Setting up SCSI 320 Ultra

19 public posts in this discussion.

Post 1

Ok I've bit the bullet and Brought

Motherboard with Onboard Ultra320

http://tw.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-8KNXP%20Ultra.htm

and two 73 gig Ultra320 10K drives

http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,538,00.html

Questions are.....

Whats the best why to set these up for maxium performance

From what I've researched I will get better performance if I run then as two seperate drives (well this is what a Guru is telling me).

But I was under the impression that some sort of SCSI raid setup would run these drives as one unit and get over the 320 m/s rate as pair.

What is the best way to set this up?

Also....

I will have 2 ATA and 1 SATA drive also, I intend to set these up as follows..

One ATA on the ATA interface
The SATA on SATA interface
and the 2nd ATA on the gigaraid interface by turning it into another ATA interface.

The reasoning behind this is so that each HHD will have its own interface so will beable to share its files better than it would on a shared interface where more than one drive is being accessed and take less system resources to run it so that I can share these drives at a LAN and run the Windows-Programs-Games of the SCSI drives and not notice a prefromance decrease (ie less that 10 to 15% system usage for shared drives).

Does anyone have any information on this? Will it work? Will it preform as I intend?

Post 2

my god why!

the best people to see would be Silent and Pally.

you bought the $700odd gigabyte board?

Post 3

i'd certainly be very wary about raiding a standard ide drive w/sata converter with a straight sata drive.

Post 4

Raid Across different Connections? :|

Post 5

nice.. but pricey!!

Post 6

ie SCSI raid, the scsi drives running stripeing...

Yeh the Ultra Giga Board

Post 7

your going to stripe raid :| ....

do you like wasting money :P

Post 8

stripe raids are nice, i'm a fan of mine. and will remain so, right until irretrievable data loss occurs :)

but i _still_ wouldn't raid a PATA with a SATA.

Post 9

but wouldnt you think the price would far out-weight the performance increase?
SATA 10k seems just as good. well maybe not as good but cirtainly good enough.

Post 10

i personally dont like RAID at all
i think that its stupid to do it casue your just doubleing ya chances of loosing all your data

Post 11

and halfing the life of the drive :P

Post 12

Cant you join two drives with raid, keep the size of both but increase you read write speed by using them in unison?

Maybe I'm using the wrong terms here, but I thought that was one of the options setting up raid...

Also the ATA and SATA drives are not included in the raid concept, just the SCSI, the ATA - SATA are just storage drives....

Post 13

Ok Now I think I got this nailed.

I setup The SCSI controller to run the drives as RAID0, they run as one drive with the full capcity of both drives with increased bandwidth.

Post 14

wait... i thought with raid 0 you lost some capacity on each of the drives...?

Post 15

As I read it no sapce lost at all, but you run storage on two drives and if you lose either you loss it all, But these drives will be my isntalled program files, My Documents will be a file on a storage drive.

The woirst that can happen to be is I loss a drive and have to warranty it and re install my stuff which is easy enough.

And given that a the SCSI drives I got have a 5 year warranty I think its all good.

As soon as you move from Raid 0 you lose diskspace as they are configured to "back up" rahter than "speed up" (other than Raid 3 as I read it but its not as fast anyways)

Post 16

raid0 = striping
- each file is 'striped' across both drives, so half the file gets written to one drive, half gets written to the other.
likewise, half of it gets read from one drive, and half gets read from the other drive (theoretically doubling read/write speeds)

Post 17

cool...

So what happens when you have things like 0+1 or 0+5 or something ?

Post 18

raid 1 = mirroring

two drives, data gets written to one, and duplicated on the other. gives you the write speed of one drive, and the read speed of two drives, and provides redundancy (can still be used if a drive fails), however half your space is basically unavailable for use.

raid 0 + 1 = combining the two.
its a raid 1 array, where the segments are raid 0 arrays, requiring 4 drives minimum for use. the data is written to one half of the mirror, and striped across its drives, and then duplicated to the other segment of the mirror.

raid 10 is similar, but is a raid 0 array, with segments that are raid 1 arrays.

raid 5 is striping with parity also striped across the array, providing redundancy (a disk can fail, and the array still be useable)

Post 19

Looks like it's going to be a fast setup. What's the primary use of this computer? Is it snappy? Access time on the array should be quick.