Hardware RAID

[stretch0069]

Re: Hardware RAID

thanks for the info on netflix. i get a 30 day free trial...which i'm sure i'lll have to give my card info and its my fault if i don't cancel after 30 days.

I did see Cool World on there, which can't be had on DVD yet. yeah yeah yeah....i know.

[Evil Lurker]

Re: Hardware RAID

I have been looking at this angle myself. Albeit I don't know much about them, but I see a bunch of used system pull Dell PERC 3 and the ocassional PERC 5 series cards going pretty cheap from time to time on Ebay. From what I gather these are true hardware RAID controllers, or at the very least serious JBOD controllers.

The 3 series sometimes have a stick of memory on the controller, but on the downside use plain old PCI slots. Usually can be had for less than $20. The 5/E's and I's use a single PCI-e 8x lane (would need a crossfire or SLI motherboard) and support numerous drives both SAS and from what I understand SATA as well (with an adapter ala old 50pin to 68pin SCSI or IDE to SATA). While most of the 5 series controllers don't have hardware cache on board, I have seen the oddball card out there with 256MB of cache for under $50, and stripped down cards for less than $20. If you do get a card with onboard cache it would be a wise investment to get a battery pack as well because if the power blinks, your array takes a dump.

Older small capacity SAS drives are cheap because manufacturers made a lot of them for the server market, pulls are available from old servers being upgraded, quality is high because they are "enterprise grade" (meaning pulls are likely to be of good quality), and SAS drives are not compatable with normal desktop hardware nor do they offer much capacity. I say get a couple of 36GB 15,000 RPM SAS drives in RAID 0 with a 5E or I controller with 256MB of cache onboard and use that as your OS drive and stick your regular storage drives in JBOD mode. Then watch it blow a regular SATA drive outta the water and even give a SSD a run for its money.

This gets me thinkin back to the old days when I had a 10K RPM scsi drive when most HD's were still turning 5400RPM. Didn't hold squat but was cool as hell listening to it spin up... it would just whine like crazy.

[Topcat]

Re: Hardware RAID

Always remember, theres a reason hardware RAID is expensive and software raid is free on just about any junk board....you get what you pay for. For a simple RAID 0 or 1, yes, softRAID's are *usually* ok. I've had some problems with a few (mainly sataLINK raids). I just don't trust my raid's reliability to the morons today that write drivers. Don't even consider a software raid for a raid5 or other complex raid configuration.

I dont want to hear anyone whine about a 400-dollar SATA2 RAID controller anyway. I remember the first SCSI RAID controller I bought, the bastard was 1900 f*cking bucks, and that was a bargain at the time.....then the time came to buy drives for it, there went a couple more grand. Stretch, I know you remember those days, we go that far back!! HAHA Nowadays, you can have one hell of a fast, dependable, and economical true hardware RAID.....all for WELL under 1000 bucks, you just can't beat that!

[smason]

Re: Hardware RAID

I have a PERC 5i 6 port card on my desk (came out of a server that spontaneously combusted both redundant power supplies)
Great card, but I don't have any systems with a PCI64 slot at the moment.

[Topcat]

Re: Hardware RAID

^
It will run in a PCI32 slot, it just won't run at its full potential.

[ratdude747]

Re: Hardware RAID

as long as nothing is in the card's way...

[Shodan486]

Re: Hardware RAID

Top's right about the whining stuff - exactly as he said = the amount of cash to be paid for instance, a SCSI-2 with true HW raid controller was somewhere around that price. And of course the drives' cost...gosh, I thought these devices were used in some small companies (not even there) rather the fooling around with it at home, just because of the money. And yes, today's prices ARE low for such HW accelerated RAID setup, plus considering the financial crisis "fallout" - still good.