IDE RAID is NOT HARDWARE!

[Warrenton]

You heard me right. The controller and BIOS only show the drives as one device. The systems CPU still has to do ALL OF THE CALCULATIONS to put the data back together and split it apart.

When you look at SCSI RAID controllers they have an onboard processor that does this for you, but the IDE ones do not (except one adaptec which is mutha slow).

I have benched the CPU usage and with a Promise ATA66 the CPU load is only slightly better than win2k's software RAID. Its within 2%.

My opinion? Skip the RAID unless you need the HD speed. If you need to do video encoding, IDE RAID is not for you. The CPU load it creates is close to 30% sustained, and will affect your encode times much more than the added HD speed can make up. For that I'd recommend 10,000RPM SCSI which can average 30MB/s write speeds.

THIS IS MY OPINION! I think IDE RAID is a gimmick. Its flaky, and has a deffinate CPU draw. My hard drives are fast enough thank you.

 

[pm]

Why do you say that it's "flaky"?

Edit: one more question - under what CPU would you consider it to require 30% CPU utilization? A Celeron 366? A Pentium III 933?

 

[NFS4]

I wouldn't say that it is "flaky"

 

[Mday]

no it isn't. the promise and all that stuff is NOT "hardware" raid. it's performance is akin to software RAID as well. This point was made when the first promise RAID controller reviews came out. don't remember reading about it much recently.

HOWEVER... promise has announced, and adaptec DO have hardware RAID controllers. complete with onboard processor and CACHE that uses RAM (promise uses simms, adaptec - DIMMS). I want a review of these devices as I AM INTERESTED ;-)

 

[Argo]

Well, my CPU utilization is closer to 15%. That's on 900MHz t-bird.

 

[Warrenton]

Flaky I refer to the problems with the most popular drives in the world MAXTOR.

 

[403Forbidden]

my whole system is fast enough thank you

 

[Soccerman]

Mday... you're not Bullsh!tting me are u?

someone is actually making an IDE controller with some form of HARDWARE acceleration?

is this ONLY RAID, or does it apply to IDE as well?

please tell me as much as you can!

you remember when they released ATA66, that they advertised lower CPU utilization? I think they did with ATA100 as well.. does this mean that the reason CPU usage is bad, is because current controller chip manufacturers don't actually make them to lower CPU utilization?

 

[Mday]

http://www.promise.com/Reviews/SuperTrak/SuperTrak100%20Product.htm

http://www.adaptec.com/products/overview/ultra_dma.html


--


it's IDE RAID!!! i doubt a single drive array will benefit... these are RAID controllers...

look at the promise one... pictures that is ;-)

 

[DarkRipper]

Oooh

I'm sold. How much tho?????


DR

 

[XMan]

Super Track ATA-100 $499
Super Track ATA-66 $399
Adaptec AAA-DMA $357

I think the Adaptec card is a SCSI controller that has a signal translator on it to change the signal into SCSI compatible.

 

[randomlinh]

drrrr... umm.. uh... mucho dinero yo no tengo

 

[downhiller80]

Man look at the size of that promise card! warning, PDF file.

I'm gonna get one of those and a voodoo5 6000 and make my case into a 3 story apartment block for hamsters!

Seb

 

[Soccerman]

"it's IDE RAID!!! i doubt a single drive array will benefit... these are RAID controllers..."

I can hope can't I? hehe

oh well, I don't care for RAID, so that doesn't really apply to me.

 

[arthurb1]

COST?

Almost as much as a SCSI RAID card, I got a Decade from DPT (owned by Adaptec) and it did all right, but I got ramdom errors with my Atlas 10K's sent all the crap back and got 2 10K II's and a 29160....goodbye to all my problems, then I ditched my A7V (800 bird@900) for a KT7 800@840 (105fsb) This KT7 seems faster even though there is a lower chip clock, the memory seems to run a little quicker, and the HD access is faster (slightly than it was before, I need to verify this with some benches later though)

 

[Davegod75]

cpu utilization? Where you getting those numbers. I'm running fasttrak66 raid 0 and my cpu utlization is 0. Correct me if I'm wrong but i'm getting that number from the task manager

 

[Warrenton]

Davegod, you getting that number WHILE THERE IS DISK ACCESSES GOING? Copy a large file and tell me what happens to your CPU usage.

 

[randomlinh]

0%? is that even possible.... other then a HD that's OFF..

 

[Hardware]

I have some hardware raid too and you can believe me take win2k software thats the same only for $0


Hardware Raid means just hotswap and you can boot from a raid0 (stripe set)

Raid5 sucks badly dont use it!

 

[NOX]

Those cards are way to big for my system, I'll stick to my FastTrack66. I really don't care about CPU usage, I have two of them, I'm sure they can take it.

 

[Ben]

<< IDE RAID is NOT HARDWARE! >>



Amen brother!

I'm sick and tired of hearing about this wannabe RAID! It barely qualifies!

Does your POS IDE RAID card have RAM on the card it uses as cache?
-No

Does your POS IDE RAID card offload work from the CPU?
-No, it makes more work for it.

Can your POS IDE RAID card automatically rebuild data to a new drive?
-No, it needs the CPU to do all the work.

Can your POS IDE RAID card automatically grab a &quot;spare&quot; drive attached to the system and use it to replace a failed drive, rebuilding the data onto the spare making it part of the array, all without your intervention?
-Maybe in la-la land. Maybe if the earth were flat. Maybe if Roseanne could diet.

Here's your first clue: the Promise Ultra66 card and the Promise FastTrack card were identical except for the BIOS and 1 wire.

It's a scam folkes. It's a ploy to get you to buy more hard drives. When was the last time you lost data on your hard drive because of a bad sector? Maybe on that 500MB Seagate drive made in 1802! Hard drives are more reliable than ever. Why now, do we need this fault tolerance for our &quot;gaming rigs&quot;? So in case we defy the odds and get a bad sector, we don't loose the savegame of us beating the &quot;baddie&quot; at the end of Quake3? Crimomy!

....glad I got that off my chest.

 

[NOX]

glad I got that off my chest

So I'm I, cuz the fact is I myself did not go RAID because of the worry of losing data (using RAID-0)! I have never lost data due to a bad sector, in fact I?ve never had a bad sector, just call me lucky I guess.

The only reason, and the only reason I need, I went RAID because of the speed increase it offered over a single drive ATA/66. It was much cheaper then going SCSI, and getting increased results was enough for me.

 

[Ben]

wannabe...

 

[NOX]

LOL...maybe you're right!

 

[Ben]

just teasin