Will cheap RAID card prove silly?

[NurseMSIC]

I saw, on komplett.co.uk (so relevant for UK people) a 'SUNSWAY' ATA-100 Raid controller for under 30 pounds.
Never heard of them, but me being me, this was the cheapest Raid card by far so i bought it, along with the 80 Gig 8MB Western Digital drive.
I also have a UDMA 100 40 Gig drive and a UDMA 66 12 Gig, so i will be having both '100' drives on the same channel somehow, havent figured the exact configuration yet.

My question is - will buying a cheap Raid card be my undoing, only having to buy a 'proper' Raid card later on??

Any thoughts??

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[kaorisdad]

I was curious as to what Level RAID were you considering? I am currently configuring a RAID Level 1 setup, but I was under the impression that you are limited by the capacity of the lesser drive. In other words, if you configure your 80 GB drive with the 40 GB drive in a RAID configuration, a Level 0 RAID setup would give you only 80GB total storage. It would be faster, but you lose, in essence 40 GB. For Level 1, if you use the 80 GB and 40 GB drive in a RAID config, the total storage capacity is 40 GB, and you lose 80 GB worth of storage, but have redundant data. My understanding is the optimum setup is two identical drives. In a Level 0 config, 2 identical 40 GB drives would give you 80 GB storage capacity and double the access and read times. In a Level 1 config, 2 identical 40 GB drives gets you 40 GB of storage capacity but it is a true redundant setup.

 

[NurseMSIC]

Yep, that's a good point well made. I actually bought the card simply to increase the number of IDE channels available, rather than going down the 'Raid proper' route, but wanted to maybe have the option in the future.

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[cakecake]

That's a good question. I don't think anyone's ever really tried using a cheap RAID card before. I don't know if the more expensive cards have error correction, buffering, or other special features, but if the cheap card works then that's good. Since you already bought it, let us know if it works and what kind of speeds you're getting. My guess is it will be a bit slower than a more expensive card.

Censorship makes us so much more creative.

 

[Crashman]

It will probably be of very similar performance to name brand boards of the same chip.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[wwallquist]

Check out the article here, it is really good:

http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=1491




"If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space".

 

[NurseMSIC]

Well i've just checked and the RAID card and the hard drive are now on their way to me, so i shall indeed be benchmarking in a number of different configurations and partitions to find out all sorts of answers.
Give me a few days...

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[Crashman]

And what relavence does this article have to his question? Please read the question before sputtering off irrelavent remarks and web articles. When you've learned how to do that, go to the FAQ link on the side and learn how to make those irrelavent articles clickable.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[lhgpoobaa]

having a bigger and smaller dive in raid 1...is just silly.
you loose all that capacity

<font color=blue>All religions are true, for a given value of 'true' - Terry Pratchett.</font color=blue>

 

[kaorisdad]

I understand what you are trying to accomplish. But will the card allow you to do what you are proposing? If your RAID card has 2 extra IDE channels, you can add up to 4 drives, with a Master/Slave setting. However, RAID requires a minimum of two drives, so at best, if you connect your 80GB drive to your older IDE channel, and use the 40GB and 12GB drives in a Level 0 RAID, you would lose 28GB of capacity (you'd have a net capacity of 104GB). I don't believe you can just use one channel of a RAID controlled channel. Probably the best thing to do is buy another 40GB HDD (or better yet, another 80GB), and use both 40GB drives in a RAID 0. That way you have 160GB storage, and I would use the RAID array as the boot drive since it will be fast. You could add the 12GB as a Slave to the 80GB, but it seems a waste to lose that 8MB buffered WD speed limited by the older drive.

 

[PCcashCow]

i set up the cheapest raid configurations there was via jumping a fastrack/66 to be a raid card. it was an artical posed by tom's hardware guide a while back. anyways i set up a simple raid 0 with 2 60 ibm deskstars and my bench mark was pretty resonaible. cheaper sometimes works but no matter the card or the drive it most of the time come to chipsets on the board and ata configs

It seems that every time I reboot my wallet get smaller.

 

[NurseMSIC]

Hmm, despite all the articles i've read on RAID, nowhere mentioned that i couldnt have only one drive attached.
Damn it!!
I was assuming, that at the very least, i would leave my current setup as is and simply attach the RAID card and the one 80 Gig to it.
So that isnt possible?
Do i feel sheepish!
Baaa....

So it looks like i should probably step up and buy another 40 Gig drive, since i am pretty much out of money and cant spend another 100 pounds on another Western Dig. SE.

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[OldBear]

Don't feel bad. If we ever quit learning, it's because we are dead.
:lol:



<b><font color=blue>The shortest distance between two points is under construction. :lol:

 

[kaorisdad]

Well, if you just want extra IDE channels, you can check your RAID card's documentation and you might be able to disable the RAID controller and just use the IDE connectors on the card. It sort of defeats the whole purpose for buying a RAID card, but you really bought it for different reasons.