about RAID

[Stryker7]

Stryder, thanks a lot for all your input here, appreciated  :) :-X

One of my PCs, I think actually this one, used to boot with a RAID controller message but I got rid of it somehow (when I bought it, it didn't have a RAID set up).

It couldn't find the HD (1TB). After fiddling with the BIOS, I found a toggle which changed some HD feature and made it accessible for XP to install on it. So I am not sure wheather or not it is SW or HW, but I think it's a HW chip on board.

And this "used to boot with a RAID controller message" means that you have some sort of RAID chip.

But even if you have a HW chip on your MB, it is more are less a communication device, that thru SW, can create a RAID, and allow for setting up an Array.

A True HW RAID, is a dedicated addon card, has its own controller chip, memory, and everything else that it needs without any further assistance from the computer, to turn multiple drives into a single drive for use by the computer.   Good ones have a Battery Backup Unit in case of a power failure so that it can shut itself down gently, instead of crashing.

Simply put, it does the basic RAID, without any help from anywhere, with the exception of a few volts and a communications link thru the host port. As soon as you turn the computer on, the RAID is there.

The more I read about RAID0, the more it interests me and I might have one one day (either upgrade this rig or have it in the next rig).

However, don't think that you're wasting your time going into detail here, we have a lot of people just reading our boards and some of them might even pop up here and submit a post ;)

I looked at your system specs, and did not see your MB listed, What is it ?

If you will let me know what specific make and model of MB, and possibly with what chipset, I can respond more intelligently, and maybe help you setup what you already have.

[Stryker7]

I sure would be interested in the performance data - I was the one with the Gateway server, and it is a hardware (PCI) RAID.  I'm not using that server any more and could yank the parts out of it for my gaming rig.

PZ, if you do have a True RAID card, you are ready to setup a RAID NOW. I am excited for you because ......

All you need are the drives.

If you will take a look at the card, and let me know the specific make and model, I can find out if it is for IDE, SATA, SCSI ,,,,,

I also looked at your system specs, so I do need to know that Vista x64 is still the OSs you operate, and then I can make sure that the SW that you need is available, whether thru the OEM that made it, or Open Source SW.

Tell you what, to make it as painless as possible, I will go so far as to make a detailed set of instructions, find the software you need to monitor and maintain the RAID Array, and upload it all to Rapishare, Megaupload, whatever.


Plus, if you want to spring for 3 or 4 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor or something similar for your HW, you would have the envy of everyone here, ESPECIALLY ME !!!!!!!  :-X

You wouldnt mind being the guinea pig here if you could setup a Real RAID would you ?

[mandru]

No worries Stryker7, I didn't take your reply as confrontational.  My silly smiley was me poking fun at myself so being so stubborn about accepting jumps in tech.

I set benchmarks and move on my purchases as they become available.  My current rig became a "do it now" when drives dropped to the $1 per gig on hard drive purchases.  For 4 or 5 years I'd told my wife that that would be the point were it would be optimal to build our next system.

The $1 a gig threshold just happened to coincide with the introduction of the nVidia GTX295 and the i7 CPU family.  Too many green lights for me to ignore.  I also had a chance to grab up a spanking new read/write blue ray drive but my research in every review I could find made me give it a pass as over half of the blue rays in computers had people screeching about them being wonky.

I'm just not that worried about ultra high def TV since my eyes aren't nearly high def enough to truly enjoy it.   ;)

I have great faith that the bright boys and girls driving the cutting edge of the tech industry will always surprise us and each other for that matter.  That's how they keep their job security up where they like it.  ;D

[Art Blade]

looked at your system specs, and did not see your MB listed, What is it ?

My game rig came pre-fab, it's a Medion "Erazer" PC ("mircostar powered by medion" with intel X58 express chipset). No idea what mobo is on it.

[Stryker7]

looked at your system specs, and did not see your MB listed, What is it ?

My game rig came pre-fab, it's a Medion "Erazer" PC ("mircostar powered by medion" with intel X58 express chipset). No idea what mobo is on it.

Does this look like your MB, look at the specifications tab ? According to a few websites, your board ""Pegatron_IPMTB-GS_X58" is in fact the ASUS board I link to here.

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=gFBKfNyhppW9tDbB&templete=2

If it is, then it does support SW RAID. RAID 0,1,5,10.

Just take a look. If it is not the .....

If you have a link to the support page for your computer, that might help.

[Art Blade]

It seems to be that mobo (although some parts are hard to see because of the massive cooler block on top of my CPU). I think it might be a slightly altered version of that board, sometimes they do that.

[PZ]

Thanks for the offer Stryder - I'll check as soon as I can (the machine is in storage right now), but it is of W2000 vintage, and I believe it is a SCSI card (I'll check though).  I can't recall the drives that are in the system now, but they are accessible through a front door on the server, and a tab releases them from the rack for hot-swapping purpose.  A couple of questions:

1. What do think I can do with this machine and/or it's parts?
2. Can I network this server somehow and gain any kind of benefit to connected machines?

[Stryker7]

It seems to be that mobo (although some parts are hard to see because of the massive cooler block on top of my CPU). I think it might be a slightly altered version of that board, sometimes they do that.

I understand OEMs having a commercially available MB, modified to make it proprietory. That is one of the reasons, that you can not afford to buy a new PSU for an HP computer, without checking to make SURE that the 20/ 24 pin MB power connector conforms to the industry standard. Hooking up an over-the-counter PSU to one, will blow the PC up instantly. As a side note, this is a business model, by which you either buy one of their replacement PSUs at an extemely inflated price (nice of em aint it), or blow you fry your entire system (by which they hope to sell you a new system).

Why ? Corporate Profits.

Back on topic. IF your MB, has the Intel ICH10R controller, then it does natively support SATA RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10.

And since you were getting the RAID error during boot-up, I am willing to BET, that it is available to you right now. What you want to do with it, is totally up to you, but with a 2 or more drives, you should be able to do some sort of RAID Array if you want to. You would just need to provide the drives, and decide what sort of RAID you want.

[Art Blade]

Currently I've got a 1 TB HD in it, with lots of space left on it. So there is no accute need for another drive.. and I don't think it is slow.. actually I'm surprised at how fast my games load. So I'll wait and see.. by the time the drive is getting full, I might already be about to buy a new PC because of CPU/GPU development. :)

By the way, please check you PM ;)

[Stryker7]

Thanks for the offer Stryder - I'll check as soon as I can (the machine is in storage right now), but it is of W2000 vintage, and I believe it is a SCSI card (I'll check though).  I can't recall the drives that are in the system now, but they are accessible through a front door on the server, and a tab releases them from the rack for hot-swapping purpose.  A couple of questions:

1. What do think I can do with this machine and/or it's parts?
2. Can I network this server somehow and gain any kind of benefit to connected machines?

Number 2 first. YES.

Now to the First. Plenty.

I have 3 old PCs doing different things in my home. All run Linux in one form or another, although I have been eyeing a new BSD media server to run on the 3rd machine I am about to discuss.

One is a really old AMD K5-133Mhz with 256 MB of RAM. The only parts it has, MB, RAM. PSU, 2 NICs, and a 1.44 Floppy. It boots off the floppy, running Coyote Linux. It is a firewall box which also does IP forwarding, IP Masquerading, DHCP server, content filtering, and a few other things along the lines of security. It serves all of the PCs in our home, 5 in constant use, and it is very rare that we can manage to bog it down.

I have another, a Pentium 333 Mhz with 512 MB RAM, that is an Ubuntu home network HTTP/ FTP/ NFS/ SAMBA server. The Linux SW RAID 5 contains/ stores/ serves MP3s to WinAmp in Windows and XMMS in Linux, help/ info/ reference pages as webpages, it contains family picture files, and an assortment of other types of storage.

The 3rd, also running Linux SW RAID 5, is a media server for movies and videos. I have not yet hooked up the cable television to it yet, but intend to shortly. I dont want to bog down the little firewall box with more bandwidth, so a connection directly to the provider is neccesary, but they dont support connectivity for anything but Windows and MAC.

So I am having to figure it out. and I will. Have even considered hooking it up to satelite instead, but I already have cable TV coming into the house.

I hope that this has given you some ideas as to how to use the PC as it is.

If you wanted to scavange the RAID card and drives, you could always experiment with setting up the RAID on your gaming PC, run a striped array for your games. One thing is for sure, disk access would no longer be a bottleneck when you are gaming.

*****  IMPORTANT and I almost forgot to mention this. If it is a SCSI RAID card, remember that SCSI drives use ALOT of power to run, especially some of the 10,000 RPM drives. Make sure that the PSU you have will be sufficient to run all the drives, and the rest of your system at the same time. Cooling is another real issue with adding high performance SCSI drives into the system. Just
do a little research and you should be fine.

[Stryker7]

Currently I've got a 1 TB HD in it, with lots of space left on it. So there is no accute need for another drive.. and I don't think it is slow.. actually I'm surprised at how fast my games load. So I'll wait and see.. by the time the drive is getting full, I might already be about to buy a new PC because of CPU/GPU development. :)

By the way, please check you PM ;)

Can I make one quick observation ?

"So there is no accute need for another drive.."

I bet you I can convince you otherwise.

If for no other reason at all, get 1 more drive. Let me explain why.

The technology that is SATA, is really misunderstood. Back in the day of IDE (or SCSI) people were aware of the following issues. That is why you had people trying to explain this to others in order to tweak their computers. The main problem with IDE drives, was the channels that were shared by the HDDs and CD-Roms. On the IDE bus, the devices could not communicate simultaneously. It was, you talk, now you talk, now you talk sort of thing.

At that point in time, one of the first tweaks to really boost performance, was to put HDDs on the seperate IDE channels. If you had a CD-Rom, put it as a slave on IDE channel 2, but always, put HDDs on seperate channels. That was one of the easiest, and most efficient computer tweaks you could use back in the good ole days.

Then came UDMA, and an 80 wire instead of 40 wire cable. UDMA gave the IDE channel a way to still take turns, but now the data had 2 one way streets rather than 1 2 way street. The devices still had to wait, but it was more orderly. And it was STILL suggested, that HDDs be on different channels. It still worked, and was still a great idea.

SATA, opened up freeways, or autobahns (spelling), to allow each drive to communicate and not have to wait for slower traffic. It did not share the bus, in the same way, that IDE did. As a matter of fact, people use to talk about Bus saturation. that was the Bus, going as fast as it could, and still too slow. There are SATA buses now, that have multi-lane connectors, with several drives sharing the same bus when connected. And even with 4 SATA drives hooked up on a multi-lane SATA connector, there is still no saturation of the SATA bus.

Using SATA, each HDD has its own direct channel to the MB controller chip, and therefore access more often than not, is simultanious.

If you have a second drive, make a 4 or 5 GB partition at the front of the drive, where the REAL speed of a HDD is, and make that exclusively your Pagefile.sys drive, and this is why.

A HDD, on the inside, looks and works much a like turn-table (record player ). It has disk(s) that turn alot faster than a turn-table. Instead of 33 or 45 (78 for all the REALLY old people) RPM. It is 5400 or 7200 or in some cases 10,000 RPMs. Instead of a tone arm with a needle on the end, It is an arm, but with a head (magnetic pickup). And the information is accesible from both sides of all the disks at once.

The files are scattered along the disks, on both sides. Sometimes the information gets scattered, defragmented, so that the head has to move back and forth, a few thousand times in some cases, to get one big file. To load a game, how many file fragments multiplied by how many movements to get those files.

Then, if any of the files have to be paged, written to the virtual memory (pagefile), the head has to read the file on one part of the disk, reach over and write it to the pagefile, and back for another file, or piece of a file, back to the pagefile, etc etc etc etc ad nauseum.

This is usually the time when the game slows, hiccups, jerks, slideshows, etc.

If you have a 2nd drive, even a really inexpensive, little old 20 GB SATA drive, then you eliminate ALOT of the extra disk access.

It can read the games files from their location on HDD 1, and write them to the 2nd drive pagefile. This cuts down on head (needle) movement. It allows the files to be read from HDD1 and the head doesnt have to move all the way to the pagefile, it just goes to the next file fragment, because the writing is taking place on HDD2.

So buying a 2nd, inexpensive drive, for no other reason than to use it for your pagefile is an extremely good deal. It also really saves on wear and tear on your primary drive.

If I have not been clear, let me know. And I have been rather detailed, because others less knowlegble than yourself may have to read and understand this.

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Sorry about the length, I am trying to be brief, but I am also trying to be accurate and provide enough detail so that people understand what I am trying to convey.

So, you think you just might need a 2nd drive ?

[PZ]

Quite impressive  :-X

Although I don't exactly remember, I believe I currently run a 850 watt power supply in my rig, and am nor overly taxing it, but I don't know if it will support a huge power consumer.  I'm currently running a single velociraptor which is divided into a couple of partitions - one for the OS and the other for the games.  An external USB 1 TB drive is for file storage and backup purposes.

Although not nearly as complex as your model, I've set up a home system similar to what you describe in the past, but with a single server delivering file and Internet proxy services to all users via rj-45 or wireless - of course, that was when we had kids at home.  ;D

On a different note, have you figured out how to have a single networked Picasa photo database?  So far, I've managed to keep the database and all photos on an external drive and thus be able to use it on any of my PCs, but true networking Picasa has not been possible.

You've given me much food for thought - thanks for the info.

[PZ]

So, you think you just might need a 2nd drive ?

Sounds like I might need one - with a 10k velociraptor as my primary drive, moving the pagefile to a cheap second drive would still give me a performance boost, or only save wear and tear on the primary?

[Art Blade]

same here, I now see why it is useful. Will be interesting to find out how that raid chip can be motivated to tell me it's there again. Probably something in the bios or boot screen..

Then again I only have a 450W power supply, might be a little erm, undersized.

[Stryker7]

So, you think you just might need a 2nd drive ?

Sounds like I might need one - with a 10k velociraptor as my primary drive, moving the pagefile to a cheap second drive would still give me a performance boost, or only save wear and tear on the primary?

Most definitely. Especially with an expensive drive like the Raptor. And just a SATA2 (3 GB/ sec) drive would be sufficient to do that.

I would say this, when buying HDDs, the prices drop according to availability of bigger drives, smaller drives become less expensive.

BUT that is only true to a point. There seems to be a bottom line price.

The way I shop for drives, is start at the cheapest of a brand with a good reputation. IF you find a 300GB for $60 and then you see a 500GB for $5 more, then is the $5 worth the extra 200GB.

Working your way up the list, if you get to the point where the price difference jumps quite a bit, then you have found the best price for what you are getting.

I dont know if that last part made any sense to you, but that is MY shopping method.

ONE more real benefit about buying older drives, is once you find one you like, google to see if that drive has any major flaws. I dodged that MAJOR  problem with Maxtor SATA drives about 2 years ago, because I searched, and found out that they werent worth the S&H cost, much less the price of the product.

BTW, where did you ever find a 10K Raptor ?
::)

[PZ]

Makes perfect sense to me - I purchased the velociraptor from newegg as one of the dozen or so parts to build my gaming rig.

EDIT: this is the specific part I purchased: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322&cm_re=velociraptor-_-22-136-322-_-Product

[Art Blade]

made sense to me, too  :)

[Stryker7]

Will be interesting to find out how that raid chip can be motivated to tell me it's there again. Probably something in the bios or boot screen..

Then again I only have a 450W power supply, might be a little erm, undersized.

First off, you dont have to do anything with the RAID to add another drive.

You should have 5 more SATA connectors. The Intel ICH10R chip supports 6 SATA drives, and if your MB has the Marvell 9128 too as I believe it does, that supports 2 SATA3 (6.0 Gb/s).

Even running those in what is called Legacy IDE mode will do what you want to do.

You might want to break out your manual, to see about settings like IDE mode, ACHI, or RAID settings,

But to see how many more SATA ports you have, start by tracing back from your existing HDD, to the MB. One of the connectors on the HDD should be a wider cable, but it will definitly go to the power supply. The other is the data cable that will go right back to the MB. And right around that you should see 5 more connectors just like it. You might have a DVD, DVD_Writer or something else hooked up to one.

But if it were me, I would see about hooking up a cheap drive to that Marvel SATA port. If it is 6G/s, that would be excellent speed for your drive, even a cheaper SATA 2 drive.

BTW, you saw my system specs.? With all my HDDs ?

My PSU is a 520 watt. Now it is a REALLY good PSU (homework thing again).

Check at a power supply calculator to see what you need.

[Art Blade]

cheers, sounds easy enough :)

[Stryker7]

Quite impressive  :-X

Although I don't exactly remember, I believe I currently run a 850 watt power supply in my rig, and am nor overly taxing it, but I don't know if it will support a huge power consumer.

I was adding that for some other people that might read the thread too. It is a concern and should ALWAYS be considered when upgrading/ adding parts.

MY PSU is only 520 watts, but it is rock stable. If I figure how to upload an image I can show you a screenshot I took the other day that shows how stable my voltages are.

On a different note, have you figured out how to have a single networked Picasa photo database?  So far, I've managed to keep the database and all photos on an external drive and thus be able to use it on any of my PCs, but true networking Picasa has not been possible.

You've given me much food for thought - thanks for the info.

Sorry, I just looked, and Picaso is a Windows Only thing, But you could install Windows on that old server. I just use HTTP for serving images with Dir list allowed through the server, and FTP for uploading so that daughters, and grandkids can looky but no touchy.

[PZ]

Do you think it worthwhile to add that old SCSI RAID to my gaming rig?  I'd actually been thinking of expanding my internal hard drive space because the current 300 gb is rapidly filling with games and related files.  Or might it be better to just add additional SATA drives like the raptor?

[Stryker7]

Do you think it worthwhile to add that old SCSI RAID to my gaming rig?

First you would need to find out what RAID card you have, secondly what sort of SCSI you have . There are several types of SCSI systems. All with different connectors, wiring, etc....

I do remember a wide SCSI RAID that a friend of mine ran for a small corporation here, and I was mightly impressed with how EXTREMLY fast it was. But remember, that was 10 years ago, he was running an SQL database out of it, and it was in a corporate enviroment. Clean room with Temperature control, humidity control, hell, they even had static electricity protection.

But if you can tell me (after you look at it at your storage) what sort of card. It might even be an IDE RAID card. My old KT7 RAID MB is just IDE RAID on it.

But after we know what sort of RAID it is, I can give you a more reasoned and intelligent answer.

I'd actually been thinking of expanding my internal hard drive space because the current 300 gb is rapidly filling with games and related files.  Or might it be better to just add additional SATA drives like the raptor?

One thought might be, that for your OS, gaming, that sort of stuff, the RAPTOR is great.

TTTT I would love to have all Raptor drives ,,,,

But for storage, if you had a regular old SATA 2 drive, just to store files and backups, the 10,000 RPM is a bit of overkill, and really not neccesary.

Hell, buy 3 Raptors. 1 more for a gaming drive, 1 with 2 partitions, the first for your pagefile, the 2nd for storage and backups, and then finally 1 to send to me.  ;)

[Art Blade]

 ;D

[Stryker7]

I told someone that I would include a screenshot showing the voltages of my MB. I turned on HWmonitor, minimized it. I ran the disk benchmarks under Everest Ultimate, ran Prime95 for 10 minutes, and then played FC2, for 2 1/2 hours. Notice the min and max voltages.

I attribute the fact that these are really stable voltages, to a Powerware 5115 UPS (almost 10 years old) that guarantees good clean and stable 112 Volts to the PC. My "REMOVED because I will not do business with this company any longer" but I will say it was a good quality modular PSU such as "PCPower & Cooling"  and the aftermarket coolers that I used to replace the Heatpipe cooling system on my MB.  Those were solid copper Enzotech mosfet and other chipset heasinks.


Screenshot removed.

[Art Blade]

nice :) I see you found out how uploading and embedding pics works :-X