Fasttrak66 or 100?

[IM_Riktar]

I was wondering if anybody has had the chance to compare the 2. Since it's time to retire my original Fasttrak for a new one I was wondering if it's worth the difference in price? I am finding Fasttrak66 prices falling into the $80 range with shipping included. Since my drives are ATA66 (Maxtor40 7200RPM 30gig units) My thought was that there wasn't any advantage to go with the newer one. Or does the new one offer still improved PCI bus utilization enhancements over the 66?
Just for clarification the prices I noted are for the genuine Fasttrak, NOT the "Fasthak" units I have seen advertised.

[gibverse]

Can’t answer you question about the differences between the 66 and the 100. I’d assume its just the new ATA100 spec. I am wondering if the ultra to fasttrack conversion will work with the Ultra100. Can anyone confirm?

Thanks,
John

[Dr Mordrid]

There are some major differences between the Fasttrak66 and the Fasttrak100. Yes, I have a FT100 installed. Here's the rundown;

1. It is again a fully redesigned unit. The physical layout has been totally changed and it appears to have fewer overall parts.

2. The major externally visible change is that it no loger uses a crystal timebase. It likely now uses a PLL integrated into the new silicon.

3. Operationally it now supports ATA100 (duh!), but is backwards compatable. My 3 Maxtor Plus 40 ATA66's (120g array) work fine on it.

4. It now has it's own disk cacheing system: PCACHE. This caches hard drives only under Win98 and has been tested sucessfully in Windows Millennium Release Candidate 2. If it ends up not working well for your purposes it is uninstallable.

5. It now autodetects if ATA66 or ATA100 cables are present on these drives and sets up a compatability mode if they aren't.

6. With IBM 75GXP ATA100 drives it posted 68 meg/sec unbuffered sequential writes in SANDRA Pro 2000. Can you say "screams like a banshee"??

7. The installation using an existing array was totally effortless. Windows98SE prompted for the new drivers and after a reboot it was off to the races.

So far it works great (obviously).

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 17 June 2000).]

[IM_Riktar]

Hi Doc,
Thanks for the info. I don't suppose you benchmarked the Maxtor HD's on both controllers to see if there was any difference in speed? Thanks again,
Rick

[Dr Mordrid]

There appears to be a 3-4 megs/sec advantage to the Fasttrak100, but at 40 megs/sec (ATA66) that could just be due to normal variations in the benchmark.

I'll know more in a few days after I do some more testing. The effects of the PCACHE utility, if any, will also be tested in that series.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 18 June 2000).]

[intomisery]

I'm a bit confused, maybe someone can help me out. Raid Controller, Fasttrak, etc. These are cards that go in a PCI slot and connect to an existing harddrive which in turn speeds it up enourmously? I have also seen external Raid Arrays (what does this mean?).. which is better?

[JTurner]

Here's a little help Doc

Intomisery,
A RAID is a configuration in which 2 or more hard drives work together as one unit. There are two main applications for a RAID:
(I will assume 2 drives connected to the RAID):

Mode RAID0 (striping) - Simultaneously reads/writes from both drives, splitting the same file over both drives to double throughput.

Mode RAID1 (mirroring) - Simultaneously reads/writes the SAME data to both drives so that two copies always exist (an up-to-date backup is always present should one drive fail). No speed advantage is present, since both drives are doing the same thing.

Mode RAID0/1 (striping/mirroring) - Increases read/write speed AND makes backups simultaneously. As far as I know, this can only be achieved with more than 2 drives, since two would be striping to increase speed, and at least another would be required to perform the backup.

For video editing, where speed is the issue, a RAID0 array is what you want. Hooking up 4 drives to the RAID can nearly quadruple read/writes.

RAIDs can be purchased as external boxes which house integrated SCSI hard drives. This type of setup is usually expensive.

RAIDs can also be assembled with several already-purchased hard drives and a controller card. Although SCSI RAIDs have been around for a long time, IDE RAIDs such as the Promise FastTrak offer more bang for your buck, especially since the HDs are cheaper.

ONE NOTE: You will need to be using the same model and size of HDs when you connect them to a RAID, to ensure there are no compatibility issues and to get optimum performance. Therefore, it is best to buy HDs for a RAID all at the same time.

I believe that's the story with RAIDs. I don't really own one, but I've hung around here long enough to learn something
Of course, If I've skewed the truth somewhere, please don't hesitate to correct me Doc.

-JT

[intomisery]

Thanks JT!
So if I get 4, 10 gig HDs, I will get nearly 4 times the data rate, right?
is this better than connecting 2, 20 Gig HDs since you only have almost double the rate?

The HD I'm running right now is a 13 gig Quantum Fireball 7200- unfortunately I couldn't get a maxtor at the time. Are they good drives and should I get 2 more to conect to the fasttrak or should I just opt to get 2 Maxtor Diamond Plus instead?

thanks man!

[This message has been edited by intomisery (edited 19 June 2000).]

[Dr Mordrid]

A bit of a correction on the potential improvements with a RAID0 seems in order ;-)

Capacity:

When you connect two 20 gig drives you get a RAID0 array with a storage capacity of 40 gigs. Adding a third drive ups this to 60 gigs and a fourth makes it 80 gigs. Therefore relationship between drive count and capacity is linear. So far so good....

Performance:

As mentioned the other major advantage of placing multiple drives into a RAID0 array is the speed increase. This performance increase is, however, non-linear.

Here is how the speed increase works out in the real world;

2 drives: the array IS 2x as fast as a single drive with 2x the capacity.

3 drives: the array is 2.3x to 2.6x as fast as a single drive, but with 3x the capacity.

4 drives: the array is still 2.3 to 2.6x as fast, but with 4x the capacity.

The variability in the amount of the 3 drive increase depends mostly on the drive itself. The larger the drives internal buffers and initial performance, the more the gain obtained with 3 drives. It will not achieve 3x the data rate, however.

A fourth drive rarely adds any performance, only capacity.

This non-linear relationship is because of the master/slave relationship of the first and second pairs of drives necessitated by the IDE interface. When the masters are being written to the slaves cannot be, thereby lowering the efficiency.

This might change with SerialATA which makes all drives a master on their own cable header, allowing all drives to be accessed simultaneously.

At any rate, SerialATA will be so fast in its own right (150 megs/second for SATA 1x, 300 for 2x and 600 for 3x) the need for RAID0 arrays will be lessened considerably.

That is, unless HDTV requires data rates around a gig/second ;-))

As far as the choice between a Quantum Fireball and the Maxtor Plus, I'd go for the Maxtors. Especially the new Plus 40's. Those scream, especially in a RAID0 array.

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 19 June 2000).]

[JerryH]

My instructor once told me that "there are no stupid questions, just stupid people asking questions..." That said, here is my question:

Is it possible to set up two individual arrays on a single FastTrak adapter? My present setup has a FastTrak and two 7Gig drives, but I'd like to upgrade to two 20Gig drives and just copy the data over.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yes, you can have two dual drive RAID0 arrays on one Fasttrak controller. No problem at all. You can even have a three drive RAID0 array and one single drive JBOD "array" connected to one Fasttrak card.

JBOD = Just a Bunch Of Drives. JBOD lets you string dissimilar drives into a single large spanned drive that is not a RAID0. Since it is not a RAID0 a JBOD gives no speed advantage, just additive capacity.

Using a single drive in a JBOD is just a trick way to get an extra IDE connection. Hard drives only though....

If you are running in WinNT4 you can even have two Fasttraks in one system. Here's how to do it;

http://www.promise.com/techsupport/I...ttrak33_66.htm

Think about the implications of that ;-)

In short the Fasttrak configurations can be very flexible.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 19 June 2000).]

[Frank Marshall]

Hey Doc,

Do you have any idea why the Videoguys don't seem to like the Fasttrak? I saw a wee post on their site stating quite categorically that they don't sell 'em (and possibly WON'T sell 'em). I wonder why? I'm dreamin' of building a little two disk RAID and all your posts on the Fasttrak seem to be encouraging so what's their beef?

Frank.

[Dr Mordrid]

It might relate to the high PCI utilization of the Fasttrak33 and the potential conflict this posed with those boards that hit the PCI hard. The RT-2000 is an example. Those problems were pretty much laid to rest with the FT66 and the FT100 is even better.

Also the the Fasttrak RAID's are a lot cheaper and therefore have a lower profit margin than SCSI solutions ;-)

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 03 July 2000).]

[Frank Marshall]

Hi again Doc,

Would you know whether a two-disk Fasttrak RAID-0 array can be set-up so that one HD writes from the outside tracks in, while the other writes from the inside tracks out? The idea being that the overall transfer-rate is more consistant than where both disks write from the faster outer tracks and slow down as they fill up towards the inner tracks.

Frank.

[Dr Mordrid]

Not sure if it already does it this way but my experience with the FT's is that the data rate is already quite even from the beginning to the end of the array.

Dr. Mordrid