Need Help With Scsi Raid

tech198tech198
edited January 2004 in Hardware
I started off building this system with a single 18GB U320 15,000RPM Seagate disk drive and was fine for a start but starting to run low on space for music.

I called to order another drive and they suggested the option of RAID.

Platform: Windows XP pro, 512 MB GEIL DDR, 2.6 GHZ P/4, Adaptec dual U320 SCSI controller w/ raid options, Radeon XP video card 256MB Ram, Gigabyte motherboard.


QUESTION:
Is it a matter of mathematics to obtain my desired bandwidth on each channel (IE around 4 Seagate U320 drives per channel) or is there another better theory??

Comments

  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited January 2004
    In layman's terms:

    2 RAID0 drives will work faster than 1.
    4 RAID0 drives will work faster than 2
    4 RAID0 drives with 2 RAID0 drives on separate channels for temporary, system temp, pagefile files will work better than just 4 RAID0 drives.

    Multiple SCSI drives will "feel" smoother rather than be significantly faster. Some are considering the "poor man's" version by RAIDing SATA150 drives for that older U160 SCSI comparison.

    Me?

    If push came to shove I'd put my music files on a single drive then run two of your drives for the program/OS. If I had lots and lots and lots of money...well it would be no question then wouldn't it. :)
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited January 2004
    That's a pretty intense setup for music ;D

    Welcome to short-media :)
  • FlintstoneFlintstone SE Florida
    edited January 2004
    Unless your P4 board has PCI-X or at least a 66Mhz/64 Bit PCI slot, the PCI bus will be your limiting transfer factor. I almost bury the PCI bus with 2 SATA 150 drives in a raid 0. SO, don't waste your money on the SCSI unless you can "upgrade" the bus to take advantage of the added speed.

    That's just my $.02.

    Flint
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited January 2004
    Your choice of scsi raid card in a 32bit slot is really pretty sad. you really need a 64bit slot to really perform. For what you doing and the platform I can't believe a nice u320 controller and hot single drives won't get it halfway to the pci bus bandwidth limit. I have about 15 u320 drives in raid and non raid configurations. Shorty prime and mediadude got high end scsi raid controllers from me and I have done this for many years and I have not personally ever seen a scsi raid controller that performed well enough in a 32bit slot to bother with. You want scsi raid or even more then two hot ide or sata drives and you blow the lid on the 32bit pci bus bandwidth.

    Son I hate to tell ya this but... You need to think about a dualie rig with 64bit slots. either 64/66 or pci-x. It will blue your idea of a disk subsystem.

    What kind of atto's you cranking on that baby now? 130,000 or so is about maxing teh pci 32 bit bus.

    Try this one on for size? And what kind a sandra bench is it cranking also? heres mine.

    Tex
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited January 2004
    There he goes showing off his beastly ~300MB/s setup. Grrrr.;)

    I was looking at the graph and noticed the HUGE jump at 64.0. Could there be a coincidence?
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited January 2004
    Thats the stripe/cluster.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited January 2004
    And I think teh 178,000 on sandra is even more outlandish. thats bypassing teh windows cache and look at the access time. Thats a huge differnace with ide raid. You never see the acess time get under like 8 or 9 seconds with hpt/promise and such.. You get the str but not teh access time. 2ms. You can't imagine what tahts liek in real life.

    I have booted from teh xp install cd, partitoned, formatted and without many devices enabled I have booted clean to the windows desktop in under 14 minutes.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited January 2004
    DAMN thats fast. I would bet the 2ms would feel a lot quicker than the 8 or 9 with IDE drives.
  • FlintstoneFlintstone SE Florida
    edited January 2004
    From experience, it feels like silk. Almost as if the machine knew what you wanted next and smooth, smooth, smooth!
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