RAID question

[spldart]

I have two 64-bit/66MHz PCI slots in my dually server/workstation mobo that I like to do video editing. I'm currently using a dual udma100 hardrive setup to do high speed video editing allowing one to read as the other writes as fast as posible on my first IDE channel.
What I'm wondering is what is my best option for speed. What is the fastest way of moving files as large as 4gig.

Obviously 4 gig from drive 1 to drive 1 is the slowest...even if it's a 7200 rpm drive with 8mb cache.

Moving that file with 2 drives, off one onto another is much faster and its what I'm doing now.

I figure moving a 4gig file from a 2 drive raid 0 to a seperate 2 drive raid 0 would really kick arse.

I've given some thought to what would happen if I had a 2 drive raid 0 (holding my OS and software) and a second conventional ide single HD just for a place to bounce the files off of might be fast. :confused:

Are there single cards that fit 64/66 slots and can build 2 seperate raid 0 2 drive arrays? Or do I need two cards?

I dunno...lots of thoughts...Any advice?


Oh...I'm not concerned with a raid version with failure tolerance.
Raid 0 is fine. I just need R/W speed.

[Synthohol]

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[spldart]

Sorry...That card won't even take advantage of the aforementioned 64/66 slots :(

[spldart]

I think I just answered one of my questions...A two channel raid card can support 2 2-drive raid 0's.
Now I need to find an affordable 64bit pci 2 channel raid card.

[Synthohol]

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=913

http://www.geizhals.cc/?a=48871

PROMISE FASTTRACK TX2000 ATA/133 RAID CARD

just to start!!

[spldart]

Yeah...The cheapest I've found so far is 189 for one that could fit the bill.

[Synthohol]

look up, i edited it!

[spldart]

I wonder if the tx4000 can support 2 2 drive raids as well as the 4 driver raid :confused:

[Player0]

Any raid card capable of supporting RAID 1+0 can also support multiple RAID0 arrays.

The Promise SX4000 is nice. I like the 3Ware 7500-4. Both offer a full 4 channels, and raid 5. I have my 7500-4 on my PCI-X slot where it gets great bandwidth.

Why are you transfering files to another drive? Why not just buy new drives and make a huge RAID-0 array, create different partitions on it. Then you dont have to physically copy one file to another.

I have three WD 250g 8m drives in RAID5 mode on Holy, for a total of 500g of space. If I need more space, I can move to a RAID-0 with the three drives for 750m, or add a 4th WD250g drive for RAID5 with 4 drives with 750m of storage.

Not sure why you need to create seperate raid0 arrays...cant you just partition? :)

[sptw]

I think there's nothing much to add here, Player0 cover it very well in my toughts too.I'd go for Escalade 7506 Series - 7506-4LP (http://www.3ware.com/products/parallel_ata.asp).This card supports PCI 2.2 compliant 64-bit/66MHz bus master.If i remember it well the difference between 7500-4LP and 7506-4LP is that the first supports 64-bit/33MHZ and the second model supports 64-bit/66MHZ.The Promise SX4000 is another good option.This card only supports 32-bit / 66MHz PCI interface compliant to PCI Rev 2.2.This means 266MB/sec (256.4 MB/sec in the truth) burst data transfer rate across PCI bus, while the 7506-4LP can handle 533 MB/sec (508.6 MB/sec in the truth).Your mobo with two 64-bit/66MHZ has enough bandwidth to handle the 7506-4LP card.Althought the best option could be 7506-4LP, the promise SX4000 and Escalade 7500-4LP can handle 4 Hds without no problem.Hds today can sustain maximum tranfer rate of 50-52 MB/sec, but in the near future it can be a problem.If i remember it well Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 (http://ssddom01.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/5AB985BA152021C686256CE800718F09/$file/HGSTDeskstar7K250finalds.PDF) already can do 61.4 MB/sec of sustain tranfer rate.
What i can say is that all of this 3 cards are very nice and can do a heavy job, of course if the money is a limited factor, the Promise SX4000 will be the choice.

[spldart]

The reason to say large files being transfered very quickly is this.
I open a mpg of varying size (as large as 4 gig) in my video editing application. I go to edit it and save the new piece of mpg on another physical drive/drives. Thus one drive/drives is reading for the software and one drive/drives is writing the output from the software at the same time. I do this with a drive c: and a drive d: right now to get the fastest possible operation.
This increases my edit time 2 to 4 times over using a single HD to read from and write to at the same time.

I figured the same would be true of raids. If I had one 2 drive raid 0 being read from by my video software and another 2 drive raid 0 being written to then I could get the fastest data rate possible.
I could then take an original file and cut out all the pieces.
This would go from first raid to the second
Then I could reasemble the pieces as I see fit.
This would go back from the second raid to the first.

My choice mpeg editor is only being speed limited by my two hardrives at this time. I'd like to really pick up the pace cuz I do this kind of work alot. I already know it wont make a difference in my compression time but I'm seriously considering the purchase of two Bartons to fix that.
My msi k7d is currently running two xp1700 tbred b's at over 2ghz apiece.
Would like to get two bartons and ramp up the clock rate to 2150 or maybe 2200 apiece.

[Player0]

Hmm, yeah, I suppose that two raid 0 arrays would be good for you then.

Yeah, i noticed the new 3ware...didnt know it was 64/66mhz. Off topic, have you seen any reviews of it? Better performance on server boards?

[spldart]

It doesn't appear that the sx4000 is a viable option for me since it has extra hardware for raid 5 that I don't need.
Please correct me if I'm wrong....Oh and the 3ware is out of budget. Datz spensive :eek:

Right now I'm considering 4 western digital 40 or 60 gig HD's with 8 meg caches. That and the TX card will be about 400 bux.

Thanks for the help....My birthday is a tad over a month away and I'm planning ;)

[sptw]

Yeah, i noticed the new 3ware...didnt know it was 64/66mhz. Off topic, have you seen any reviews of it? Better performance on server boards?
I haven't seeing no reviews yet Tom, 3ware claims that this new 7506 series improve 25% of performance over the old 7500 series.According to the 3ware Web site, the 7506 uses a different firmware, driver, and utility series than the 7500 models.The only difference that i could see is the support for 64bits/66Mhz, maybe this new firmware can do this 25% more.I don't know.

[Player0]

spldart, why not sx4000? It has RAID5 support, but if you never use it, then theres no harm in having it. It still has better acceleration for standard raid0 arrays I beleive than the tx4000.

My only concern is whether the tx4000 supports multiple RAID0 arrays. Might wanna look that one up. I know the sx4000 does, but its firmware might be more advanced than the tx4000. But, if the tx4000 supports it...it might be the cheaper solution :)

[Synthohol]

plus the addition of 2 HDD's in the future make 2 raid5's verrry nice :)

[Player0]

Dont look at RAID5 for speed. It aint. Writes are terrible, even on my rig. RAID5 shouldnt be a replacement for RAID0. It makes a FINE replacement for RAID1 though, where you loose only 33% of your logical drive space versus 50%. Still, I like having my redundancy. Knowing that whatever data I store on the fileserver is safe, and knowing that I have TONS of room, those is nice feelings.

If I was doing a pure video production box...Id probably do two RAID0 arrays like Spldart wants to.

[spldart]

Thanks for the TX4000 SX4000 two raid caveat. I'll definitely check that before I buy. But since I never plan on raid 5 if the cheaper card is 2 2 drive raid capable i'm going that route.
Is setting up raid arrays very hard?

[spldart]

And do raid drive spin down when not in use like a conventionally configured drive can. (as set in windows)

[sptw]

spldart,

PROMISE FASTTRACK TX4000 for about $103.00 (http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=&submit=Go&description=Promise+TX4000) at Newegg, and PROMISE FASTTRACK SX4000 RAID5 for about $165.00 (http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=&submit=Go&description=Promise+SX4000) at Neweeg too.Promise Fasttrack TX4000 supports multiple disk arrays, a maximum of four arrays.It has four independent data channels, Supports concurrent IDE channel operation and the drive workload is distributed in parallel between members of the array.This card is a 32bits/66Mhz PCI compatible.Although Promise declare that it also fits the 32-bit portion of a 64-bit PCI slot it's better to check with them if it's compatible with your mobo.FastTrak TX4000 only supports striping (RAID 0), mirroring
(RAID 1) or striping/mirroring (RAID 0+1).There's no RAID5 supports what you want.

Is setting up raid arrays very hard?
No it is easy instead.You can be familiarized with this here (http://www.promise.com/support/file/manual/1_FastTrak%20TX4000%20user%20v1.1.pdf).

For last, remember, as Player0 said, for $62.00 more you can get a better card, but if money is a problem, probably this TX4000 can be useful for you.

[Player0]

Originally posted by spldart
And do raid drive spin down when not in use like a conventionally configured drive can. (as set in windows)

Yeah, new drives and new RAID controllers support this. I still avoid using it, it has been EXTREMELY flakey in the past. I beleive that if you disable write caching that you will be fine, although you will loose performance, its more stable.