Questions on RAID

[LC1104]

I have the following setup:

P3B-F, 450 P3, matrox g400 max and rr-g, plextor 40x ultraplex, plextor 8/20 cd-r, 2x 128 MB Viking CAS-2, 3Com 905-b network card, SB Live, Adaptec 2940U for the CDroms and an Epson 636 scanner, IBM 22GXP 22.0 GB

I am interested in getting a promise fasttrak 66. But now that i have been reading these messages on the crackling noise and problems with the SB Live and fasttrak, i'm getting worried. I don't do much video capturing, but am interested in much more video editting after i get the card. I wanted to get three IBM 35GXP 20.5 GB harddrives and put them in a RAID 0 config with the IBM 22.0 GB also on the fasttrak but just as a single drive. Will i have many problems? Also, i'm worried about cooling. I have a full tower case with good air flow, but for the bay where i am planning to put in the harddrives, i only have three slots for harddrives. Will it be ok to stack the three one on top of the other? And with that, how is it possible to put another harddrive anywhere? There is just a lot of hollow space under the bay where the front bottom fan is. Any help would be great. THank you everyone who replies.

[Frank Marshall]

Hi,

I should state from the outset that I don't have a RAID array at the moment but I too have been looking into the possibility. If you do a search here on 'fasttrak' you'll see in the posts that the new fasttrak 100 looks like a mighty fine proposition. As for the IBM GXP35s, I'm not sure if they are ATA100 compliant but I think they run cool. You can check out a review of these and other drives at:
http://www.storagereview.com/

Quantum LMs also get a good rap at storage review. These and the Maxtors are definately fast but cool HDs.

HTH.

[This message has been edited by Frank Marshall (edited 20 July 2000).]

[SteveC]

Has anyone tried using a software RAID solution, such as Win2k's (or even NT4's) stripe sets? How to they compare?

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[Dr Mordrid]

I have several IDE RAID arrays on my labs systems ranging from Fasttrak33's to the new Fasttrak100.

First I'll address software RAIDs as in NT4 and Win2K. They are cheap but have serious limitations. First of all software RAID's can fail due to a software error and rebuilding them is a royal pain if it ends up being possible at all. This doesn't happen with hardware RAID's as the drivers don't affect the functionality of the RAID array itself. They mainly just provide settings. The ability to rebuild an array is built into the Fasttraks hardware BIOS.

Now for the Fasttraks. I'd recommend the new Fasttrak100 over previous models because of the recent improvements in their design. This has reduced their PCI bus utilization and efficiency. One such change is the use of phase locked loop timing instead of a crystal timebase because of the speeds used in an ATA100 interface. Next on my list would be the Fasttrak66 as it also had improvements over the older and now outdated Fasttrak33.

I have used ATA33, ATA66 and ATA100 drives on the FT100 and all worked just fine. I would not recommend, however, the installation of the PCACHE utility that comes with it. This is not very useful for video applications, being more targeted towards server and "normal use" needs.

As far as the drives I've used:

Maxtor Diamond Max ATA33 7,200: work great, but outdated.
Maxtor Diamond Max ATA66 Plus 40 7,200: The fastest ATA66 in the market. Love mine.

IBM Deskstar ATA33 7,200: not as fast as equivalent Maxtor. Had 1 of 3 fail this year.
IBM Deskstar GXP75 ATA100 7,200: fastest drive I've tested, but I haven't tried the Maxtor ATA100 either.

Maxtor DiamondMax Plus ATA100 7,200: just released and on my "hit list".

A couple of my systems:

Asus P3B-F
256 megs
Win98SE
Marvel G400
Fasttrak66 w/3 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus ATA66's

Asus P3B-F
256 megs
Win98SE
RT-2000
Fasttrak100 w/4 DiamondMax Plus 2500's, waiting for those Maxtor ATA100's

Yes, I like the Asus P3B-F

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 20 July 2000).]