I am making my first venture into raid. I am going to purchase a hardware
PCI raid controller which allows attachment of 4 IDE devices.
I would like clarification on the following;
1.This allows me to attach an extra two identical IDE hard disks to my
system.(currently DVD-Rom drive, CDR Drive and 2HDD).
2.I would then be able to add another CDr and a DVD writer also as slave and
master.
3.The two new IDE HDD would not affect the current two.
4.Can the drives be removed from the raid card and inserted into another
system as slaves and the data be available or would it only show on another
raid system?
5.Which is the best raid method(0/1/0+1) for normal storage to use?

All help appreciated.

--
kerplunk@greenday.SPAMfreeserve.co.uk
remove SPAM to reply
Victoria Concordia Crescit

On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 02:14:27 -0000, KerplunKuK wrote:

For optimal RAID performance, the hdds should be matched. I don't know about
adding additional stuff in the manner you seem to be describing - I've never
used a card. Mine are all onboard chips. I would think though, that you wouldn't
be able to run a normal IDE appliance on a RAID controller without taking a
performance hit on the RAID. I don't know that it would even work, since RAID
protocols are somewhat different than regular IDE.

RAID0 (striping) is fastest, but has no redundancy - if one of the drives fails,
the RAID fails. RAID1 is a little slower, but with three drives, if one fails,
the hot backup is incorporated back into the RAID so you don't lose your data.

I personally run RAID0 (240gig) on this machine and have found it quite
reliable. In a few days, I'll be running a 320gig SATA RAID0 on my work box. I
just prefer RAID0. The choice is up to you, depending on what you wish to
achieve.

Note: Once a RAID is set up, the drives _can_ be moved to another system - but
only as a RAID setup, if you wish to access the data already installed. In other
words, if I move these two drives to another of my systems that has the same
motherboard, and set them up exactly as they are now, which is both as Master
drives on ATA100 controllers in a certain order, the RAID array will come right
up with all the data intact. It won't work if you change the jumpers or the
controller hookups, though. (i.e, changing the jumpers to slave, or setting them
up on a normal IDE controller, or setting them up on the wrong controllers.)

--
What we need are a couple of good hangings.
-- FTC Chairman Orson Swindle, on email spam