P5GD1 - SATA RAID 0+1 ? RAM too...

[Mr Mister]

I am a bit confused with this new Intel Matrix RAID stuff; can someone
please clarify if I can use 4 SATA drives to have a true RAID 0+1 (striping
with mirror) array on the Asus P5GD1 or P5GD2 ? If not, isn't a 2 drive
Intel Matrix a bit of a herring?

I am setting up a CAD server to serve large files to 20 users, by the way.

Also, will 2 Gb RAM be better than 1 Gb on a file server? Is DDR2 Worth it
for this application?

Thank you kind people.

 

[m.marien]

I am a bit confused with this new Intel Matrix RAID stuff; can someone
please clarify if I can use 4 SATA drives to have a true RAID 0+1 (striping
with mirror) array on the Asus P5GD1 or P5GD2 ? If not, isn't a 2 drive
Intel Matrix a bit of a herring?

I am setting up a CAD server to serve large files to 20 users, by the way.

Also, will 2 Gb RAM be better than 1 Gb on a file server? Is DDR2 Worth
it for this application?

Thank you kind people.

RAID0 is for speed and RAID1 for redundancy but IMHO if you have more then 2
drives then RAID5 is a better solution. It uses striping for speed plus has
redundancy at a cost of (n-1)/n*size where n is the number of drives. So if
you have 4x20GB drives RAID5 will give you (4-1)/4*20GB = 60GB of space with
data striped across all the drives. You can loose one drive and not loose
any data. Depending on your system you can also add a spare so that one
drive goes down, the spare will automatically replace it. RAID0+1 on the
other hand will only give you 40GB of redundant data and no spares.

Since this is a server, both Windows servers and Linux (any distro) have
software RAID5.

As far as the RAM, it's a waste of money if the system doesn't use it.
Unless you're going to run applications on the server, file sharing isn't
going to use a lot of memory.

If the system is going to be a file server, I'd spend the money on the drive
subsystem. At least a RAID5 card with onboard cache and the ability to use
spares. Your four drives would still get you 2x the capacity but with the
ability to loose 2 drives and not loose data. Two drives down in a RAID0+1
and I think you're toast.

 

[Mr Mister]

Thanks for your informative reply.

However, I am still unsure if the Intel Matrix RAID as on the P5GD1 will do
true RAID 0+1 on 4 SATA drives?

I understand that RAID 5 is better, but also cannot locate a PCI-E SATA
RAID card in Australia; if I could suggestions are it would be quite pricey.
I may have to consider standard ATA instead of SATA, and use the onboard
ITE 8212F controller. Unfortunately I gather that ATA is not as efficient
as SATA.....

Thanks again.