IDE RAID

[bdemenil]

I'm interested in setting up a cheap IDE raid config for recording - to benefit from RAID's fast sequential reading. Anybody out there using it. How's the stability. What card should I get, what drives ect . . .

 

[ola]

Search this forum and ye shall find more answers than you can shake a stick at.

/O

 

[Scheisskopf99]

don't trust add-in cards

Such an informative post, O

If you are really interested in RAID, I'd go for one of the new 686B southbridge motherboards, Abit KT7A-RAID or Asus A7V133 RAID. Of these I prefer the Asus. See the review at http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/a7v133/default.asp

These are both Athlon boards, however. Also, with RAID, you need at least 2 hard drive, preferable of the same size.

I use an Abit KT7-RAID which is the older 686A southbridge board. Setting up the drives and getting them formatted correctly is a challenge, but once everything is set up it's great. There are guides on the internet for setting it up. I don't have the links off-hand.

I wouldn't trust the add-on boards for IDE devices. I've seen too many problems with them.

 

[ola]

Well Shithead, I have written my share on the subject. If you had used the search, you'd know... If you got a specific question, I'll gladly get more detailed.

 

[Hard2Hear]

southbridge = VIA chipset = SUCK!

If you get one and start having problems...don't say I didn't warn you.

Use a RAID controller card. A decent one is $$ but do it.

H2H

 

[bdemenil]

Hard to hear, is the raid controller built into the new Asus boards any good. Is a seperate controller card better than onboard? Can you recomend a good IDE RAID controller?

I did search the boards before posting, but, influenced by Ola's not so informative post, I did search again more thoroughly - I found this thread , which is pretty good.

https://homerecording.com/bbs//showthread.php?threadid=9097

seems like RAID 0+1 is the way to go. I would be interested in knowing how much inferior RAID5 performance is to RAID 0+1 though. Also which RAID controller...

 

[Hard2Hear]

RAID 5 is really inferior to nothing...hot-swappable drive mirroring and data sharing...but you have to have the $$ to do it right. I have an SCSI array controller that was about $1200 and 8 36GB SCSI HD's at around $700 a piece. SCSI is really the place to do RAID and it work correctly. Plus, these are 15000 RPM drives.
Enough gloating....now to answer your question

I would like the Asus boards IF they would use the Intel 815i chipset. I have gone through 3 VIA 133 chipset boards, and had real problems with every one. I would agree with the on-board, but ONLY if it has the Intel chipset. As far as an IDE RAID controller, the Promise controller is pretty much what the on-board is, so you can buy one of those and get the same performance.

H2H

 

[bdemenil]

Know anything about Epox motherboards or MegaTrends IDE RAID controllers - this is what is being recomended to me (with AMD K7).

 

[Scheisskopf99]

check it out

You can get motherboard reviews at http://www.motherboards.org In the left column, select 'Manufacturers', then 'E' and 'Epox' and click on the 'Reviews' Link, etc.

 

[RWhite]

If you want to read a fine piece on the basics of setting up an IDE raid system, check out:

http://www.maximumpc.com/reprint/RAID/raid4.html

And incidentally, if you check out tomshardware.com and do even a small amount of searching you will find dozens of pieces describing recent Intel chipsets (particularly the i820 RAMBUS disaster) as being big barking dogs, while the VIA Apollo Pro133A chipset (as well as the newer VIA chipsets) got excellant reveiws. I own 2 ASUS P3V4X boards with that chipset, have bought 40+ more systems for my company with the same motherboard, and they have all been rock solid.

I liked the BX440 chipset, and I hope Intel got it right again with the 815, but I will have to see more positive press before buying one. And my next cpu will probably be an AMD anyways.