P4C800-E S-ATA Controlers

[Ken']

Hi
If I understand thing correctly the P4C800-E board has two Raid controllers,
one from Promise and the other from Intel.
Is this correct?
Which is the best for S-ATA drives for a Raid0 setup?
Thanks
Ken'

 

[jaeger]

Hi
If I understand thing correctly the P4C800-E board has two Raid controllers,
one from Promise and the other from Intel.
Is this correct?
Yes.

Which is the best for S-ATA drives for a Raid0 setup?

RAID 0 is almost always pointless, but pretty much anything is "better"
than Promise.

 

[R. Pazderski]

And Just Why is RAID 0 Pointless ??
OT:
Granted there is no safe redundancy BUT (2) fast drives in Raid 0 does give
a nice performance gain in drive operations over normal IDE channels. We use
Promise TX2000 Controller Auxiliary Cards in our machines.

Rick P.
(e-mail address removed)
============================>>

Hi
If I understand thing correctly the P4C800-E board has two Raid controllers,
one from Promise and the other from Intel.
Is this correct?
Yes.

Which is the best for S-ATA drives for a Raid0 setup?

RAID 0 is almost always pointless, but pretty much anything is "better"
than Promise.

 

[jaeger]

And Just Why is RAID 0 Pointless ??

Because unless you work with files of massive size doubling the transfer
rate doesn't boost application performance at all. So unless you work a
lot with digital video, RAID 0 is paying MORE money for LESS
reliability.

Good read:

http://tinyurl.com/i5r3

 

[R. Pazderski]

Jaegar,

A good read indeed.

Granted, Raid 0 is not much good for typical desktop apps like MS Word, etc.
After all, how fast can one type and save ? However over a network, Raid
does offer advantages. Transfer block size and machine typical usage are the
important factors when evaluating how much advantage one gains using Raid
plus there is the issue of backups.

I don't recommend a Raid 0 array because it is dangerous as you say.
Complete data loss is just a "glitch" away. I neglected in my previous post
to mention that I normally run Raid 0+1 stripe / mirror. The performance is
almost as fast and the backup security is well worth the couple of extra
drives now that the price has come down substantially.

We could go deeper into the other Raid configurations here but I believe the
original poster was more interested in how to setup a simple array on his
new machine for his own purposes.

Regards,

Rick P.
==================================>>>>>

And Just Why is RAID 0 Pointless ??

Because unless you work with files of massive size doubling the transfer
rate doesn't boost application performance at all. So unless you work a
lot with digital video, RAID 0 is paying MORE money for LESS
reliability.

Good read:

http://tinyurl.com/i5r3

 

[God]

Jaegar,

A good read indeed.

Granted, Raid 0 is not much good for typical desktop apps like MS Word, etc.
After all, how fast can one type and save ? However over a network, Raid
does offer advantages. Transfer block size and machine typical usage are the
important factors when evaluating how much advantage one gains using Raid
plus there is the issue of backups.

It's cool for Video editing, but not worth the trouble IMHO.

I don't recommend a Raid 0 array because it is dangerous as you say.
Complete data loss is just a "glitch" away. I neglected in my previous post
to mention that I normally run Raid 0+1 stripe / mirror. The performance is
almost as fast and the backup security is well worth the couple of extra
drives now that the price has come down substantially.

If you don't want to lose the data if a drive fails, then Raid1 or Raid 1+0
is worth it (you lose half the capacity of your array, but trust me, when
you can't retrieve data it's a pain)

We could go deeper into the other Raid configurations here but I believe the
original poster was more interested in how to setup a simple array on his
new machine for his own purposes.

Regards,

Rick P.

I might be wrong, but doesn't that board support RAID over both S-ATA &
ATA-133?

 

[R. Pazderski]

Your comment concerning a Raid 0+1 array is well founded. One only as a 2
out 3 chance of complete data recovery if a 0+1 array fails. For true
redundancy of course a Raid 1 or better should be used for critical data.
The subsequent loss in speed is of no consequence such cases. It all boils
down to the needs of the individual and what chance they are willing to take
with their data not to mention the extra investment cost in hardware.

To be truthful, I'm not really sure how many ways the original poster's
board can be configured. There are so many variations of the 875 and 865
chipset boards in the market, it hard to keep up. Each manufacturer is in
process of releasing the 2nd revision of these boards now so by the end of
August, the variations will double. Someone earlier posted that there was
not even a summary product page on the Asus TW Site but I haven't had time
to search for myself.

In my own opinion, these "hybrid" boards with all the add on (on-board
features) are causing much confusion. This post is being written on an Abit
$135 IC7 875P board just to wait until the market shakes out.

Regards,

Rick P.
===============================>>>>

It's cool for Video editing, but not worth the trouble IMHO.

If you don't want to lose the data if a drive fails, then Raid1 or Raid 1+0
is worth it (you lose half the capacity of your array, but trust me, when
you can't retrieve data it's a pain)

I might be wrong, but doesn't that board support RAID over both S-ATA &
ATA-133?

 

[John]

In my opinion, the chances of losing a RAID-0 array due to a hard drive
failing aren't that much worse than the chances of losing a single drive due
to a hard drive failing. I'm no statistics expert, but I think the chances
must be something like 50% worse. And 50% of what? 50% of some small chance?
Admitedly all drives fail eventually. But if you lose your RAID array due to
a hard drive failure, the chances are something like 66% that you would have
lost your work with a single drive anyway.