Contemplating RAID0 with sata...

scriptasylum

OSNN Senior Addict
Joined
25 Dec 2001
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832
I am seriously toying with getting a couple of raptors and a SATA Raid card (merry Christmas to me :)), but I'm not sure which RAID card to get for the system in my sig.

I have SATA on-board but it's the SIL chip and I've heard nothing good about it. So I thought I'd get a SATA PCI RAID card. The brands I've looked at so far are Promise and Highpoint but I've heard Promise cards have issues with nForce2 boards and HighPoint performance is not all that great. Then, I've heard about problems with performance due to write-back caching. I'm not gonna spend ~$350 on something that's not gonna work well.
 
alternatively sell your board and get a good mobo with onboard promise controller :)

I have both and intel and promise raid controller on my mobo :)

quite kewl...

the promise works brilliantly... the intel one afaik is for s-ata...
 
Thanks Sazar, but I really don't feel like changing platforms... too expensive.

I posted a similar question on Amdforums.com and from what I've read in other posts, it looks like the corruption issues with the Sil controller have been solved with BIOS and driver updates. Performance isn't all that bad now with the Sil either; between 80-100+ MB/sec depending on which drives you use. Certainly less expensive that buying a whole new mobo/CPU plus the drives.
 
Originally posted by coathanger007
Asus P4800 deluxe is good value with onboard SATA RAID.

I'm sure it is, but I would still have to buy the mobo and CPU as they haven't come up with a SocketA to Socket478 adaptor. ;)
 
Well, I went ahead and got those Raptors and after Windows is all reloaded and apps installed (ugh), I must say I'm pretty happy with the feel of the RAID set. In ATTO, I get a max transfer rate of ~105MB/sec (write) and ~95MB/sec (read), although there's a "read" dip when it gets to whatever I set my chunk size to (32).

I went to go see if write cache was enabled, but it's not even there for the RAID drives! It's enabled for the IDE drive though (see the pic).

Oh, I'm using the newest Sil drivers and all Windows Updates are done.
 
its just the way its read out as a scsi adapter is used to mount the drives, imho it is enabled as a default, as i never noticed a speed drop switching my drive onto the PCI ATA Card.
 
Thanks Gonzo (didn't think there would actually be anyone here on Christmas).

My performance is ok but I've heard about people having to enable write caching and I just can't. The Sil RAID Windows proggy says write caching is enabled, but Windows says it isn't and when I used Bootvis; it says it's not either. I would just like some type of confirmation either way.
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
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Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
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Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

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