Re: Drive configuration options with RAID (7 harddrives)

I don't have the :SI card yet.
I am using a 19160 adaptec card.
When I boot the drives say 160 and the plextor says 20

Maybe the Plextor is on a different channel?





What do you mean by "My drives report 160 in the bios"? The BIOS of the LSI adapter? That does not give the actual speed, just the maximum the drive is capable of. The "UltraPlex" is not LVD capable and will therefor pull the whole bus down to single-ended mode.
Get a cheap little LSI/SYMBIOS 53C810 based card for things like CDROM drives so you can use both LVD buses for the disks. Available from several manufacturers and on eBay.
Assuming that the maximum sustained data rate of the hard disks is in the region of 40 MB/sec, 4 disk drives could theoretically push the bus to the limit (4 x 40 = 160!). Manipulating video data can require high data rates, so it does make sense to limit the number of disk drives to four per bus.





That likely will force one of the two SCSI channels to SE mode but you
didn't tell us the model of RAID card you have.


I use photoshop and video editing apps with WinXP.

I was thinking 2 drives in RAID 0 for the OS and program files.
4 drives in RAID 5 for data redundancy.





RAID 5 has slow writes which likely makes it unsuitable for the target of
real time video editing. The source/target of video editing streams should
be a couple of fast late model HDs and/or RAID 0 array[s]. Copying to RAID
5 as nearline backup works but better is to copy it to a backup media.



What RAID configuration would be the best..


Depends on the priorities. Availability/redundancy, performance or cost. 
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Newbie Questions on XPe Install and configure
    ... It is often missing IDE controller drivers, or disk drives. ... I just finished reading about the Flash card with write limits. ... on my target system by using a WIN98 Boot disk. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.embedded)
  • Re: which ASUS board (and other HW/SW) for RAID-NAS?
    ... And using RAID 5. ... that can grow simply by adding more drives. ... performance from the RAID card. ... backup array, so at least you might avoid buying a second ...
    (alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus)
  • Re: RAID timeouts on P4PE
    ... Does anyone know what the promise RAID controller might be issuing ... The drives could be spinning down and spinning back up again. ... incentive to move some add-in PCI card, ... Having a backup, and a controller to handle the ...
    (alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus)
  • Re: Raid Card controller for FC System
    ... Most modern motherboards will all you to have 4 or 6 SATA drives connected, so the cheap solution is to use Linux software raid, that's the best bang for your buck you're gonna get:), on the other hand, if you're interested in higher spec try this: ... Fedora 8 kernel includes drivers for this card. ...
    (Fedora)
  • RAID Problem diagnostic help desperately needed.
    ... problems using hardware RAID 1 with a Promise TX2000 controller, ... IBM/Hitachi drives and a Asus A7M266-D Mboard with single XP2400+ chip, ... Problem still exists when card is installed in another machine. ... Problem relates to corruption of data over IDE cables. ...
    (comp.os.linux.hardware)