to RAID or not to RAID?

[Bose-Einstien Condensate]

I plan to buy my motherboard from pctoyz but i can't decide between getting the KT7A or the KT7 RAID. they are both the same price and i plan to also buy 128mb of thier value memory and an OCZ duron@900. should i get the newer board or the raid one? do i even really need RAID? HELP!

[Squishyface]

well, I have two A7v's and they run great...only i can't overclock the fsb very much.
I'm thinking about getting a board by abit as well. I've heard there is a kt7a-raid board?? is the 'a' just to signify that it's socket A? I don't really need the raid part myself...not too much use if you use IDE connections. Shrug...will keep checking this topic for advice...later http://www.procooling.com/ubb/smile.gif


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1.2Tbird @1456 with winter air cooling...yeah baby!

[Squishyface]

Wow...i just read a few reviews comparing the iwill kk266 kt133a board with the abit kt7a kt133a board. The iwill stomps it. Both boards support pc133 memory...good thing for me since i bought a bunch of it :P
I might go for the iwill board. It seems to support higher fsb's than the abit board while maintaining stability. Shrug..check out the review at overclockers.com

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1.2Tbird @1456 with winter air cooling...yeah baby!

[Squishyface]

Heh...i just ordered an Iwill kk266 board....screw the ddr and screw the raid.
ddr...unproven...but faster..a.nd more expensive...i own sdram...good stuff...and don't need the added cost of ddr.
as for raid....according to my friend who use scsi....it simply rocks and cannot be beat...but with ide...its different.
The way i understand it is this:
each ide drive ata66 or 100 can deliver data at 40MB/s max. With raid...this number doesn't change. If you have two drives on two separate ide cables...you would think you could get the delivery up to 80MB/sec..but with ide, the cpu can only recieve one piece of data at a time...which drops you back down to 40MB/sec. I think. Someone please correct me if i'm wrong, but the benefits of ide raid are not that great as far as striping goes....might be fine for mirroring http://www.procooling.com/ubb/smile.gif

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1.2Tbird @1456 with winter air cooling...yeah baby!

[Kevin]

Striping theoretically doubles everything cuz it takes data from two drives at one time. I've noticed programs loading up a bit faster since I got my RAID.

[Alives]

Im sick of you scsi people. Ide raid is just as good...btw the new plextor ide drives are way better than their scsi counterparts...scary

[Joe]

Originally posted by Alives:
Im sick of you scsi people. Ide raid is just as good...btw the new plextor ide drives are way better than their scsi counterparts...scary


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA Ohhh man you have NEVER used U2W or U160 SCSI RAID arrays have you?!

IDE RAID - All software Driver Driven RAID, Unless you are using the 500$ Promise hardware ATA RAID card, you are only using SOFTWARE RAID , Max 100Mbit for all drives on the channel. Single communications with one drive at a time, no cache, very poor multiple access performance. Overall performance of ATA 100 is equal to 1 single 15kRPM and some 10kRPM U160 SCSI drives

SCSI RAID - Real hardware raid up to 160Mbit on the channel. Multiple drives can read and write at the same time, up to 14 drives on one channel, cache'n, Increases performance over any single drive by up to 200%.

SCSI rules man. I run it in my main machine, and my 10krpm IBM UWSCSI ( 40mbit) drives SMOKE my 40gb 7200RPM IBM ATA/100 drives.

Its so much better doing multi tasking then IDE since all the devices can be addressed at once on the channel, IDE has to wait till the first device is done with the channel before you can talk to the second device.

IDE RAID is Unstable, Slow, and over all a waste. In the last week I know of 3 people who have had their IDE array sorta stop working out of no where.

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C-ya
Joe - Owner/Editor www.ProCooling.com (http://www.ProCooling.com)
Where the Completely Addicted Come to Cool Off

Somebody set up us the bomb.

[This message has been edited by Joe (edited 02-26-2001).]

[Joe]

Originally posted by Kevin:
Striping theoretically doubles everything cuz it takes data from two drives at one time. I've noticed programs loading up a bit faster since I got my RAID.

It takes 4 Drives in a SCSI RAID with Caching to achieve a 100% performance boost over a single drive

[Alives]

oh.

..i love how you like to rip me to shreds...thanks

[Joe]

heheh I have gotten into SO many debates on IDE vs SCSI raid.. so I just run into them full bore now http://www.procooling.com/ubb/smile.gif

nothing personal, just tired of hearing people claim IDE raid is as fast as SCSI raid http://www.procooling.com/ubb/smile.gif

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C-ya
Joe - Owner/Editor
www.ProCooling.com
Where the Completely Addicted Come to Cool Off

Somebody set up us the bomb.

[tranced]

Joe, this might make you laugh but..
I bought a retail Promise ATA100 RAID 0+1 pci IDE controller card (thats not the funny part), and I was reading the features of this product when I came along this statement on the back of the box:


FastTrack 100 with Ultra ATA/100 drives (ATA RAID 0) (is) three times faster then SCSI160

Now, I suppose RAID0 vs a single drive alone, but this does bring up some questionable testing ethic. Just wanted to let you SCSI maniacs know what Promise is saying http://www.procooling.com/ubb/smile.gif

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If at first you don't succeed, slap on a 7k rpm Delta!

[phreenet]

I got a VP6 running RAID 0 on two 30GB Quantum 7200rpm HDs. Well the performace is there in away :-/. BUT....Software RAID sucks period. The RAID found in the HPT370 and similar chips is all software based which means you need drivers, drivers of course that are only for windoze. I like to use Linux and now I must refrain. For the most performace and the most cash, if you want IDE RAID anyway, is to just get a Adaptec AAA-RAID card with hardware based Caching. That sucker will boost your IDE performace through the roof. And don't worry about the speed difference between ATA66 and 100. ATA100 isn't a real big improvement over 66 as far as substained transfer rates. The only real difference in the two is that ATA100 has provisions for larger data header "cells" (for lack of a better word) for future hardware indevors that are not around today. As far as SCSI goes I would much rather have a single disk Ultra3 160 30GB IBM System then the RAID 0 setup im using to type out this thread. Also, I don't recall anyone letting you know that you need TWO (2) disk to run RAID 0, with the combined 30GB I have I get about 55.9 GBs fresh off the 32K parition.

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Blah Blah Blah
Overclocked Dual PIII 933
sitting on a VP6 mobo featuring liquid intercooling.
AIM[SN]: PhreeNET

[phreenet]

I don't think I made myself clear about why software based RAID sucks. Its like this, software raid needs drivers more then hardware based cards like the AAA-RAID, furthermore, software RAID needs system resources. Its like the switch between normal video cards like the Voodoo2 and 3 to the GPU which needed less processing power. damn im long winded, please excuse the runons

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Blah Blah Blah
Overclocked Dual PIII 933
sitting on a VP6 mobo featuring liquid intercooling.
AIM[SN]: PhreeNET

[spyizme]

what Joe stated is very true, doing multiple task that access the drive at the same time will always be faster on scsi devices. all drives can be accessed at the same time, and they don't have the overhead of IDE which is about 25%, so you loose overall speed with IDE. so if you think you have 100mb/sec your really getting 75MB/sec.

I have a Mylex accelraid 250 w/16mb cache and 3 fujitsu 10k drives, i don't think I will see an IDE raid go this fast, not now at least.

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overclock everything

[phreenet]

umm I would have to disagree with you there man. 75MBs a second on IDE, i doubht it. Even with SCSI those numbers they give you are just Lab Tested (which means everything was perfect) burst speeds, what people really get with ATA66 is ONLY about 5-7MB/sec and with ATA100 its about 8-10MB/sec

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Blah Blah Blah
Overclocked Dual PIII 933
sitting on a VP6 mobo featuring liquid intercooling.
AIM[SN]: PhreeNET

[spyizme]

i understand that, im just saying that whould be the max you would get from it because of the overhead.

[p[ara]d0x]

The "A" in the KT7A signifies that the newer board has a 133MHz(x2) FSB speed, over the non "A"'s 100MHz(x2). IDE RAID is most definately NOT faster that SCSI RAID, and this should be obvious, but it IS hella lot faster than non-RAID IDE. But you do need more than one hard drive if you want to take advantage of the RAID. If you dont want to spend more money on hard drives I'd go with the reg KT7A. If you DO have multiple drives I'd get the KT7-RAID.

BTW: I have the KT7A-RAID and it kicks ass :)