8-port hardware raid

[bazaarboy]

hi I have 8x samsung F2 1.5TB drives (eco-greens), and I want to build a hardware raid array (operating on Raid5 or Raid6) - for my new media server (running win xp pro) which already has a 2x WD boot disk (raid0) on a ASUS P5W DH deluxe motherboard

having looked at a well-known auction site - it seems that the adaptec ASR-4800SAS is affordable - but not sure it will work in the ASUS motherboard?

any ideas or suggestions of other cards??
thanks

 

[MaxBurn]

Welcome. Check out these two threads.

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7815

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7886

 

[bazaarboy]

thanks those PERC cards look interesting - I see there are additional batteries / memory modules etc - are they necessary? I would prefer just a card that doesnt need upgrading! lol

 

[ddrueding]

The extra memory isn't necessary at all, just gives a few percentage points improvement in certain circumstances. The battery allows you to cache writes and reads safely. If your data isn't exceptionally valuable, or you can deal with the performance penalty of not caching your writes, you don't need it.

You can also buy a card that already has both, then you don't need to upgrade it!

 

[bazaarboy]

has anyone used the adaptec ASR-4800SAS cards? I can get one (including the sas-sata cables) for about half the price of the perc 5i ....
thanks

 

[Stereodude]

Perc 5/i's are all of $100 used with RAM and battery, so that must be one cheap Adaptec card.

 

[Will Rickards]

It seems to be 150-200 on ebay, and much more elsewhere.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm not a fan of hardware RAID, because you're taking the chance of losing your data to some kind of controller failure.

In my experience, even the quasi-hardware RAID available with Intel south bridges isn't necessarily portable to newer iterations of their chips (ICH9 RAID0 to ICH10 reports RAID member disks as unusable), let alone the issues you might have if you have 6TB+ of data on a hard array for a type of controller that you may or may not be able to buy again.

I very strongly urge anyone considering large storage volumes for their home data dumps to consider a softRAID. There are hacks for allowing SoftRAID5 on desktop versions of Windows, or even better, you can set up proper volume management on a *nix host. Linux has really, really nice software RAID features at this point.

 

[Stereodude]

In my experience, even the quasi-hardware RAID available with Intel south bridges isn't necessarily portable to newer iterations of their chips (ICH9 RAID0 to ICH10 reports RAID member disks as unusable)

Sorry, but this isn't true. They are completely portable if done correctly on the Intel controllers.

 

[Stereodude]

It seems to be 150-200 on ebay, and much more elsewhere.

It's all where you look. I see them sell frequently in the classified section of several forums for about $100.

 

[Mercutio]

Sorry, but this isn't true. They are completely portable if done correctly on the Intel controllers.

No, they aren't. I tested with a pair of 160GB Samsung drives in RAID0 against multiple Gigabyte, Tyan and Intel boards and chipsets from ICH7 to ICH10. I had to recreate the array in every circumstance; the controller BIOS would not recognize the drives' existing configuration.

 

[Stereodude]

No, they aren't. I tested with a pair of 160GB Samsung drives in RAID0 against multiple Gigabyte, Tyan and Intel boards and chipsets from ICH7 to ICH10. I had to recreate the array in every circumstance; the controller BIOS would not recognize the drives' existing configuration.

Intel and other user accounts don't agree with you. Intel link Tom's Testing

Heck, the ICH9R in my desktop recognized an array recreated on one of my Perc Cards.

 

[MaxBurn]

I am getting the feeling that Merc has had some bad experiences with things once or twice and gets totally burnt on them and won't use it ever again. I don't blame him but I don't hold grudges against hardware raid and WD forever, I do often swear off something for a while when I have a bad experience and read others having it. Think that's prudent but I generally come back eventually for a second try in a generation or two.

On the above subject I can only say my feelings are hardware raid even with redundant disks and hot spares are never a replacement for proper backups. I think we can all get behind that.

I have spotted the PERC6i for the 150-200 range recently, I think people are catching on to that one and prices are going up. I thought about a PERC6e but the external bays are super expensive, haven't followed through to see if you can use non dell stuff for them.

 

[Mercutio]

Heck, the ICH9R in my desktop recognized an array recreated on one of my Perc Cards.

I happen to have a pair of Gigabyte i7 boards here. I'll run my test again with both of them.

 

[Mercutio]

I am getting the feeling that Merc has had some bad experiences with things once or twice and gets totally burnt on them and won't use it ever again.

I have a lifetime of bad experiences with Western Digital drives. They weren't any good in the mid 90s. They weren't any good in the early part of this decade. They don't get another chance.

Given the choice between being able to recover my data from a failed RAID controller and having to search high and low for an appropriate replacement just so I can see my data, I'll take the choice that actually allows recovery. That means software RAID.

 

[bazaarboy]

perhaps I've been lucky but WD drives have always behaved themselves with me...

As for hardware Vs software raid - most of the hardware controllers have quoted MTBF of hundreds of years - sure, they can still go wrong but software raid requires more components to remain failure-free

 

[Mercutio]

OK:

My source drives are a pair of Samsung SP1614C 160GB SATA drives on a RAID0 created on a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 with an ICH9R southbridge. The drives work fine in RAID0 with that board, as verified by the fact that I had to shut down Windows to take the drives out of that chassis and move them to test in another system.

System #2 and #3 use Gigabyte EX58-UDR3 motherboards with ICH10R southbridges. I plug the drives in, set the disk controller to RAID mode in the BIOS, hit CTRL-I and for each of my Samsung arrays I get "Unrecognized Disk." I can recreate the array, but that erases the drives.

 

[Stereodude]

Well, Intel did say not to boot from them.

If the new system includes a different I/O controller than the one on which the RAID volume was created, you should not attempt to boot to the RAID volume. You should boot to an operating system on another non-RAID hard drive or RAID volume and, from there, access the contents of the original RAID volume.

As an example, if you move a bootable RAID 0 volume created on a system with ICH5R to a system with the Intel® 82801GR I/O controller hub (ICH7R), you should not boot to the RAID 0 volume. Instead, you should install an operating system on a non-RAID hard drive or a new RAID volume and access the contents of the original RAID 0 volume from within that operating system.

 

[Mercutio]

Either they're portable or they're not. If the disk controller doesn't recognize an array made by a different controller made by the same company, I'd call that non-portable.

The difference between a P35-DS4 and an EX58-UD3R is small enough that a normal drive with Windows on it can go back and forth between the two boards with only a quick re-detection of hardware. It's pretty reasonable to think that a "hardware" RAID volume would be portable between the two as well.

 

[Mercutio]

perhaps I've been lucky but WD drives have always behaved themselves with me...

As for hardware Vs software raid - most of the hardware controllers have quoted MTBF of hundreds of years - sure, they can still go wrong but software raid requires more components to remain failure-free

Software RAID requires only a functional operating system and normal disk controllers. You need those things regardless. It's very useful to be able to build an array of arbitrary size from the collection of controllers on a modern system. At times I've had a single array spanned from Intel, JMicron and 3ware controllers.

Controllers do fail. You have no idea where your individual hardware is going to fall on the reliability bell curve. That's not a big deal if you have an identical replacement handy, but it's a killer for people who are getting their high end stuff as Ebay/Craigslist cast-offs.

Depending on what you're doing, hardware RAID might be faster, but at least in the context of home media storage, I've found that I have no need for fast access time or transfer rate. I'd prefer to have it, but given the choice between increases in capacity and increases in speed, I'll take capacity; the vast majority of the time I'm going to be limited by the speed of my network equipment anyway.

 

[sechs]

has anyone used the adaptec ASR-4800SAS cards? I can get one (including the sas-sata cables) for about half the price of the perc 5i

This is one of those you-get-what-you-pay-for situations.

Adaptec + RAID = angle-side-side

 

[LunarMist]

This is one of those you-get-what-you-pay-for situations.

Adaptec + RAID = angle-side-side

What? Is it a low profile type?

 

[sechs]

What? Is it a low profile type?

You lost me here.

 

[LunarMist]

OK, I don't know jack about the servers and thought that perhaps the low profile cards were not perpendicular to the motherboard (on their sides). Which angle is involved?

 

[bazaarboy]

just to give you an update:
in the end I got an LSI MegaRAID SAS 8208ELP card
i'm just about to set up Win Server 2003 (64-bit) and build my RAID5 array on that...
I actually tried using the card with a Win XP 32 bit system but the newly-initialised RAID5 drive was just not visible at all...

 

[MaxBurn]

Did the HBA drivers not load or something? Why wouldn't the OS see it?

 

[bazaarboy]

unclear - i just assumed win xp 32-bit would have trouble with a 12TB logical drive, so i had a low threshold for moving on to server 2003 64-bit, which i am trying out currently!

 

[MaxBurn]

Yes quite, I forgot about the sheer size of the volume we were talking about here.

 

[sechs]

OK, I don't know jack about the servers and thought that perhaps the low profile cards were not perpendicular to the motherboard (on their sides). Which angle is involved?

http://tinyurl.com/yknc4ma