SCSI 320 RAID question

[Black_Cat]

A while back I had posted a question regarding long pauses (sometimes up to a minute). This usually occurred during decoding or encoding video but was not limited to just that. Sometimes games would hang especially if it were at a point where it was saving.

Before I go on with my story, let me tell you that I have an Adaptec 2120S SCSI 320 with 2 Seagate 15k RPM 73GB Cheetas in a RAID O configuration in an MSI 875P Neo-LSR board. I swapped out the MSI for an Asus P4C800 Deluxe, I've reinstalled WinXP numerous times, I've tried different RAM, but the problem remained. The Adapted is a 64 bit card but I was using it in a 32 bit PCI slot (half of it hangs over the slot). I just got 2 new S-ATA 160GB Deskstars and also configured them RAID 0 and reinstalled WinXP. No pauses. Everything seem fine.

Now, I plugged in the Adaptec to transfer some files to the new drives. You guessed it! Pausing like a mofo! It's taking forever to transfer just a few gigs. What could be causing this? Is it because the card is in a 32 bit slot? If I were to get a mobo with a 64 bit PCI-X slot would these pauses cease? If anybody has a technical explanation, I'd love to hear it.



You've tried and failed. The lesson here is, never try again. -- Homer Simpson.

 

[bobwya]

Hi mate.

If you read the specs. you would see this is a 64-bit/66Mhz card. Basically you answered your own question ... you will need a MB with a PCI-X slot (i.e. 64-bit PCI) if you want to run it.

I know a lot of 64-bit PCI cards work in 32-bit PCI slots but this card doesn't appear to have that mode... It would be pretty crap anyway as 32bit/32Mhz PCI=133Mbyte/second transfer rate max. across _all_ your PCI devices (including embedded MB devices hanging off your southbridge)...

I have some raid-0 Maxtor 15K U320 for booting off plus some 15K U320 Seagate Cheeta for workspace temporary storage. SCSI drives are nice but are we going to see a PCIe 1x host adapter anytime soon...??

Bob

 

[Black_Cat]

Thanks for responding. This post was so old it was starting to grow mold. I wish I could answer your question but if I had to take a guess about the PCIe 1x I'd have to say not for a while. The SCSI world seems to make large leaps over longer periods of time.



You've tried and failed. The lesson here is, never try again. -- Homer Simpson.

 

[bobwya]

Hi,

The problem with this great rush to PCIe is that its left all those 64-bit capable PCI/PCI-X cards out in the cold. All the newer mainstream MBs have a combo of PCI and PCIe 1x slots... But where I ask are the PCIe 1x cards - for doing anything??!!

Naturally a 1x PCIe slot running at 2.5Gb/second (250Mbytes/second) in each direction would be nice... But imagine even a 4-lane PCIe card running at 10Gbit in each direction (1Gbytes/second)!! Ah well one can but dream...

Like most people I would like to move to an Athlon 2X+DDR2 at some point (when they are avialable of course) but I have too much $$$ invested in hard disks to do this until I can get a decent PCIe U320 host controller.

Bob