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Serial ATA RAID - which one?!

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Gandhi
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Serial ATA RAID - which one?!

Thu Oct 30, 2003 8:36 pm

Hi -

I am building up a new Athlon 64 rig and am using the ASUS K8V Deluxe MoBo. The board come with two serial ATA RAID options - one through the VIA VT 8237 RAID controller, and the other with the Promise 20378 RAID controller. I am using two Hitachi 80 Gig HDDs set up to do RAID 0 (striping).

So .... which of the two options is the best? This is primarily a gaming and entertainment rig, but I would like to pick the more stable of the two controllers to run the two drives. So which do I go with?

Thanks!
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Forge
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Thu Oct 30, 2003 9:00 pm

Promise == garbage. Turn it off and forget it's there, it's worthless.

I've stated this with more detail before, so suffice it to say that any RAID created on a 20378 or it's existing kin is crippled in hardware and is generally a waste of time and resources.


I haven't used the 8237's SATA yet, but if it's anything like the ICH5's, then it's the good stuff, beats the PCI-attached Silicon Image/Highpoint/Promise stuff handily.

I'd wager on the 8237 being superior by dint of the PDC20378's known inferiority. I mean, Via's controller HAS to be better than that. :)


BTW: You suck. I'm not going to get to play with AMD64 in person again till socket 939 hits. :( :(
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Lordneo
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Thu Oct 30, 2003 9:17 pm

onboard Promise = garbage

NOT onboard Promise /= garbage

only reason the ICH5 is good is because its not connected to the pci bus.
both the onboard promise and the via go thru the same pci bus.
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Gandhi
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Thanks!

Thu Oct 30, 2003 9:37 pm

Looks like I will be using the VIA RAID.

Thanks!
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Lordneo
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Fri Oct 31, 2003 9:27 am

whats your plans on cluster and array sizes ?
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Gandhi
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Nothing fancy

Fri Oct 31, 2003 9:57 am

Use two 80gig Hitachi S-ATA hard drives, and probably go with the 32 KB cluster size.

Like I said, this rig will be use 99 percent of the time for games and movies.
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Forge
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Fri Oct 31, 2003 10:12 am

Not onboard Promise often = garbage as well.

I have a large assortment of Ultra/Fasttrak cards here to back that up. The things are pickier than Creative sound cards about which PCI buses they'll play happily on.

Good call on the 8237 SATA RAID. I'm not 100% sure it's on 32/33 PCI, I'd suspect otherwise. The Intel 'hub architechture' is 64bit 33MHz PCI, as is 'CSA'. Three PCI connects, one 64/33 from northbridge to CSA LAN, one 64/33 from north to southbridge, one 32/33 from southbridge to PCI slots. :) Via's layout is a little harder to decipher, as the 'V-Link' doesn't seem to be PCI-derived, but it's hard to tell from a finished product.
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Gandhi
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ASUS K8 review

Wed Nov 05, 2003 12:35 pm

Forge, just came across an article on the ASUS K8 mobo that goes into some detail on the two RAID solutions offered and even compares the VIA RAID with that of the Promise RAID.

FYI .....

http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/asus_k8v
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Forge
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Wed Nov 05, 2003 12:49 pm

Speed isn't everything. Promise's failure point hasn't been speed, it's been stability. The Ultra66 and Fasttrak66 were unbelievably stable, but each successive controller revision has been a little worse on this point.

They're not unusable yet, but they're getting there fast. Use it if you'd like, but I sure wouldn't.
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Buub
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Wed Nov 05, 2003 1:19 pm

If I were going all out, I'd get the 3ware 8500 series.
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drfish
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SATA RAID add on card...

Wed Nov 05, 2003 1:23 pm

Just yesterday I spent a long amount of time looking into a similar question for myself. This is what I came up with:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.a ... 6816102016

I got very good reviews, and it's pretty cheap, yeah, it's Promise, sorry...

This is what made up my mind:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storag ... undup.html

A good artical, one of few of its kind...
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Gandhi
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No

Wed Nov 05, 2003 2:14 pm

Forge wrote:
Speed isn't everything. Promise's failure point hasn't been speed, it's been stability. The Ultra66 and Fasttrak66 were unbelievably stable, but each successive controller revision has been a little worse on this point.

They're not unusable yet, but they're getting there fast. Use it if you'd like, but I sure wouldn't.


The system is stable and working fine on the VIA RAID. I am NOT flocking with it just to get a marginal percentage increase in speed. I have disabled the Promise RAID and on-board sound in the BIOS. After that defective floppy fiasco, I am keeping my system running as is, no changes.
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CaptainCruise
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Tue Dec 02, 2003 9:47 pm

Buub wrote:
If I were going all out, I'd get the 3ware 8500 series.



As far as a good quality 4 channel/device SerialATA RAID controller card, is 3ware what you guys would recommend?

The few I was looking at are:

3WARE Escalade 8506-4LP:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.a ... 16-116-022

HighPoint RocketRAID 1640: some no-so-hot reviews, though....
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.a ... 16-115-015

Adaptec 2410SA:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.a ... 16-103-137

The HighPoint seems to have issues from the reviews I read. Unless there is another good one out there, I'm guessing either the 3ware or the Adaptec.

Also, I'm not looking at Promise. From what some of you have said, Promise belongs with OCZ RAM as "The Devil". :P

Opinions?
Thanks...
Whoever said "A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work"..........
.............never caught anything.

~Cruise I
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Buub
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Sat Dec 06, 2003 3:05 am

Yes, absolutely. The 3ware stuff is about as good as it gets in IDE-land.

Promise isn't in the same category as OCZ. I don't think Promise is trying to deceive anyone; they're just trying to make really cheap RAID controllers. OCZ, on the other hand, got a great start in the market by ripping people off, lying and cheating.

I've also heard that the Highpoint stuff is quirky and not particularly high quality. Supposedly fast, but not terribly robust.
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