promise vs hightek raid

[hippie91]

i have used a promise fasttrack raid controller in the past, but m new MB (KG7-RAID) has onboard raid. the card i have is ata66, but the MB has ata 100 raid. i'm wondering on the quality of each raid chip. i have the raid on the MB so that is isn't sharing an icq in hardware (kept specific slots empty) but it still seems to use FAR more cpu than the promise card i have. i'm wondering if i should scrap the onboard raid and use my promise card to get better speeds.

(the drives are ata66 so it makes no diff on the interface between 100/66

sorry all, i'm fairly drunk while posting this so if i'm leaving info out please ask and i'll fill in when i can type properly

will

[Phil Pugh]

Stick with the Promise RAID card. The on-board RAID will probably be limited to a couple of drives (i.e. one on each port).

If you eventually get UDMA 100 drives - you could try it out then.

Hope the hangover wasn't too bad

[Dr Mordrid]

HighPoint's chips are generally trouble looking for a place to happen. Avoid them.

Dr. Mordrid

[Karlson]

Doc,

I have to admitt though, that in oposition to your recomendation
I bought a Highpoint 370A based card.

In fact, I first had a lot of trouble with this card due to broken
stripes. It was exchanged by the old revision of the card
(manufactured in 4 layer multilayer instead of 2 layer with the
new version) and everything works realy fine now.

See details of my configuration below.

Why did I do it? Half the price. Realy. So if you have negotiated
with the dealer to maybe exchange it in case of problems...

[hippie91]

Heh no, there wasn't a hangover

i guess i'll switch the drives to the promise card, and just use the onboard raid for bulk storage.

i was pretty careful when installing the cards with this system... making sure various cards didn't share DMA in the hardware and all...

luckly, that left the slot that shares with the onboard raid open, so if i put in the raid card instead it won't take any performance hit.