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http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6710Quote:
But you see I've run into a snag. I've now got six SATA disks and eight ports to plug them in to, but across two different disk controllers, and I'm pondering the best way to set them all up. So I thought you guys could maybe help.
Can you help our Rys?
Buy a tape drive, back the whole bloody lot up, configure everything how you want to, restore the data back..
/coat..
;)
Yes, or borrow a huge hard drive for an evening.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stoo
I have recently decided to upgrade the HD in my PVR box from the OEM 160Gb unit to a 400Gb samsung. The new drive arrives today. Before I fit it into the PVR, I will be using it to rationalise the partion layout in my Linux server, as I can easly format the drive as ext3, and then copy everything to it, re-organise partions, and then copy everything back.
In your case, perhaps there are some large drives arround the office you could borrow overnight? I seam to recal a review a few months ago that fetured several 750Gb drives in a RAID setup. Alternatively have the Thecus NAS boxes gone back yet after the revew Hexus did earler in the week?
By the way the discuss in forums link doesn't link here but the forums as a whole :)
Fixed :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Gordy
Buy a dedicated RAID 5 card (4 or 8 port) stick it into the PCI slot. Run one raptor outside the RAID 5 and stick the rest in RAID 5. Plenty of good cards out there - I use a Broadcomm 8 port card which works a treat and can expand the RAID volume on the fly if you want to add yet more discs to it.
With the uberness of the rest of the kit and the benchmark-whoring I know he'd like, I'm surprised Rys isn't considering splashing out on a decent PCI-E raid controller.Quote:
Originally Posted by rys
Maybe something like this:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=408085
or
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=298158
The obvious layout of discs would be RAID 0 pairs of both raptors and keep the Maxtors as single disks.
Depending how reliable you wanted the OS you could keep the OS on the current maxtor, or if you wanted maximum speed I'd put the OS on the RAID 0 74gb raptors.
Absolute top performance would probably be to have each pair have it's own controller card attached through PCIE, though knowing Rys he'd probably want to run at least two gpus in there so leaving only one free PCIE slot.
So you'd end up with:
PCIE raid contoller card
2x Raptor 74gb RAID 0 - OS(es) install here
2x Raptor 150gb RAID 0 - Games and fastest requirements here.
ICHR7
1x Maxtor 300 JBOD - Vital data
1x Maxtor 300 JBOD - Scratch space.
If you can backup the vital data then consider running a RAID 1 with the two maxtor disks and have that as your safe data storage area.
As far as I know that setup works fine regardless of OS - you end up with 4 volumes to partition as you like (3 if you RAID 1 the maxtors).
i feel it is my duty to point & laugh at youQuote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
highpoint don't do real RAID controllers, and the products you've linked aren't even slightly better than the existing onboard driver-based (fake)raid on the system
they certainly don't do any OS-independant products, which is the main purpose of a decent controller - and a decent controller isn't about speed, it's about reliable throughput and OS independence.
on a machine which is mostly underloaded, and not mission critical (i.e. a desktop) then what would you rather have doing your raid calculations - a 300MHz RISC chip, or a several GHz x86 chip? which is faster? the downside to software RAID on modern desktop systems is the OS dependence issue, not the performance.
if you feel like recommending real hardware controllers, link to products like http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=244413
I would recommend what Kalniel said, 2 RAID 0's with the raptors. Though I'd put the OS on the 150's as they are ever so slightly faster(depending on the age of the the 74's there could be quite a difference).
The onboard Silicon image RAID controller is ok and can handle running the two RIAD 0's with no sweat. So I wouldn't bother with a PCI-E raid controller, performance wise a second graphics card is much more important. Unless you change the motherboard and get 3 PCI-e slots.
Leave the two maxtors without RAID. Use for backups, movies, playing with linux partitions or whatever else.
Duly noted :) The intention was correct, I just know nothing about raid controllers hence the 'maybe' in my post ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by directhex
The fact the 150s are faster is why I didn't put the OS on them - I'm probably wrong, but I assumed the largest amount of sequential reading + writing is more likely to be done with your data than with your OS.Quote:
Originally Posted by chuckskull
I thought his motherboard does have 3 pcie slots.Quote:
The onboard Silicon image RAID controller is ok and can handle running the two RIAD 0's with no sweat. So I wouldn't bother with a PCI-E raid controller, performance wise a second graphics card is much more important. Unless you change the motherboard and get 3 PCI-e slots.
Ah you're right it does have 3, I was thinking of the wrong intel mobo.Quote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
As for where to put the OS, it's only goign to make a minute difference. I'd just have it on the newer disks personally. Either will be lighting fast, everytime I load a game I miss my Raptor RAID 0 :(
Raid contoller 1
2x Raptor 150gb RAID 0 - OS + Games, Quick stuff etc. (300gb to play with)
ICHR7
2x Maxtor 300 JBOD - RAID 1 (All your data safe as houses, backup for raptors)
eBay:
2 x Raptor 74gb
if it were me:
i'd mirror the 300GB maxtors, back it up somewhere first tho.
Stripe the raptor 150's, bung windows on here, i would probably matrix them, with something around a 40/110 split, but this will depend on what you want to do really, and how you work, and will let you switch between a mirrored secondary or striped, depending how you feeling.
Have the two 74gb raptors as single disks - leave ubuntu on one, then you have the other for another os, scratch, whatever, kinda floating, probably fat32 for ease of data xfer between ubuntu and Windows, favorite mp3s etc.
Nox
NOTE: Raptors are connected on the SI controller, the Maxtors connected to ICH7R.
Step 1: Stripe the two 150GB Raptors in RAID-0, referred to as 'RAID-A', on the SI controller, channels 1 and 2.
Step 2: Stripe the two 74GB Raptors in RAID-0, referred to as 'RAID-B', on the SI controller, channels 3 and 4.
Step 3: On RAID-B, install a temporary OS with a partition copying utilility which you're familiar with.
Step 4: Onto RAID-A, copy the 3 OS partitions from the first Maxtor drive. Copy the DATA2 partition from the second Maxtor drive to be the fourth partition. Copy the data inside the UTIL partition to the empty second partition on RAID-A.
Step 5: Boot into OS's on RAID-A (to make sure they work), then copy the DATA partition from the first Maxtor disk to RAID-B (overwriting the temp OS).
Step 6: Validate that all essential data is intact, then mirror the two Maxtor drives in RAID-1, referred to as 'RAID-C', on the ICH7R controller.
Step 7: Recreate the original second Maxtor disk, ie empty 30GB partition, 10GB UTIL partition (copy data back from the second partition of RAID-A), 150GB DATA partition (partition copy), 90GB DATA2 partition (partition copy). Validate copied data.
Step 8: Format the second partition on RAID-A, ready for you to install XP 64bit; delete the fourth partition on RAID-A and create your SCRATCH partition. Delete partition on RAID-B.
RAID-A (300GB in RAID-0) runs your Microsoft OS's and scratch data. RAID-B (150GB in RAID-0) can be used for your Linux OS and associated partitions, etc. RAID-C (300GB in RAID-1) is for your essential data. For future expansion, you can add another two large disks that are SATA2 to the unused channels of the ICH7R, either mirrored, striped or whatever.
Hmmm data you cant lose.
Back it up before doing anything then!
In fact is it backed up already? It should be!
And why didn't you stretch out that little but further and get some Quad core goodness rather than the mundane (:D) Extreme Dualie.
With quad core goodness, the fake RAID will have so much less of an impact on your system.
Just sell the drives and get your gf some shoes.
"Chief of Totally Incredible Technical Stuff" <-- Chief of TITS? ... lol
ClassicQuote:
Originally Posted by DragonStar
What you do is use 1 hardrive and throw the other 7 away with the two controllers , they the extra stuff you get with products that you dont need,
On a serious note though it all depends , why so many drives ?(splitting risk)
If its gaming then RAID0 striped but if its not then the best config your controller has it. Simple.
Our RYHS is sorted , cased closed people nothing to see here
also I noticed that you have two controllers and loads of different sizes of hardrives , yes you can mix them but why would somebody do that , thats like paying for something that doest work
My advice keep the two 150gb raptors and keep either the two maxtors or the small raptors , sell the other stuff and match the same drives , if you have this much money to spend then go the full way about it. ! controller for the two raptors and the other for 4 300gb and the raid seriously my freind depends on your controller and how they perform on the disks., I am not to sure how your controllers work and if or whether they can take mix speeds and sizes for two different setups.
I would do one striped a with the raptor setup and this would be strictly for gaming and the other application stuff the other drives will be good enough , its the games that need the speed boost not the everyday application.
Create a compressed image of the data using Norton Ghost and back it up to another disk or DVD's.
That way the data will be safe at least and you simply install Norton Ghost when everything is up and running and can drag and drop everything back to where you want it.
How I worked round the problem I was experiencing a few months back when my Windows installation became corrupt and couldn't be repaired. I created an image on my 2nd partition of the C drive then pulled all my important files back out of the image once I was set back up.
Definitely mirror the two Maxtors. If it's stuff you can't lose, I'm surprised you haven't done this already.
As for the rest of it, probably one of the other answers is best...
Raid 1 - 2 x Maxtors
Raid 0 - 2 x 74GB Raptors
Raid 0 - 2 x 150GB Raptors
Because I know absolutely nothing.....
I'm gonna simply say....
Willy Waving sounds...cold!
Or, Acronis TrueImage, I prefer that, its not as clunky and slow!Quote:
Originally Posted by Ferral
Sorry guv, but you're wrong about the second one he linked to. It's a fair chunk better then any onboard fakeraid. Reliable OCE, read speeds several times in excess of onboard fakeraid 5, a reasonalbey good management console, and mobo independance. I'd say that's an improvement. And I'm fairly sure the 2320 is OS independant too. Sure, it's no Areca, it seems to be termed partial hardware by some people - meaning yeah it'll use up CPU time when doing heavy writes. But then it costs half of what an Areca costs, the user gets the security of a full hardware and acceptable write speeds, while not having to spend half a grand.Quote:
Originally Posted by directhex
I agree that the first link was tripe, the second shouldn't be pointed and laughed at so quickly though, it's a decent choice for people who want something reliable but can't afford a full hardware card.
As for my suggestion, I'm not all that sure what I'd do with the disks. I'm someone who likes RAID 5's. RAID 0 is highly over-rated, and unless you either don't care about the data on one, or back it up regularly, I'd advise against using one.
If you really want to clean things up, I personally would probably actually RAID 0 the 150's(not for the speed benefits, they're negligable, just to have a big 10k RPM disk) and then regularly image it to the 300. Leave Ubuntu where it is and just use the other 74GB disk for junk you don't care much about. Oh and one final thing, experiment with NCQ on and off, because I've found disks in single user environment actually benefit from it being off generally.
FYI: we just installed a Highpoint RocketRAID 2322 in the
second x16 "universal" PCI-E slot in our ASUS P5WD2 Premium.
(We don't need dual video cards for our work here.)
We chose this controller specifically because it ports
out the rear panel to 2 x mini-SAS "multi-lane" cables,
which we connected to 8 x WD1600YS SATA2 HDDs
housed in a separate storage case.
We're very happy with the overall results, with one
caveat: our motherboard only allows that "univeral"
PCI-E slot to run at x4 speed (max), and this limitation
appears to explain the speed ceiling we have measured
with these 8 HDDs in a RAID 0 (for max speed) --
about 240 MB/second doing "raw reads" with
the PERFORMANCETEST software, version 4.0.
A review of the 2322 on the Internet reported
speeds in excess of 400 MB/second on a Mac G-5,
and I suspect that the Mac runs this 2322 controller
at x8 speed, not x4.
(We have plenty of other HDDs in our disk farm,
so other RAID options are not interesting to us.)
We ultimately plan to replace our Intel 640 CPU
with a D 960 dual-core at 3.6 GHz: the extra speed
should help with computing RAID overhead,
but we suspect that the x4 PCI-E ceiling will
be the major limiting factor, not the CPU speed.
BTW: this controller will operate at x8 speed
in a slot that supports that speed e.g. server
motherboard designed to accelerate storage
subsystems.
I hope this helps.
p.s. We first tested each of the 8 drives separately,
by XP "Quick" formatting each using our eSATA port:
but, the 2322 detected these as "legacy" drives
and handed them over to Windows XP as 8 x JBOD
drives. Then, XP assigned 8 different drive letters,
which conflicted with the remote drives we had
already configured on this machine: happily,
this problem disappeared when we combined all 8 drives
into a single RAID 0.
From the College of Hard Knocks, we remain ...
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell
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