RAID Question

[hoytron]

I currently have two IBM 30.7GB 75GXPs striped on a Highpoint HPT370 IDE RAID controller. They are located on the master of the primary and secondary channels. I want to add two more drives to the slave channels, but I want to know if it will effect performance. I am told that each channel can only write to either the master or slave one at a time. I could see how this would slow things down. I also may not be able to get two more of the same drives at a reasonable price, so I've been looking at Maxtor 30Gb drives for the upgrade. Would that be a bad idea? All of the drives would be 30Gb, 7200RPM, and ATA 100. If I do get the Maxtors, would I want each of those to be a slave, or would I want to have the IBMs on one channel and the Maxtors on the other? My main concern is the performance loss/gain. Any help on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

 

[nikhsub1]

I currently have two IBM 30.7GB 75GXPs striped on a Highpoint HPT370 IDE RAID controller. My main concern is the performance loss/gain.

Don't take this the wrong way but your main concern should be those 75GXP's not dropping dead on you! You are a brave man running those 75's in a stripped array! It is best to use 1 drive per channel, Promise TX4 comes to mind...

 

[hoytron]

Maybe I am lucky, but I haven't had a single problem with the drives, and I run them all the time. That's not the point or question though.

 

[Xaotic]

I agree with nikhsub1. You will be taking a performance hit by mounting the Maxtors on the HPT370. Since you are getting 2 new Maxtors, purchase a RAID controller card, 2 or 4 channel. Mount the Maxtors to the new card for best performance. Next, out of paranoia, I'd run the OS on the 2 Maxtors and use the IBMs for backup and data storage, I'm not downing the drives just going by statistical trends. If you get a 4 channel card, you could hang the IBMs from the third and fourth channel or leave them as is.

 

[Kingslayer]

His point about your GXP's is a good one. While RAID is a great thing, if you run those GXP's in a RAID-0 array and one does happen to go bad your data will be 100% unrecoverable.

That is why he is warning you.

 

[Ice_Gargoylle]

hiya hoytron,

so from what i gather u want to add 2 more drives to a raid controller. raid, single, whatever.

good news, i think. I have just gotten done moving my raid0 array from 1 channel,master/slave, to 2 channels ,master, and have found no noticable inprovement.
the only bad thing is, u will have to delete the array u have and then reformat/install os and everything else all over again.
I personally wud put the maxtors into the raid0 array on 1 channel and then put the other 2 ibm's on the other channel set as whatever config u like.

btw, i used atto to bench my hdd's and no noticable improvement was gained from switching from 1 channel to 2.

 

[hoytron]

Thank you Ice_Gargoylle, that's what I wanted to hear.