Areca card & raid questions......

dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
edited March 2006 in Hardware
Hi guys, doing some research which leads me to a few questions.

Is the areca 1210 raid card hard to set up vs setting up onboard software raid. This would be on an Asus p5wd2-e Premium mobo.

Is there a noticeable difference between the 2 above?

Thanks in advance

Jon

Comments

  • FlintstoneFlintstone SE Florida
    edited February 2006
    In my limited experience and having no experience with the Areca card at all, All of the "add-on" raid cards have had a much more robust user interface which makes them much easier to set up. There are more options, typically, but that just makes it more able to do what you want it to do.

    Flint
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited February 2006
    Thanks for the reply Flint. We have done NVidia software raid, but not hardware one. Google searching came up with limited info, though it does appear to be a good thing.

    Guess we'll find out soon enough when all the parts arrive.:smiles:
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited February 2006
    I acutally use an Areca 1230 in my Asus A8N-SLI. it runs a raid 5 using currently 7 300gb hard drives. and it is unbeliveably fast. all mine are SATA 150 drives, and i have read write speeds in excess of 300MB/sec read and 150MB/sec write.

    the configuration manager is supurb and very easy to use. i can telnet into the card, or use the http manager. it has email notification, alerts, and all sorts of ways of telling you somthing whent south. i should know i had a drive die over the weekend and the card when crazy beeping at me untill i fixed it. it has complete srtipe migration, complete raid migration, i can go from raid 5 to raid 6 as the push of a button. adding drives in is just as easy. when you create an array volume, its instantly availabe in windows even though its not done initiazing

    i give Areca a 5 star rating. but bear in mind, these are SERVER class raid cards. these are not toys. they are lean and mean and bad ass.

    also make sure the bios of the board supports it, asus came out with a specific bios ( rev 1013 and higher ) specificly for the acreca 12XX series of cards. see if theres a P4 version of the same features.
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited February 2006
    Thanks for the info Armo. I searched high and low to find what i believed to be a good card, since it is going into the latest Asus mobo. It's the only Pci-express one i could find.

    Mobo should be here tomorrow, so we won't be bored this weekend:smiles:
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited February 2006
    just make sure the bios supports that thing, cuase like i said, asus came out with a bios update specificly for the Areca 12XX cards. also hrers a pic of the HTTP console:
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited February 2006
    ARC-12XX(4/8/12/16 Ports) series SATA ll RAID Adapter
    with SLI M/B Compatibility Matrix


    This is a list of mainboard manufacturers compiled by Areca. This list represents mainboard that Areca has tested
    and certified these companies' products model. If it is not on this list, please contact the manufacture directly for
    information regarding compatibility of specific mainboard model. If you manufacture SLI mainboard with
    Dual PCI-Express X16 and are interested in being part of this list, please send an e-mail to support@areca.com.tw
    If you have problem in any mainboard, please try the manufacture latest BIOS.
    SLI Motherboard Compatibility (For Intel 775&AMD 939 CPU)


    ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe nVidia nForce 4 SLI X16 OK True PCIe X16 *2 AMD 939
    ASUS A8N-SLI SE Nvidia nForce4 SLI OK(*1) PCIe X16 (X8) *2 AMD 939
    ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Nvidia nForce4 SLI OK(*1) PCIe X16 (X8) *2 AMD 939
    ASUS A8N-SLI Nvidia nForce4 SLI OK(*1) PCIe X16 (X8) *2 AMD 939
    ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Nvidia nForce4 SLI OK(*1) PCIe X16 (X8) *2 AMD 939
    ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe Nvidia nForce4 SLI Intel OK PCIe X16 (X8) *2 Intel 775
    ASUS P5ND2-SLI Nvidia nForce4 SLI Intel OK PCIe X16 (X8) *2 Intel 775
    ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe Nvidia nForce4 SLI Intel OK PCIe X16 (X8) *2 Intel 775
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited February 2006
    Thanks for that, Armo. Had a look through the pdf file and could not find Sally's mobo. In the process of building still, so will have to see in a few days if it works ok.

    If not, there is GOOD news. I have 2 mobo's that are mentioned in that list. w00h00.

    1 will run a X2 3800+ and the other an Opteron 175.:smiles:
    Not adding more computers, just moving a few proc's around.

    Jon
  • pandemikpandemik Melbourne, Australia
    edited March 2006
    Hi there!

    I have recently gone down the Areca PCIe controller path, and installed one in the secondary PCIe-16x slot in my Asus P5ND2-SLI mobo.

    I have been documenting my progress etc in this thread for anyone interested :) ---> http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=478102

    In summary, things have been pretty smooth for me, other than some compatibility issues between the Areca card and the 400GB WD4000YR (RE2) drives that I am using. Looks like I have it all sorted now (with some help from Areca)..!

    Anyway, thought it might be helpful for you, or at the very least let you know about another "real world" example of the Areca PCIe controllers functioning in Asus PCIe/SLI mobo's!! :)

    cheers
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited March 2006
    Hi pandamik. Thanks for linking us to your thread. I am a member @ whirpool, just not posted much. I'm getting very close to giving the rig a test run, initially letting it run in the bios and monitor temps, etc.

    Once we are happy with it, get started with the OS, etc.

    Like everyone, hoping for a faultless start, lol.

    Thanks again

    Jon
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited March 2006
    be sure to give us some ATTO benchies
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited March 2006
    I'm sure i have the "Atto" program on my computer, but never used it as i don't fully understand it. :(

    Once it's all set up an running, anything i can't work out, like Atto, i'll be sure to ask as i'd be interested too and learn something new in the progress. :)
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited March 2006
    theyhave it here

    http://www.short-media.com/download.php?dc=54

    it just gives read write benchies to a disk using diferent sized data clusters.
  • pandemikpandemik Melbourne, Australia
    edited March 2006
    Armo wrote:
    theyhave it here

    http://www.short-media.com/download.php?dc=54

    it just gives read write benchies to a disk using diferent sized data clusters.

    okay cool Ill give this a go

    any other decent benchmark programs around that I should be looking for?

    HD Tach? Iometer?

    cheers :)
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited March 2006
    for the love of god, do not use the drivers that come on the CD 1.01. Ive had alot of trouble with them. good drives would just drop from the array for no reaseon, the system manager said that the card didnt resprond in a timley manner or somthing like that, then there would be about 3 paging errors to the array and one of the drives would drop out. as soon as i updated to version 1.02 i havent had a problem with it yet.

    just keep that in mind
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited March 2006
    Driver 1.02 would be available online no doubt.

    I read with interest in [pandamiK]'s thread @ whirlpool, that a recommended firmware would fix a problem only to find it was not available online. :/

    I managed to start the computer and get into the bios, so it's looking good sofar. Bit of a hold up as Sally is fixing 2 others at the moment. At least if the Areca controller will not work for any reason, the Asus mobo has a pretty good raid set up available of it's own.

    Raid was planned and raid it will get. ;D
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited March 2006
    yea its on the net, i just cant link you from work cause FTP protocol is blocked.
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited March 2006
    these are for Windows XP 32bit

    ftp://60.248.88.208/RaidCards/AP_Drivers/Windows/Driver/WinXP/X86/scsiport
  • pandemikpandemik Melbourne, Australia
    edited March 2006
    here is my atto benchmark results from yesteday evening, quick overview of set-up as follows:

    using Asus P5ND2-SLI mobo
    Areca RC-1220 (PCie-8x) controller
    RAID-5 (64K Strip Size) using 4 x WD4000YR 400GB SATA-150 drives, NCQ on (i think)

    would still like to play with NCQ and a few other things to see if it makes any diff, and just for the hell of it!

    cheers :)
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited March 2006
    are you sure those are 150 drives? thats outrageous.

    here is horrificgore's score with 4 SATAII drives
  • FlintstoneFlintstone SE Florida
    edited March 2006
    You guys are comparing apples and oranges, in a way. Armo, the total length should be as in Pandemik's tests, @32, not 4 mb. And even then, with a real caching raid controller, the ATTO tests typically don't even get out of the ram so the comparison becomes a matter of how fast the ram and bus are, not the drives/disk system themselves.

    But it is fun to look at!!

    Flint
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited March 2006
    You said these are server class cards right?

    So they have a cpu and cache onboard correct?

    Then ATTO is no way to measure a raid controller with cache. As the test sits only in the cache and never hits the disks as the test size is so small.

    PM or email me and I'll expain what you need to do to really test that array.

    And no.. you won't really get those write speeds on raid-5.

    Tex
  • pandemikpandemik Melbourne, Australia
    edited March 2006
    yeah I didnt think these numbers were realistic, which is why I posted on another forum asking for options as to other benchmarking tools that will give a much more accurate indication :)

    happy also to hear suggestions from you guys? Ive heard of programs like HD Tach and IO meter? are these good ones to get a hold of, or..?

    cheers :)
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