http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews...lld19JRD0xMzY2If you need high data rates and really don't need the hassle of downtime thanks to a dead hard drive, RAID is your answer. If you want efficient usage of disk space, you're going to need an add-in card for a decent solution. If you want to combine all that with low CPU usage and ease of use, then the XFX Revo 64 is the card for you.
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Lol i thought this was about something totally different!
I thought it was a strange title! lol
Ian
Mac fancier > white macbook base spec .................. CS: muddyfirebang
using RAID3 (Striping across multiple disk drives with dedicated parity drive) in this day and age is utterly, utterly bizzare
not to say it can't work, but I've never even heard of a commercial RAID3 controller before - they all focus on 0, 1 and 5, or combinations thereof
anyway, i'd be curious to know when (if) the required patches to the linux kernel to make these work properly get itno the off-the-shelf kernel.org source
An excellent read Kez, very well done mate.
Indeed it is odd, however they seem to have pulled it off. I'm guessing there's less processing overhead in byte level striping with a dedicated parity drive compared with block level striping and distributed parity.Originally Posted by directhex
As for the kernel source, I will rejoice when the patches are integrated into the Linux kernel. In fact I think we need to see it happen as soon as possible.
Rave: Thanks for the kind words
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Haha, nice one. I had a feeling the title would get people thinking. I also had a feeling the article would get people wanting RAID.
Incidentally, you can try this card out before you buy one, if it tickles your fancy:
http://www.scan.co.uk/spu/index.asp?source=hexus_spu
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I`ve run RAID5 for some years now and still managed to lose data.
Not the cards fault as I later found out after 2 succesful rebuilds but 2 dud Antec psu`s in a year. One failed dead on restart but the other failed over a period of time and took some diagnosing.
Be interesting to see if the pci-e card is better (should be) but for the moment I need 8 channels for 2 raid5 arrays on my 2 servers.
Nice review though and thought provoking.
Very interesting, might have to put one of these in Udat the day I start building Twodat
After all, the Revo 64 seems a lot more suitable for a CPU limited VIA Epia system than the current Broadcom BC4852 controller which is designed for a more powerful CPU and PCI-X 133MHz.
Do not get one of these cards if you are thinking of running maxtor drives on it ..... there is a "compatibility" issue. I spent a couple of weeks watching various drives on my array "fail". The card seems to work for a few days then the array will fail for no reason. It will rebuild until the next time. The support from Netcell is non existant (even their support email address on their site bounced my mail back). The only clue to the problem was an addendum to the faq on their site that appeared after I started to mail them for support. It states that you can get a "bios upgrade" for you diamondmax drives that "should" fix the problem. The only two problems with this is that a) I am using 3 (brand new) maxline proffesional 500GB sataII drives and b) the only bios upgrade on maxtors site is to help with a compatability error between their drives and nvidia nforce4 chipsets, not to help with netcell raid cards. After two weeks of pain I got a refund on the card and went with a highpoint rocketraid 2220 raid 5 controller and have had no issues at all. Having said all that If the card seemed to be very easy to use *and* was recognised at bios level ... no additional drivers needed. Had it worked ok with my drives I would have been more than happy with it.
Cannop
Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but it this product seems like a viable option for my NAS needs. The review was able to confirm a couple of my concerns, however I haven't been able to get any information as to wether or not:
1. Despite it being driverless, would this work under FreeNas
2. Have Netcell released a PCIe variant.
I've tried over the past month to get information from Netcell's website, but it seems to be dead.
Hi Kojak71.
This thread might also be of use to you. As for FreeNAS; I'm not sure if it will support it; it depends on the kernel version.
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Anyone know whether its okay on a Win 2k3 server?
holy thread revival batman!
Its just that Scan were doing them at an incredible price over the weekend - £14.99+VAT!!!
Another thread revival...
Yes, I bought one at that price a couple of months ago, after a dismal experience with a cheap adaptec controller.
Has anyone used one of these cards? My intention is to use it on a Linux system, either just as a native SATA controller and use the Fedora core native raid capability, or use the card's own raid facility - any comments anyone?
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