IDE RAID

BawheeD · n00b Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 14 Location: UK

Hello,
I'm currently looking to buy an IDE RAID card, but iv never used it before. Could any one recommend one which is known to work with linux?

Cheers.

alan.hughes · n00b Joined: 23 Mar 2003 Posts: 40

Well I have a built-in HPT370 on my mobo that is supported under Linux. AFAIK a Highpoint PCI card should also be OK. Promise chipsets are also OK, although I've heard some people complaining about them.

To be honest I would'nt bother. IDE RAID is sometimes referred to as WinRAID, i.e. in Windows they need special device drivers to operate (bit like WinModems). While Linux does have the corresponding drivers for Promise and Highpoint chipsets, the performance benchmarks I've heard of suggests that you would be better using software RAID and/or LVM.

For example, on my system I have 4 IBM Deskstar 40 Gbyte drives. One drive has /boot, / (only about 256 Mbytes) and a swap partition; the rest of the drive and all of the other drives are integrated into a single LVM volume. My remaining partitions (/usr, /var, et al) are then logical volumes that I have stripped across the disks for maximum performance.

Of course there is a problem in that if I loose a disk my system is screwed. I could have handled that by integrating the disks into a software RAID-5 array and putting LVM on top of that. This would be OK so long as my boot disk (hda) does not go tits-up. However to be honest I simply could'nt be bothered with this configuration.

slais-sysweb · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jun 2002 Posts: 221 Location: London

Don't the IDE RAID cards, in particular Promise, are more trouble than they are worth. I have a promise controller on my Supermicro mb which is nothing but trouble; Gentoo wil boot with it enabled but not Knoppix or SuSE. So even using it as a simple IDE controller is a problem. The IDE RAID cards are really just IDE controllers with extra (buggy) drivers
If you want IDE RAID get an extra IDE card(s), so that each drive is on a master IDE channel (do not use the secondary), then use the Linux md driver to set up software raid. Not only is it just as efficient but you will also be able to put together more than two disks in a RAID 5 array.
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jt42 · Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 4:04 pm Post subject:

I've read and heard good things about the 3Ware Escalade IDE RAID cards.
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upnix · n00b Joined: 02 Jan 2003 Posts: 63 Location: Canada

I'd have to agree with alan.hughes that the Promise/HighPoint "RAID" controlers are more trouble than they're worth. I've seen people use them in Windows and Linux and have nothing but problems.

If you're looking for cheap, go with software RAID. It'll be at least as fast and take out the complication of a card that needs drivers.

However, if you're looking for good RAID, go with 3Ware. I have a Linux (RH9) server in a RAID 1+0 config at 320 Gigs running on a 3Ware 6410 card (little old) and not only does it work flawlessly, but it's crazy fast. Linux sees it as a SCSI drive.

I do believe 3Ware makes 2 disk cards, but I don't know anything about them.

Chris

taskara · Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2003 12:16 pm Post subject:

go the 3Ware 8506 Serial ATA raid card with Western Digital Raptor HDDs in Raid 0

can u imagine... ?

it's my goal...

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