Buying a new computer for IDCS

[JohnO@adobeforums.com]

> I have XP, you mean I have to get Windows Server to run a RAID 0 properly?

No, you need hardware RAID. XP Pro and Server can do some RAID without any
extra controllers, but the array is built from Windows' dynamic disks, so
you might as well set your desk on fire now and get it over with. :-)

Hardware RAID (a separate controller) is the only practical way to go. Works
with any OS.

-John O

[scottbailey@adobeforums.com]

I've been using CD-RW for a couple of years, and their especially useful for repetative back-up and overwrite. With the new burner speeds and XP it has been flawless for me. I also burn through hundreds of CD-R's for other purposes, but for the daily re-write that's under 700MB, they're perfect, cheap and fast. (1 will last forever, but copy it!!)

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for all the info JohnO. I wonder why they bothered to add those extra RAID ports to my motherboard if the way it should be done is by using a separate controller card. That makes me angry when manufaturers try to make things simplified but do a half @55 job while they're at it.

Are you sure these built-in controllers that come with motherboards aren't going to give me optimal performance? You kind of lost me at "but the array is built from Windows' dynamic disks, so
you might as well set your desk on fire now and get it over with"

I noticed that my motherboard also has a very limited Soundblaster built in. I was going to get a separate one because the bass on my speakers gets too loud sometimes when I have the music on. There is no advanced settings for Bass or Treble on the soundcard properties so last night I turned on equalizer in MusicMatch Jukebox to eliminate the problem.

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

1 will last forever, but copy it!!




Must handle with extreme care.

[George_Bilalis@adobeforums.com]

I wonder why they bothered to add those extra RAID ports to my motherboard
...




A set of 9 ASUS motherboards we bought sometime ago have this feature installed. This means the hardware controller is on board driving 2 80Gb ATA HDDs in a RAID 1 array. The board has 2 connectors for regular ATA configuration, 2 extra connectors specific for the array configuration and a hardware switch on board selecting between the 2 configurations exclusively.

If you check with the manual of the board you probably find that the same is true for your board, Gabriel.

George

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

Ok, thanks for your reply and thanks for suggesting RAID. I'm convinced, I've got to try it.

[George_Bilalis@adobeforums.com]

One more thing, Gabriel.

On board array controllers usually permit only for level 0 or level 1 arrays, with 2 or 4 same type disks.
So between the two modes, I suggest you use a level 1 array for any normal use.
Level 0 would be perfect for a workspace where temp files are created, like what Michael needs.
First check with your board specs what they support.

George

[Scott_McCullough@adobeforums.com]

One more one more thing, Gabriel:

I strongly suggest that you back up all your data regularly until you're sure the array is stable. Sure, it'll be huge and it'll scream, but none of that will matter if it eats all your jobs.

Just a tip. Let us know how it works!

Scott

[JohnO@adobeforums.com]

There ya go, I was going to suggest that your mobo might have it built-in.
Built-in RAID will get a lot more popular as the mobos switch to Serial-ATA
this year. There's no reason a mobo can't have a dozen or more SATA
connectors, once the BIOS people figure it out.

As for the dynamic disk thing, that's an alternative setup where you can
adjust the drive parameters on the fly...not like Partition Magic that needs
to reboot...you tweak the settings and the drive size just changes. You can
add volumes to a set, adjust volume sizes, that sort of thing. It's a cool
idea. But from what I've seen myself, it's tricky and there's no going back
once you convert to dynamic. From what I've read, don't ever do it to your
workstation. Leave it to the server geeks.

-John O

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

But you said Level 0 is much faster didn't you? I think I remember reading at <http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/adaptec-2410sa.html> that Level 1 is almost as slow if not slower than a normal configuration. I can not confirm this since I can no longer access the page.

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

I strongly suggest that you back up all your data regularly until you're
sure the array is stable. Sure, it'll be huge and it'll scream, but none
of that will matter if it eats all your jobs.




Yes, I always have extra backups. One on DVD and one on an extra hard disk.

[George_Bilalis@adobeforums.com]

Level 0 IS faster, much faster, almost twice as much. Also the two drives sum up to total twice capacity.
Level 1 is NOT slower than a single drive.
Level 0 can look stable and we have been testing it on the ASUS boards for over 6 months with no problem at all.
Then one morning one PC wouldn't find the array to boot. Period.

Backing up the data will not help in this case. You also need the system back. A mirror dump of the complete works would be the solution, but then you need a mirror size of as many gigabytes - say 160Gb in our case. So a DVD won't help much.

thanks
George

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

Great! Don't know how you ended up with 160GB but... Does the mirror dump need to be on a 120GB drive since the two drives I plan to RAID are going to be 60GB each? Also would you happen to know if a Norton Ghost Image will help? The setup I am planning to go with is going to be RAID 0 on 2 60GB drives. I also have couple of 200GB drives where I might be able to backup everything to one of them. If a Ghost image is good enough then I could just save a spanned image on DVDs.

The whole point of me choosing to go with RAID is I want more read speed. I don't need data security.

TIA

[George_Bilalis@adobeforums.com]

Gabriel,

The trick is that in level 0, using two identical drives, the total is twice the single drive's capacity. We are using 2 80Gb and this totals 160Gb. In your case you will en dup with 120Gb in RAID 0 configuration.
Mirroring should be for the complete system and I don't know if Norton Ghost Image can do it, I feel it will. Not sure though.

Then if you don't need security, level 0 is good for you.

Let us know about results.
thanks
George

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

Mirroring should be for the complete system and I don't know if Norton
Ghost Image can do it




Ghost usually makes an identical copy of any partition/disk to another partition/disk, local or networked. I don't know if it's going to work on RAID either but it's worth a shot.

Thanks a million! I'll let you all know when I do it and how it turns out.

[JohnO@adobeforums.com]

There's such a thing as RAID 1+0, or 10. That's what you're looking for, I
think. You use two identical drives for the striped (raid 0) volume. Then
you use one drive to mirror (raid 1) that volume. The mirror drive should
probably be the same size as the raid 0 volume.

-John O

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

I was looking at my drives last night and found that one is a UATA/133 and the other is UDMA/100. This means they are not identical so I didn't bother messing with RAID. I will have to get one that matches my 133. I also plan to buy a new MB, CPU, RAM and 2 LCD Monitors. What I have works good but I always want the latest. This system is a little old so I'll probably just end up selling the parts cheap to a friend or relative.

RAID 1+0, or 10. That's what you're looking for, I think.




I think you're right, sounds like a winner.

[Keith_Fryer@adobeforums.com]

Gabriel - a few things to consider:

You should be fine with the two 60Gb drives - they'll both just run at UDMA/100. I'd be surprised if your RAID controller worked at 133, but I don't think you'd notice a massive difference if it did.

Given you've got a minimum of 6 drives available (4 on standard IDE, 2 or 4 on RAID), and depending on your other drives, I might go with something like this:

2 x 60Gb in RAID 0 on the RAID controller
The remaining disks on the standard IDE

How you arrange the filesystems depends on what you want. If you do video editing (but not feature length), then make the raid array your video drive. Partition one of the 200Gb WDs to be ~50Gb/~150Gb, and use the 50Gb partition as the windows partition - this will be on the fastest part of the disk. Capture video to the array, and use that as high-speed video storage during the edit. When you're finished, copy the final render to one of the WDs.

If you're doing a lot of big photoshop work, the same should help - put the primary scratch on the array. Left to its own devices, win2k and up should use the RAID array for the pagefile too.

If you want to generally speed up your system, don't need loads of superfast video capture space and don't need superfast scratch space, then put the system & apps on the RAID array. BUT: as soon as its all installed, ghost/driveimage the array to one of the WDs. Make sure you do this whenever you install a bunch of new apps. Don't EVER store any data on your C:\ drive (the array in this case) - always save files to one of the WDs. And be prepared that, if one of the drives in the array goes phooey, you'll have to either get another and rebuild the array before re-imaging, or get a 120Gb drive on which to restore your ghost/driveimage disk image

Cheers

Keith