like norco 8, 16 or 20 bay version for same $ ?
Build your own nas using whs or linux or whatever you're comfortable with.
You'll get much better performance and no messing around with port multipliers etc.
 
most of norcos cases are rack mount, i need a tower for space reasons.

whs blows. linux works great if you want to spend a few days/months/years messing with it.

i want to plug it into a computer that already up and going and just share the raid array out.
 
codegrinder said:
Does anyone use them? I'm looking for one to pair with this enclosure.

But I can't seem to find one that supports a port multiplier and use an x8 or x16 slot the as the 1x is not enough bandwidth.

Is this a bad solution? I have 8 320s left over and this looked the cheapest to get a backup server going.
Click to expand...

I agree with Axan said but just to reinforce:

x1 interface will not be your bottleneck.It will be the multipliers.
Each SATA connection has a theoretical throughput of 300MB/s and an PCIe x1 2.0 lane is 500MB/s.

And if your going to be using a Port multiplier then 4 drives will be sharing a theoretical 300MB/s link.

And if your even considering running something like that off an onboard eSATA port you can just forget it. Most of the onboard eSATAs use the Silicon 3114 chipset which blows goats and you will get like 20MB/s throughput....seriously dont do it.

See where Im going with all this?
 
codegrinder said:
yea :( build a new fileserver. with a real raid card. my ready nas is dying.
Click to expand...

Yea i know thats not the answer you wanted to hear but its way cheaper than to buy a DAS.
A good 8bay SAS DAS will cost you ~$1000 without drives......and prob no HBA......thats just stupid
 
codegrinder said:
most of norcos cases are rack mount, i need a tower for space reasons.
Click to expand...
There are plenty of tower cases that can handle 10-12 drives; you might need to get 3.5" to 5.25" adapter rails, but they're dirt cheap. Or you can get a tower server case with lots of bays.

whs blows. linux works great if you want to spend a few days/months/years messing with it.
Click to expand...
FreeNAS? OpenFiler?
 
are there any good cases like the norco but desktop style ? not a big fan of the thermaltake...ect cases. I need one with all the hotswaps in it
 
You do know that that the Norco case can be mounted on its side right? Effectively making it a tower style case?
 
codegrinder said:
are there any good cases like the norco but desktop style ? not a big fan of the thermaltake...ect cases. I need one with all the hotswaps in it
Click to expand...

I dont know of any desktop cases that have native Hotswaps.

If you have to have hotswaps, then you really have two options:
1) Server Case which will be BIG and loud
2) Desktop case with Hotswaps added.....expensive
 
keenan said:
There are plenty of tower cases that can handle 10-12 drives; you might need to get 3.5" to 5.25" adapter rails, but they're dirt cheap. Or you can get a tower server case with lots of bays.


FreeNAS? OpenFiler?
Click to expand...

I've tried both, their performance sucked.... after one or two gigs of transfer (memory filled up im assuming) and the speed dipped and took forever to transfer 4 gigs. Also had performance issues with vista and windows 7.


i was thinking of trying unraid or flex raid have you used these?
 
nitrobass24 said:
I dont know of any desktop cases that have native Hotswaps.

If you have to have hotswaps, then you really have two options:
1) Server Case which will be BIG and loud
2) Desktop case with Hotswaps added.....expensive
Click to expand...


sorry i hot swaps are not a necessity, but it does make it nice with 8 drives and one fails.
 
Actually NVM forget all that
I just reread what you are doing and you want backups right?

Really you should sell the 320s and just by the Acer or HP WHS and be done, you will have spent less money and have more space than doing what you are trying to do with what you have.

For backups you dont need highspeed RAID because you are essentially limited to LAN speed anyways.
Theres no need for RAID cards, and expansion boxes, and NAS's if you are just backing some computers.
 
i think the included card is x1 pcie 1.0 so the bandwidth is 250MB/S with 8 hdds using 2 esata ports the card would be the bottleneck. Even if you go with better x4 pcie controller the sil port multiplier chip used in the enclosure is crap.
I found some x4 and x8 controllers here http://www.satasite.com/esata-pci-e-4-port-esatapcie8.htm if you want to try.
 
I dunno what you're doing with it, but Linux softraid + Samba (which OpenFiler is based on) nearly saturates GigE with a 4x500GB RAID5 for me, and it's a pretty low-end box doing a whole bunch of other things. I've never had trouble with performance; I'm happy with 90MB/s. I built a FreeNAS box for a friend as well and haven't had any issues there either. Make sure you use quality NICs, Realtek and Marvell onboard are crap, but a board with Intel onboard or add a $30 Intel PCIe x1 card.

As far as cases, yeah not a lot of pedastal cases with hot-swap ports, but Athena makes one with 8 hot swap bays for a little less than the Norco 4020, but as far as drive density vs. cost, the Norco is the clear winner. Putting it on its side is an option, but it is indeed pretty f'ing massive.

If hotswap isn't a necessity, then hell, just buy a cheap tower case, Celeron CPU, decent motherboard and a AOC-USAS-L8i. Install FreeNAS or WHS or whatever you want.
 
codegrinder said:
I've tried both, their performance sucked.... after one or two gigs of transfer (memory filled up im assuming) and the speed dipped and took forever to transfer 4 gigs. Also had performance issues with vista and windows 7.


i was thinking of trying unraid or flex raid have you used these?
Click to expand...

UnRAID is essential single disk speed because it does not use distributed parity and thus can only go as fast as the parity is written to its dedicated drive.

FlexRAID is not really RAID because its not real-time.
It runs on a schedule to write parity.
It does not do any Striping so unless you are already running a RAID you are limited to single disk speed as well.
 
codegrinder said:
hmm might go that way!! all the pictures i had seen looked like it was just part of the case.
Click to expand...

Only on the 4020 can you remove the ears, the 4220 you can not remove the ears so be careful what you purchase.
 
keenan said:
I dunno what you're doing with it, but Linux softraid + Samba (which OpenFiler is based on) nearly saturates GigE with a 4x500GB RAID5 for me, and it's a pretty low-end box doing a whole bunch of other things. I've never had trouble with performance; I'm happy with 90MB/s. I built a FreeNAS box for a friend as well and haven't had any issues there either. Make sure you use quality NICs, Realtek and Marvell onboard are crap.
.
Click to expand...

OMFG you can saturate GbE with 4 drives in RAID5......:rolleyes:
125MB/s across 4 drive is nothing to bragg about. Serioulsy

I can pull 100MB/s with a single disk.

Which proves the point that RAID in this case if pointless, you are going to be limited to the speed of your LAN which in most peoples cases is going to be less than 50MB/s because they have cheap switches and have onboard RealTrash NICs in their comps.

Its just a fact of life.
 
Uhm, I wasn't claiming that performance was great for RAID in general, but the OP specifically said he had poor performance *TRANSFERRING FILES* when using them. FWIW, I get about 275MB/s read and write on the local machine.

RAID isn't pointless, it improves storage efficiency if you want redundancy.
 
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