RAID array question

[stuart_tetley]

I have a couple of questions regarding setting up a U160 drive array for VT2.

I gather it's best to stick with Adaptec controller cards - I'm thinking a 29160 or 39160. I have 64 bit PCI slots available.

For the drives, would a set of 4 Maxtor (Quantum) Atlas 10K II (U160 73Gb, 10K rpm, , 5.2ms ave access) be respectable?

I would use Win2K's software striping facility.

Thanks

[robewil]

Either Adaptec card you mention should be good but I believe only the 39160 is a 64 bit card.

The 4 Quantum Atlas drives should perform very well.

Yes, use Win 2000's built-in striping.

[SBowie]

Originally posted by robewil
Either Adaptec card you mention should be good but I believe only the 39160 is a 64 bit card. I think the 29160 can be had in 64bit, but is single-channel, unlike the 39160 'dualie'...

[Faraz]

You might want to consider getting a hardrives that U320 drives. And get a SCSI card that supports it. We are getting amazing results. 3 drives stripped @ 180 MB/sec.

If we put 4 on 2 on each channel results should be very intresting.

[SBowie]

Originally posted by Faraz
We are getting amazing results. 3 drives stripped @ 180 MB/sec. Very nice, Faraz - are these 15k Cheetah U320's?

[Paul Lara]

Originally posted by stuart_tetley
I have a couple of questions regarding setting up a U160 drive array for VT2.

I gather it's best to stick with Adaptec controller cards - I'm thinking a 29160 or 39160. I have 64 bit PCI slots available.

For the drives, would a set of 4 Maxtor (Quantum) Atlas 10K II (U160 73Gb, 10K rpm, , 5.2ms ave access) be respectable?

You can save a few scheckels by getting the 29160, which is 64-bit, but single channel. You can put all four drives on the same channel.

Yeah, you'd be pretty happy with multi-layered tastiness with that setup, Stuart! ;)

[tmon]

Question for Faraz:

Any chance you might try a RAID Level 3 setup with U320 drives?

Maybe you need another drive, though.

Anyway, something for me to think about. I need security/redundancy that RAID Level 0 does not provide...

[ted]

I'd really like to consider that also, when we can get fast enough drives and throughput. By then HD will put us back in the same boat. :(

I spend so much time backing up projects on about a daily/weekly basis.
I also have spent a fortune on large backup systems, just incase!

For now I need the speed, but maybe, someday.

[stuart_tetley]

Thanks to all for your advice. I'm about ready to put this puppy together....

U320 drives were too expensive, so I have gone for 4 U160s. I did manage to obtain a 39160 for a good price, so I'm putting 2 of the drives on each channel.

Later, I could perhaps add another 2 drives, making 3 on each. That'll probably be about all the internal space I have.

Hopefully, this will fly (and eliminate the audio sync problems.)

[sbrandt]

Am I to understand you can RAID-0 an Adaptec 29160?
The one I'm trying to set up right now does not
give me any RAID functionality at the CTL-A set-up.

I just read a post, talking about "using the WIN2000 striping function".

What am I missing here? Anything?

[SBowie]

Sure you can - or a 19160, 39160, what have you -- just using disk-striping in Win2K or XPPro. You can even stripe EIDE drives right off the motherboard if you don't need the spots on the IDE bus for another device.

Just right-click on My computer, select Manage, then Disk Manager. From here you can set up and format a stripeset.

[sbrandt]

Guess I could have saved myself some Jack if I'd known that sooner. Do you know what the relative performance gain is, for running on a hardware RAID over software?

[sbrandt]

BLAINE just filled me in.
I've been doing it wrong since before last Christmas !!!