Areca ARC 11xx + SF-1200 or X25m

[buckrogers]

Ignoring for the moment the fact that ICH10R or a newer pci-e card would result in far superior performance, does someone have any experience with an Areca ARC 1110/1120 controlling a modern SSD, in particular the sandforce based drives?

I believe the Intel x25 drives are super compatible, but the sandforce cards seem to have more resilient write performance in applications where trim is no possible (e.g., XP).

 

[Stereodude]

What are you hoping to gain with the RAID controller?

 

[buckrogers]

It is for a project that involves the use of a really old main board that only has onboard ATA33. Bandwidth via the pci bus should be somewhere between 100-133mb/s, which I would like to make use of, and benefit from the low latency of an SSD. Since I am running win2k and XP, no trim is available, so an SSD that maintains its performance without trim is preferred. The x25-m 80GB should do fine, especially with some spare area left over, but something like a Corsair F60 or Vertex 2 60GB is more readily available at my local stores, already has 28% spare area, and are the least fussy when it comes to lack of trim and alignment. Cheaper too.

However, it is a risk since I do not know whether there will be compatibility with the Areca controller.

 

[Stereodude]

So, why do you need a RAID controller for that?

Does the motherboard you have even have a PCI-X slot?

 

[LunarMist]

There are a gazillion PCI cards to SATA in the $15-20 range. I suggest buying one.

 

[buckrogers]

A Sil3124-2 based card from ebay will cost me $50 shipped. An Areca 1110, which is PCI 2.2 compliant, will cost just over double that. But at least I will hardware raid, which is a good thing where CPU power is limited to begin with, and I have the option of striping some high performance 7200rpm drives like the F4 or WD black, to store apps and games onto.

 

[CougTek]

Don't expect to break 110MBpps on a PCI bus. The Areca should work fine since it is a PCI 2.2 card (altough the motherboard must not be more than PCI 2.1 compliant). I doubt that even with perfect performances from the Areca you'll be able to come even close to saturate the PCI bus. You'll probably be RAM and CPU limited well before that. The oldest computers I repare are P3 with SDRAM. According to Memtest, they can only read/write to memory at 120MBps or less. And those computers are faster than the one you will work with. And that's without an OS loaded and other applications running simultaneously. IMO, even in the best case scenario, you'll be very disappointed with the end result.

BTW, there are tons of used P4 3GHz for sale at ~120$-150$ and even Core 2 Duo used systems for less than 200$. Both have SATA ports and are way faster than a system not supporting more than ATA33. Just my 2¢.

 

[buckrogers]

Thanks for that.

I do have an Adaptec 1420SA at hand, which I have read will do around 100mb/s via the pci bus with an X25-m. No guess work or risk, or much cost.

I could just use that as a sata JBOD controller, grab an X25-v 40gb as cheaply as I can, maybe add 1 or 2 F4 spinpoint 320gb single platter drives for apps, which is capable of saturating the 1420SA / pci bus, at least on seq. reads, and forget about the Areca and raid.

 

[buckrogers]

The Areca should work fine since it is a PCI 2.2 card (altough the motherboard must not be more than PCI 2.1 compliant).

I thought 2.2 compliant means it needs to be in a 2.2 slot, and not a 2.1 compliant slot? Of course, the pci-x card needs to be physically keyed to run in a 5 volt pci lost too.

 

[buckrogers]

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?65970-OCZ-Vertex-Turbo-30GB-Problem/page2

In the above thread a chap using a pair of Vertex turbo 30's in raid 0, via an Areca ARC 1110 on a pci 32bit 33Mhzslot, Asus P5E3 board, achieved 110mb/s and 85mb/s seq. read and write speeds, 0.2ms access times.

At the very least it shows that the old ARC 11xx series do work with the vertex indillix barefoot based SSD's, and reasonable speeds can be achieved. Given the Areca card has its own CPU, I wonder if this is the sort of performance one can expect even on hardware older than the P5E3. Only one way to find out...

 

[Stereodude]

You'll find out when you try it.

 

[Santilli]

Don't know your situation down there as far as cost, but, I would REALLY look at this website, for a ballpark figure of what you are running, and, if what you are trying to do might better be accomplished by a motherboard-cpu combo upgrade?

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html

That said, I did something close to what you are talking about. I have a Supermicro Dual Xeon 2.8 Ghz that I bought about 10 years ago. The PCI-X slots on that board are advertised
as near 500 MB/sec capable. In reality, they are doing 200 MB/sec with 3 Vertex Turbos, and
a 9550s-4.

The problem seems to be the cards are designed for single channel capability consistent with SATA drives in about 2005, not SSD's now. None of the current PCI-X cards are any faster then the one I'm using, and some are slower. There just isn't anything designed to take real advantage of the SSD throughput. the 9550 seems to be the best of show in this area, but, it really is going to give you little more then what a single SSD will give you on a SATA II card.

Next: when we went to upgrade the server, finding all the right drivers for all the different components, and really, there weren't that many, became a royal pain, and, IIRC, finding the right driver for the 9550 was our real problem, and, finding a ATI driver was another problem, due to using a 4670, and the legacy driver wasn't anywhere to be found, for AGP.
Finally, we ended up going to Windows 7 Ultimate for the install, since finding drivers for 2003 Server, my favorite operating system, didn't work, and, trim was a major factor as well.

Does it work? Yes, it's pretty snappy. In retrospect, the 9550 was around 100 dollars.
The SSD's 450 dollars. All will be forward compatible, but, I could have tripled my processor power by upgrading the motherboard, cpu and ram, and I suspect that would have
allowed a better chance of the bus working at the speeds you are after.
Here is the atto result from the Supermicro server:

Here are the results from my computers onboard, two X-25M's:

 

[buckrogers]

Thanks for the info. Especially regarding the performance of event the best pci-x controllers. I was going to be build a system around a 7505 board with 133mhz pci-x slot, but now I am glad I did not.

Yes, I agree. A modern system with ICH10R or a bootable pci-e slot makes the most sense when outright performance is the primary goal.

Perhaps I should have explained this earlier. In my case I am building a system around a legacy motherboard for the purposes of running legacy software, and for very basic desktop use. However, I am attempting to modernise the system with up to date peripherals. The benefit vs gain ratio is never going to be very good, but it could turn out to be worthwhile.

I will post the results and my subjective impressions in due course.

 

[Santilli]

I suspect 2000 and 98 would be bloody blinding on such a setup, even though it's nowhere near what a new machine would be.

I was trying to suggest that the major benefit is going to be access time with the SSD, and
with the motherboard you have, the only reason for a raid card would be to either have a bootable drive, or multiple SATA drives in a system with no onboard SATA connectors. Since any of the lower priced 8500-9000 cards are fast enough, pick the one that is the most reasonably priced. Your adaptec card might do it, but, I wonder about driver support.

Also, a server quality motherboard might TRIPLE the throughput capable in the PCI-X slot(see my Supermicro motherboard tests above). You might be able to find one dirt cheap.

 

[buckrogers]

Yes, the quick access times/low latencies should be experienced on any system, no matter how modest the CPU and ram is. That is my MAIN motivation. That and no moving parts/noise, and arguably far superior reliability to scratch disks. I have had multiple scratch disks fail on me. All in domestic settings with lighter than a size 6 model desktop use. One right before a 15,000 word thesis was due. Thank goodness for backing up onto 3.5" floppies (2001 feels soooooo long ago)!

According to Patriot, win98 is the quickest OS of all windows OSes, based on its in-house SSD testing. The problem with win98 is that the page file / virtual memory writes to the same area on a disk; wear leveling is NOT supported. Disabling VM prevents some programs from running. And I read claims that windows ignores this setting, and will always use some amount of disk space for VM. Perhaps the best solution is to place VM on an SLC ssd, or just use SLC ssd's in the first place, and sleep easy at night for several years. There is also the issue of security, as their is little choice for anti virus software for win98. A good firewall is essential.

Win2k is the next fastest, and does (in a way?) support wear leveling, and is what Patriot recommends if speed is your only goal. I will be using this myself with my SSD setup in the short term, before moving to win98 when I have a more modern rig built for running XP via ssd's (ICH10R or revodrive/ibis).

I have managed to build up a database of sata controller cards that work in regular 32-bit 33Mhz pci 2.2 compliant slots. In case there is anyone else out there who is nutty enough to be interested in running modern SSDs on ancient motherboards that have ISA slots:

1. 3ware 9500s series
2. Adaptec 2610SA
3. Adaptec 1420SA
4. Sil3124 based cards (e.g., Syba)
5. Areca 11xx series
6. 3ware 8500s series

1. True hardware raid. Win2k/XP. The 3ware is sata I only. So whatever drive you attach needs to support this interface. I suspect an Intel X25 series drive would work, but did not get the chance to test this before my 9500s-12 died. A word of caution with just about all 3ware cards: even with single disk/JBOD, one cannot expect a drive cannot be taken off a 3ware controller and used on another controller, and still be able to access data. :cursin:

2. Also true hardware raid. Sata II. win2k/XP. No personal experience with this card. Adaptec gets a bad rep depending on who you talk to. Horses for courses I guess. Adaptec have a rep for patchy SSD compatibility (I assume this DOES not apply to current cards but rather older gen ones like this).

3. Fake raid (aka host raid). win2k/XP. Should work even in a PCI 2.1 slot. Boot process and menus do not instill confidence. Have read that it works with X25-M G1 drives, and I would presume then all X25 based ssd's. Best used only for JBOD and not raid, maybe except for 0. Maybe. Have read reports of some ports "dropping" off line. Not keen on using this card.

4. Fake raid (aka host raid). win98?/win2k/XP. Some sil3124 cards come advertised as supporting win 98 but generally driver packages are win2k and up only. Very mixed reviews from users on newegg/amazon. For the price new, one could score anyone of the other cards listed here second hand for not much more money, sometimes less.

5. True hardware raid. Sata II. Intel IOP331 chip. Areca's rep is tough to fault but it is sometimes hard to see through the fanboy crowd :tounge:. Reported to work with OCZ Vertex Turbo (Indillix) SSDs with excellent seq. read and write speeds, given the application.

6. True hardware raid. Sata I. win98/win2k/XP. Confirmed to work with OCZ Vertex Turbo (Indillix) SSDs. Expect only 50-60mb/s per channel. Arguably the best card to use for win98 when the application is multiple striped drives (a pair should be enough to saturate the available bandwidth of a pci bus when other pci cards are taken into account).

 

[buckrogers]

In case anyone was wondering, AFAIK, LSI have not made any pci-x cards that are compatible with a regular pci slot. The 3080X-R looks to be, however, it is only physically keyed for use in 3.3v pci slots, which I have never even seen, as all pci slots seems to be keyed for 5v. So in practice, pci-x only.

 

[blakerwry]

I'm running a PERC4 (LSI Logic MegaRAID 320-2) in a standard PCI slot. However, this is SCSI and not SAS/SATA.

Good research though. One thing I will mention is that the 2 channel 3-ware cards seem to be inferior to the multichannel versions. I wouldn't even consider the 8xxx series of cards (I have one, and it blows).

I think the Areca is a good choice as long as it works with your OS. I'd be interested to see what your numbers are, but with a machine that came with ATA33 (Pentium II?) I'd be impressed if you can surpass 80MB/sec.

There might be a few tweaks to gain more performance, such as disabling other PCI devices (including onboard IDE, sound, etc) and utilizing AGP (if you have it) for graphics.

 

[Bozo]

The 3Ware 9650se SATA two channel card is a big improvement over the older cards.

 

[Santilli]

That's great if you have a PCIE slot. This discussion started talking about PCI-X
cards, and support for 98/2000.

For my two cents, Windows 2000 Pro would be what I would start with, and stay with.
98 was the reason I stayed with Apple for so long.