Serial ATA Raid

[ricksimm]

Any experience out there with serial ATA RAID? I'm thinking about using it on small to medium sized servers. Are there any serial RAID onboard mobos other than Intel? Thanks.

[felix88]

there are a few AMD boards that have SATA RAID.

the Abit AT7 MAX2 and Asus A7N8X Deluxe come to mind. i'm sure there are others.

[gobbo]

ATM though i don't think there are any fully compatable SATA HDDs??

Plus the technology is very new, so there will be the generic "issues" with all hardware and O/S systems!

But once they are all sorted out over time, it WILL be the way foward.

Maybe in a few years SCSI will be redundant?!:D

[felix88]

the SATA Cuda V drives are out. a friend of mine in Canada has a couple.

[Dissolved]

Originally posted by gobbo
Maybe in a few years SCSI will be redundant?!:D

it will take 20 years for ide to pass scsi. thats at scsi's current state. in 20years scsi will be 10x better and it will still own ide in speed.

[felix88]

there are certain qualitys you get from a scsi drive you will never get from an ide drive.

scsi drives don't really have sustained transfers that are much faster than ide(unless you have a 15k.3, then your sustained transfers can be nearly 80MB/s :eek: ). they do have lower cpu usage and access times. this adds a certain smoothness you'll never get with an ide drive. and most scsi drives have a 5 year warranty.

by the way, the SATA seagate drives only have a 1 year warranty.

[CCW]

SATA drives are gonna be used for home therefore they will never be as reliable as a SCSI drive.

Craig

[PimpJack]

why don't they just ditch old ass ata overall and change the standard to scsi? There is no point in raid for scsi is there?

[felix88]

Originally posted by PimpJack
why don't they just ditch old ass ata overall and change the standard to scsi? There is no point in raid for scsi is there?

not all people have the money to buy SCSI stuff.

and yes, some people do RAID SCSI devices, it makes them faster.

[Dissolved]

Rais scsi is the best, i think you ment Raid sata.

sata raid wont be any good till u can have about 4+ drives per raid array. 2 drives wont do anything great. and sata raid0 wont be very good with 2 drives seeing the pci bus is limited to 133mpbs anyways.

So if you want Speed, get a board with 64bit 66mhz and get a scsi card. You could either get a bunch of cheaper drives and raid them of just get like 2 really good ones.

But i myself will be getting 3 15k (not the newer ones) and running them basic. one for OS, one for Programs, and one for Swap/pagefile. i have a 120gb WD ill use for important data.

[CCW]

Dissolved - ur putting important data on a WD drive? :D

Craig

[felix88]

Originally posted by Dissolved
But i myself will be getting 3 15k (not the newer ones)

too expensive? i'm saving up the extra for them.

i'll give a quick plug for www.hypermicro.com too, they gave me a free scsi card when i bought my 15k IBM drive.

[Dissolved]

Originally posted by CCW
Dissolved - ur putting important data on a WD drive? :D

Craig



well not really imporant, just all my music and such.

[Dissolved]

Originally posted by felix88
too expensive? i'm saving up the extra for them.

i'll give a quick plug for www.hypermicro.com too, they gave me a free scsi card when i bought my 15k IBM drive.


HM i hear is great. ive been getting my drives from ebay. one i got for 96shipped, this last one cost me 115shipped w/ apdator.
ill probly buy the 3rd one retail if they drop down in price. But the ones with the 5year warranty are almost as costly as the 15k.3 series. So thats why ive been getting them off ebay. a lil easier too.

[Tex]

Originally posted by PimpJack
why don't they just ditch old ass ata overall and change the standard to scsi? There is no point in raid for scsi is there?

Yeah right..

Tex

[Tex]

Originally posted by PimpJack
why don't they just ditch old ass ata overall and change the standard to scsi? There is no point in raid for scsi is there?

Price as always.

Tex

[Tex]

Originally posted by gobbo
ATM though i don't think there are any fully compatable SATA HDDs??

Plus the technology is very new, so there will be the generic "issues" with all hardware and O/S systems!

But once they are all sorted out over time, it WILL be the way foward.

Maybe in a few years SCSI will be redundant?!:D

Not as long as SATA allows one drive per channel. The transfer rate from drive controller is ridiculous and a non-factor when we are still hooking up basicaly ata drives as sata drives. No sata drive surpasses 50,000 on atto basicaly so explain the advanatges of the transfer rate again to me please.

Pretend your watering your lawn with a hose and a nozzle on the end. You want more water so you put a bigger hose on OK? But you have the same water supply rate and the same nozzle on the end. NO faster.

When they build sata drives that are 3.5ms, 15k rpm and hit 80,000 on atto for a SINGLE drive you may reppace scsi though.

But remember there are still major differance that will not change and therefore limit sata. scsi is a bus onto itself and can read and write to multiple drives simultaneously. No sata or ata can. The specs for the device do not support it. So for multi-tasking/multi-user systems sata wil still be a problem.

SATA is a spec for workstations not servers basicaly at this time.

Tex

[twiggy]

Heres some SATA RAID0 with 2x 40gb Maxtor 7.2k rpm 2mb Cache on a NF7-S.

[Dissolved]

the seagte 15k.3 36gb just about doubles that. and thats just a single drive.

[Tex]

Originally posted by twiggy
Heres some SATA RAID0 with 2x 40gb Maxtor 7.2k rpm 2mb Cache on a NF7-S.

Thats nice but no faster then several ata100 drives either. But your cables are much cooler.

My 2 yearold quantom ata100's hit 46,000 on sandra when tweaked to the max..

So with the sata converters and cables how much did those cool looking cables with next to no performance gain realy cost ya bottom line.

Don't get me wrong... the cables are sweet but... Thats all. SATA is like ata133. Still a joke living on future performance promises.

Tex

[Dissolved]

Originally posted by Tex
Thats nice but no faster then several ata100 drives either. But your cables are much cooler.

So with the sata converters and cables how much did those cool looking cables with next to no performance gain realy cost ya bottom line.

Don't get me wrong... the cables are sweet but... Thats all.

Tex


id rather have 2 15k.3 36gb then 200gb or more in ide :)

[Tex]

I agree for the OS and stuff. I think on a workstation the ideal is a combo. You put the MP3's downloads, movies and :banana::banana::banana::banana: etc.. on ide.

Put the OS, Pagefile, Temp file tec.. on scsi. Itssilly topay scsi prices even used for all the casual storage we are now spoiled with.

Tex

[CCW]

To be honest woth you all, I got SCSI recently and I may never go back to IDE. So you can get IDE drives for bout £1 per gig but you cant get reliability, or speed, or a half-decent warranty for a pound a gig.

Craig

[Dissolved]

Originally posted by CCW
To be honest woth you all, I got SCSI recently and I may never go back to IDE. So you can get IDE drives for bout £1 per gig but you cant get reliability, or speed, or a half-decent warranty for a pound a gig.

Craig


i know exactly how u feel man :)

[CCW]

If u look at my spec, there are only two things i havent bought case (christmas pressie!) and the SCSI card. Boss at work got me the SCSI card for crimbo and I forked out over £100 for the hard drive and have been pleased since

The card wouldve cost me £230 (ish) so im happy!

beats my RAID anyways, SCSI was never designed for home use, thats why we have "old ass ata" pimp jack, for general home use, office, bit of gmaing, ata is fine, its only for us xtreme that will need/want to spend out for SCSI

Craig

[twiggy]

Originally posted by Tex
Thats nice but no faster then several ata100 drives either. But your cables are much cooler.

My 2 yearold quantom ata100's hit 46,000 on sandra when tweaked to the max..

So with the sata converters and cables how much did those cool looking cables with next to no performance gain realy cost ya bottom line.

Don't get me wrong... the cables are sweet but... Thats all. SATA is like ata133. Still a joke living on future performance promises.

Tex

lol I just setup the SATA RAID just to see how well it was. I dont use RAID and this was my 1st time and my last. I could care less bout the cables cause my rounded cables look hella nicer. :D

As for the cost, it was all free.:p

[felix88]

Originally posted by Dissolved
id rather have 2 15k.3 36gb then 200gb or more in ide :)

you have no idea what you just did to me. :eek: ;)

i can't wait until i can own just one of those 15k.3s. if i had 2 of them i could potentially saturate the 32bit 33MHz PCI bus during sustained transfers.

have you guys read about Serial attached SCSI?

http://www.serialattachedscsi.com/

twiggy, what kind of speeds did you get with that array? any HDtach or Atto screenies?

[twiggy]

I have no clue what HDtach or Atto is:brick:. Link please and I could post some screenies. :)

[felix88]

links to both can be found here:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7899

HDtach is very easy to understand, but it's not free if you use an NT based OS.

ATTO isn't quite as easy to understand, but it's free and gives useful info.

http://www.canby.com/chale/benchmarks/scsiattopatch.jpg

take note of the settings i used, this way you can compare your benchmark with other drives easily.

[twiggy]

ok I installed it, ran it, rebooted and ran it again. Hows it look?

[Tex]

Originally posted by felix88
you have no idea what you just did to me. :eek: ;)

i can't wait until i can own just one of those 15k.3s. if i had 2 of them i could potentially saturate the 32bit 33MHz PCI bus during sustained transfers.

have you guys read about Serial attached SCSI?

http://www.serialattachedscsi.com/

twiggy, what kind of speeds did you get with that array? any HDtach or Atto screenies?

Those are sweet drives but....

This is a73gb hitachi I paid 120 bucks for. I have a matchng 36gb of the same model I paid 80 bucks for.

The 15k.3 is faster but for the money .... (grin)

The writes are almost always equal to the reads all the way down.

Only mod was moving the pci latency from 32 to 64.

Tex

[CCW]

im gonna have to go bench my RAID array and my SCSI drive.....

Craig :D

[felix88]

Tex, where did you get the Hitachi drive for $120?

i could use 73GB of scsi storage space.

twiggy, your read speeds look great, but your write speeds are a bit low on the first few tests.

[twiggy]

lol Im with felix where did you get the Hitachi drive for $120?

But anyway I seen there was an option that was diff from mine and Tex's benches so I ran it again with the Overlapped I/O on.

[Tex]

ebay of course.

I have so far bought the following computer gear off ebay.

1) Elite 1600 u160 caching disk controllerwith i960 risc procesor and 128mb cache (mine came without the stick of ram)

list on the MEgaRaid website is 1000 bucks. I paid $103

2) Hitachi 73gb u320 with the atto I posted for 120 bucks. They list for 600 or so.

3) Same Hitachi u320 in a 36gb for 80 bucks.

4) Two Atlas 10k III's. One was like 43 bucks and the other $50. One isu320 and the other is u160. These are the coolest bargains going right now.

So 3 of the four drives are u320 even....

I also scored two dualy AMD MPX chipset MB's. One Asus and one MSI-k7D. I overpaid for the asus and paid $135 and the MSI was $115.

A killer new 600 watt PSU was 40 bucks... I LOVE this PSU btw... 40amps on the 3 volt line.....

2 new netgear 64 bit gigabit over copper NICS... 35 a piece.

One new in original box with all softweare etc.. 4 port fiber gigabit switch for 85 bucks.... ( I couldn't resist) They sell for 400 to 600 bucks new like this.

Everything is tested and fully functional also btw

I was using a sniping tool to bid. Let me know if I can be of any further assisatnce guys.

Tex

[felix88]

hmm, i've still never bought anything off of ebay. i've got a friend with pretty good feedback though. if i ever find anything i'll probably just use his account to buy it.

[CCW]

same here, if i want n e thing off ebay id get someone else to get it for me, ive never really trusted eBay, might give it ago because they are some good bargains,

Craig

[Dissolved]

if your smart and buy from a good seller, then your set. ive wasted alot of money on ebay as it is.. and will probly keep doing so.

[felix88]

it's not that i'm worried about finding a good seller, i just don't want to deal with building up my "feedback". i wouldn't use it enough to justify the time put into it. who knows, maybe i will sometime soon.

anyway, i'm gonna go browse ebay for good deals on big SCSI drives. :D

[Dissolved]

Originally posted by felix88
it's not that i'm worried about finding a good seller, i just don't want to deal with building up my "feedback". i wouldn't use it enough to justify the time put into it. who knows, maybe i will sometime soon.

anyway, i'm gonna go browse ebay for good deals on big SCSI drives. :D


well i have decent feedback, gimme the cost+10bucks and ill get you what you want :)

[Tex]

Let me second dissolved .... Get a strong seller. One that guarantees ya a non-doa drive at the least. Most the big guys are getting pulls from servers being upgraded and such. Many guarantee ya 30 days even non-doa. A super deal on a
non-guaranteed drive ..... really isnt a deal is it. Its a chance to sell dead drives to dummies I'm afraid.

Remember a deal that looks too good to ve true maybe is. Be careful but have fun !

Good Luck

Tex

[CCW]

is there a rating system on ebay so you can see what peoplem ar elike and what feedback theyre getting?
Craig

[Tex]

Absolutely. Its called "seller rating" and includes the number of positive versus negative feedback. And you can look at the negatives and see what he screwed up on.

Half the time I side with the seller after seeing the complaint. Call it unrealistic expectaions....

They also rate the hard core sellers that have performed at a consistant high level with few complaints as "power sellers" I think it is.

This isnt fool proof but when a guy selling disks has 3000+ transactfions with 2 negatives in 6 months I feel he is at least trying hard to resolve problems. I mean errors or lost shipments etc... the negative could be something even shipping related not that he didn't replace a defective drive etc..

I gave one guy a negative from me so far. I bought a nice Yamaha integrated stereo amp/preamp. The guy lived maybe 5 hours drive from me. I received it finally after harrasing him a month late after he had told me it shipped 3 differant times. It got here in a box maybe 2 inchs bigger then the amp and half full of peanuts so it was beat to all to hell on the way and dead.

He said ship it back and he would refund but I still gave him a blisterring review as he lied and didn't ship and then packed it like a 3'rd grader would have.... causing me to be out the cash for 6 weeks. Thats my definition of a bad ebay seller..

The good guys double box and pack this stuff etc... They don't want to ever see the damn thing again.

Tex

[CCW]

Thanks, just gonna have a look at eBay and if I like anything I will ask my mum to sign up :D

Craig