Re: [H] RAID questions
1) Any recommendations out there for cards? I was looking at the Highpoint RocketRaid ones and was fairly impressed. Any major differences between Highpoint, 3Ware, and Promise? I would stay away from both 3ware and Promise. You might look at Broadcom adapters...they seem to have very good RAID5 write performance, and are at a good pricepoint. 2) This array is going to be attached to a HTPC but I have not decided on the OS I will be using. Anything out there that supports Wintel, OSX, and Linux? Anyone know about RAID compatibilit with Knoppix or Mythpc? 3) Do I have to start with a set of blank drives? Right now 1 of the 3 drives has about 200GB of data on it which would not be easy to backup and get off the drive. Yes, all drives will be wiped when you init the array. You'll need to get the data off first. 4) Do all the drives in the array have to be of the same size? No, but the array will be configured around the size of the smallest drive. IE: a RAID5 array of a 40, 120, and 300GB drive would only be 80GB usable (plus 40GB for parity). Greg
Re: [H] RAID questions
On Thu, 18 Aug 2005, Brian Weeden wrote: Well after my latest HD failure I have decided it is best to pursue a RAID solution. I have 3 250 GB SATA 150 drives that I would like to start the array with and will probably be adding a couple more later. Right now the array will be going into a Athlon system with a nForce 2 mobo but soon ( 6 months) I will be moving to a newer 64 bit system with PCI-X slots. I would like to get a RAID card that supports both the older 33/66 PCI standard and the new PCI-X. I will be booting the OS off a separate, single drive and using the RAID array for dta storage and media playback. I don't really need a hardcore, heavy duty server-quality RAID card but I am looking for something pretty decent. 1) Any recommendations out there for cards? I was looking at the Highpoint RocketRaid ones and was fairly impressed. Any major differences between Highpoint, 3Ware, and Promise? Make sure you get a true hardware raid as opposed to a software assisted raid. Quite a few SATA raid cards aren't true hardware raid. This of course depends on your preferance. http://linux.yyz.us/sata/faq-sata-raid.html A raid card I really like is in the Adaptec AAC-RAID family. it's true hardware raid, so you don't need to worry about using any extra CPU power. It's a couple hundred dollars tho. Christopher Fisk -- Fry: Leela, there's nothing wrong with anything.
RE: [H] RAID questions
3) Do I have to start with a set of blank drives? Right now 1 of the 3 drives has about 200GB of data on it which would not be easy to backup and get off the drive. I'm pretty sure I've seen RAID cards that can do online expansion of their raid volumes. If you decide on one that can do this then get a fourth 250gig disk so you have a 3 disk RAID 5 set, copy all your data onto it then either keep the fourth drive as a spare or combine it into the volume :)
