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some raid advice ????

K

kandor

Gawd
Joined
Aug 24, 2005
Messages
632
Hi all,

I'm trying to figure out a solution to this problem. I have a home office with 2 computers. My work is all computer based (all cg and cad) with lots of data. My projects folder is 45gb. I have another 150gb of personal stuff like photos, video etc.

My 'work' system has an msi neo4 platinum mb with 2 raid controllers, my 'other' computer has an asus p4c800 deluxe with a raid controller.

I have 8 hard drives at the moment.

Work has a 2x250gb sata2 raid1 array on the nvidia controller and a 2x200gb sata1 raid1 array on the silicon data controller.

Other has a 2x120gb sata1 raid1 array.

Too many arrays!!!!!!!!!

I would like to combine the 2 arrays on the work computer but I think it's a bad idea because 2 drives are sata2 and 2 are sata1.

I would like to buy a raid controller card for all 6 raided drives (in a raid5) if I could but again a mix of sata1 and sata2.

Any advice?

Thanks,

Kandor
 
Mixing and matching drives is problematic, yeah. You're probably best off buying new drives. Raid 5 won't work very well at all in your situation - the capacity of a RAID 5 array is the size of the smallest disk times the number of disks minus one, so you'd actually get the same amount of space with the 120s used as with them unused (200 GB * (4-1) = 600GB = (120 GB * (6-1)). My suggestion is to get an 8-port raid controller (the Highpoint 2220 in pci or the 2320 in pci express are my recommendations) and some 250GB disks. Then you can back up the raid 1 array, create a new array of the 250s, and restore the data onto it.

 
Thanks for the info!

I was looking at using the winxp sw-raid5. I know it's slower, but I was wondering: I guess it would have the exact same limitations: restricting volume capacity to the size of the smallest member?

I guess budget wise I just bought the 2 250's, only recently acquired the 200gb sata1 as well specifically to match a year old 200gb I already owned. The 120's are spares from 2.5 years ago. (recently replaced when one dies within warranty by seagate)

I've got to cobble something together with these. Maybe 3 raid 1 arrays is the best I can do.

Mainly what I'm using them for is backing up data from one array to another out of abject paranoia. I just cannot lose data and doing dvd backups of close to 200gbs is a little time consuming.

The msi k8n neo4 platinum/sli has the silicon image 3132 raid chip onboard, which supposedly supports a sw assisted raid5, but not on my board, must be a newer revision.

ps. you might like this strip: http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war.html
 
In that case, I'd suggest using the Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 for around $100, depending where you're willing to buy from. You'll still have the limitation of raid 5; it's inherent in the striping mechanism that the disks have to match sizes. Maybe you could sell off the 120s and get another 250? Putting the 3 250s into raid 5 would give you 500 GB of space instead of the 320 you get with two raid-1 arrays. Note, though, that you can't expand software raid under XP without the Highpoint card, so if you bought more disks later they'd have to go on a different array. I think spending a little more money on this setup is warranted - buy the Highpoint and at least 2 more 250s, that's about $450 worth of hardware for a 750GB array that's expandable. That expansion is easily worth the extra money - you don't have to go through this whole thing again in a few months or years when the array fills, just pop in another disk and expand.

Edit: I like this strip. And this one. I like my social commentary subtle and/or nonsensical.

 
Ok, thanks again for the info. Just to clarify: Do both the highpoint and the AoC-SAT2-MV8 use the systems cpu to generate parity info or do they have onboard processors for that? I'm guessing they need the cpu due to the low cost.

One thing I need to consider is that I save large files (between 50 to 100+ mb) very regularly. Probably every 5 minutes or so while I'm working and I have to wait when this happens. I've been reading about raid 5 and it sounds like write performance, especially on a sw-raid may be an issue.

Again, I appreciate your assistance.

Kandor
 
They both use the system's CPU for generating parity. The AOC is a completely non-raid card, and the Highpoint has partial acceleration. However, the Windows software raid sucks major ass, so if you're using that (with the AOC) you'll probably be looking at 5 or 6 MB/s as compared to a few hundred with the Highpoint. You might be best off using one of the raid 1 arrays as a scratch disk, or converting one to raid 0. Use another volume for scratch and have it backed up to the raid nightly or so. Even at 5MB/s, within 10k seconds (~3 hours) you will have backed up 50 GB. That should be plenty to keep up with you, but if you'd rather use the array on your work machine directly, the Highpoint would be a better choice.

BTW, if you're picking between the 2220 and 2320, get the 2320 - it's got a much, much faster bus (at least when the 2220 would be in a standard PCI slot) and it'll work in the x4 slot of the neo4. That can keep your speeds from being limited by the 133 MB/s of the PCI bus.

You might also consider setting up a seperate machine and accessing the files over a network. That would let you use the vastly superior Linux software raid, which gives me ~50MB/s read and write on 3 disks and the AOC. It would also give more fault tolerance; one machine can fail without affecting the other.

Finally, there are basically two ways to go at this point: Highpoint and Windows on the same machine, or Supermicro and Linux on a different machine. Both have advantages and disadvantages, but eventually you'll have to pick ;) If you can give me an idea which way you're leaning, it'd be helpful to me.

 
Hi,

Both the 2220 and the 2320 are over 400$ here (canada). So my only affordable option (believe me when I say I've blown my hardware budget in the last 12 months :eek: ) is the AOC card (which I havn't been able to find here yet).

If that's the case and I install the AOC card in my winxp system then I have no choice but to use windows raid5 software??? Is that right? From my growing but limited understanding the AOC card is really nothing more than 8 sata ports running through the pci-x bus?

Thinking that way, my neo4 k8n mb has 4 nvidia sata ports and 2 silicon image sata ports. I could use all 4 nvidia ports for a raid5 array.

Is there any other raid5 software that runs under windows?

Thanks again!
 
NCIX has the 2320 for $308, and the 2220 for $320. FrontierPC also has both cards for around $320.

But WRT software raid. If you have to use windows and don't have a special controller, you have to use windows software raid (and this requires hacking your copy of windows!). And it doesn't expand, and it's slow, and it's unsupported, and it makes you use dynamic disks... but if you can live with all that, it's for you ;)

 
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