Good RAID for New Desktop Machine?

Franc Zabkar wrote
On 10 Apr 2008 13:48:40 GMT, Arno Wagner put finger
to keyboard and composed:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Franc Zabkar wrote:
On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 21:41:36 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
put finger to keyboard and composed:
In comp.arch.storage Arno Wagner wrote:

As this thing was unusable and I had to get the storage running,
it has been disposed of by now, I expect. I bought it 4 years ago.

This card didn't even exist 4 years ago.

Product Reviews - Hard disks - Adaptec Serial ATA RAID 2410SA:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/50553...id-2410sa.html

PC Pro ISSUE: 111 DATE: Jan 04

Thanks. Seems some people are shamelessly lying just to give the
impression some others are wrong.

You would never do that.

Disgusting.

Indeed you are.


Arno

That's happened to me as well.

I know how you feel,

You should, fast becoming the second babblebot here.

especially when you catch them out.

Which never happens to you, right, babblebot 2?
Have a big killfile too I suppose, to prevent that from happening.


- Franc Zabkar

Maxim S. Shatskih wrote in
I can't speak for their RAID cards, but the SCSI card in my old desktop
was flaky from day one. After numerous tech support equiries, driver &
firmware updates, it still bluescreens my computer occasionally.

I will never buy another Adaptec product.

I run the Adaptec SCSI card

(160MB/s, the one with Windows driver "adpu160m")

That narrows it down quite a bit, doesn't it.
Almost as good as naming the model number.

for 8 years or so. No issues.

I run the Adaptec SCSI card

(160MB/s, the one with Windows driver "adpu160m")

That narrows it down quite a bit, doesn't it.
Almost as good as naming the model number.

Adaptec 29160, PCI\VEN_9005&DEV_0080&SUBSYS_E2A09005&REV_02

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation

http://www.storagecraft.com

software or environment or fumble-fingers. IMHO, since
the HD is one
of the most reliable pieces of a PC, RAID-1 has very
little value
for a home.

I disagree. I've had home PCs since 1987, and in that
time the disks have consistently been the least reliable
components, and i've that experience with a bunch of
brands -- Seagate, WD, Maxtor, Fujitsu, even now-dead
brands like Conner and Micropolis (I used SCSI during much
of 90s). I've used RAID1 in my home PC for about 4 yrs.
now. I agree wholeheartedly with your advice that it's no
replacement for backups, which I know people (myself
included) can get lazy about when they know they have that
mirror.

In comp.arch.storage Franc Zabkar wrote:
On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:12:28 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
put finger to keyboard and composed:

In comp.arch.storage Franc Zabkar wrote:

On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 21:41:36 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
put finger to keyboard and composed:

This card didn't even exist 4 years ago.

Product Reviews - Hard disks - Adaptec Serial ATA RAID 2410SA:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/50553...id-2410sa.html

a 2420sa isn't a 2410sa, kind of like how 3 isn't equal to 7

I was addressing your misinformation, not your model preference, kind
of like how 2008 - 2004 = 4. Maybe the 2420SA is a good card, I
wouldn't know, but I do know that the 2410SA is at least 4 years old.

Let's think about this for a minute.

This post started when somebody asked what sort of raid card might be good
to use.

I suggested a modern and good card. Then somebody pipes up about some old
card they claims sucks for 900 reasons, then they finaly admit they never
used the card long enough to know anything about it.

Of course, none of this is relevant to the 2420sa I suggested.

I even asked for people to name problems with that card, and nobody was
able to come up with anything at all, except for stories that keep
changing about a 2410 card.

Arno Wagner wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Maxim S. Shatskih
wrote:
I run the Adaptec SCSI card (160MB/s, the one with Windows driver
"adpu160m") for 8 years or so. No issues.

The problem with Adaptec is not that all their products are bad.
Thanks. For me, this really means - bad products.
Indeed. My take also.

AOL, they've had products all over the map and the less said about
their early RAID products the better.


All are expensive though

Yes. LSI/Tekram controller (Windows driver "sym_u3") is much
cheaper and also works OK.

I have heard good things about 3ware under Linux, but was too
cheap to get one so far. We also have some 8-way Arceas at
work (als under Linux) that are really fast and reliable. Only
downside is that you need to patch the driver into the kernel
manually.

FYI I found the earlier 3wares to not perform especially well under
Linux though the later drivers made them somewhat less painfull, never
tried them under Windows (though the benchmarks I've suggests their
Windows driver is much better). With lots of tweaking (documented by
3ware) you can get them to go fast on streaming (just add very large
readahead) but nothing seems to help with small accesses.

It's possible that the latest generations card (only tried up to 9500)
with latest firmware (only available on the new cards) might solve
this, there's some hints in the release notes, but I have no intention
to put money into testing it.

The Areca cards on the other works very well under Linux and is
supported under most recent distributions and Areca has drivers for
many older ones. Only tried the latest generation but it seems to be
rock solid cards and the standalone web server rocks...


Similarly I have *no* experience with modern Adaptec RAID controllers,
but after the consistently crappy controllers they've pushed on the
world for a long period there's no way I'll given them a second chance
(well, probably fourth or fifth chance but who is counting). Heck,
they started their RAID line with buying out DPT, I consider DPT's
only redeeming feature that they were the first with Linux drivers?,
performance was far from stellar.

OTOH, I see that Adaptec seem to own ICP Vortex now, though the cards
seems to be different from Adaptec's own, I know they used to have a
decent reputation even if I've never even seen a card. Perhaps Adaptec
finally taken out their DPT code base and given it the burial it long
needed? :-)


On the LSI side I've used the SCSI and SAS models (though only with
SAS disks), even before they bought Mylex they were much faster than
Adaptec and I have a feeling the newer cards are either running Mylex
derived firmware (IIRC they support both types of on-disk formats) or
they picked up some tricks from them...

Mylex used to win a lot of comparisons back when, to the point where
some major big providers allowed you to special-order them to comply
with the requirement that you could buy the configuration they
benchmarked :-)

For a desktop machine the various built-in host RAID seems to work
well (now!), but so do the OS built-in ones.

Maxim S. Shatskih wrote in
I run the Adaptec SCSI card

(160MB/s, the one with Windows driver "adpu160m")

That narrows it down quite a bit, doesn't it.
Almost as good as naming the model number.

Adaptec 29160,

PCI\VEN_9005&DEV_0080&SUBSYS_E2A09005&REV_02

Ahh, there you go, that's the HP/Compaq OEM-ed one.
Obviously that's the one to go for.

On Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:24:45 +1000, Franc Zabkar
put finger to keyboard and composed:

On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:41:11 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
put finger to keyboard and composed:

In comp.arch.storage Franc Zabkar wrote:
On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:12:28 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
put finger to keyboard and composed:

In comp.arch.storage Franc Zabkar wrote:

On Wed, 9 Apr 2008 21:41:36 +0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
put finger to keyboard and composed:

This card didn't even exist 4 years ago.

Product Reviews - Hard disks - Adaptec Serial ATA RAID 2410SA:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/50553...id-2410sa.html

a 2420sa isn't a 2410sa, kind of like how 3 isn't equal to 7

I was addressing your misinformation, not your model preference, kind
of like how 2008 - 2004 = 4. Maybe the 2420SA is a good card, I
wouldn't know, but I do know that the 2410SA is at least 4 years old.

Let's think about this for a minute.

This post started when somebody asked what sort of raid card might be good
to use.

I suggested a modern and good card. Then somebody pipes up about some old
card they claims sucks for 900 reasons, then they finaly admit they never
used the card long enough to know anything about it.

Of course, none of this is relevant to the 2420sa I suggested.

I even asked for people to name problems with that card, and nobody was
able to come up with anything at all, except for stories that keep
changing about a 2410 card.

Well, I can see both sides of the argument. I understand that people
may be turned off by a particular manufacturer or vendor as a result
of a bad product or bad support. If it's a case of bad support, then
it makes sense not to go back to that supplier in the future. However,
if it's an issue with a particular product, then I'd suspect that all
manufacturers have produced at least one dud at some time or other.
Anyone who has ever been burnt by a Pinto would be hesitant to
recommend another Ford, but if you were to stay away from all
manufacturers of storage products on the basis of past experience,
then you wouldn't have any products to choose from.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Rod Speed wrote:
nik Simpson wrote
Bob Willard wrote

With RAID-1 (mirroring) you still should do regular backups. RAID-1
only protects against failure of a HD, and supplies no protection against failures of any other piece of hardware, or
glitches due to software or environment or fumble-fingers. IMHO, since the HD is one of the most reliable pieces of
a PC, RAID-1 has very little value for a home.

Hmm, if I look at all the hardware failures I've in the last 15 or so years, hard disks are probably the least
reliable part of my desktops. I can't recall a CPU, memory, graphics card or motherboard failure in that time, maybe
I'm just lucky (or unlucky depending on how you look at it.)

Sure, but plenty get that with hard drives too.


With an oddball hiccup in the measured reliability of all components in
systems, working for multiple vendors, I gotta go with hard drives.
This is SMD, IDE, EIDE, SCSI, FC, SATA.

Generally anything with moving parts will be less reliable.

Other highlights are parts where the user can get at them, plug them
into something stupid, plug something stupid into them, or pour various
liquids on them.

Even way back when memory errors occurred, measured over an entire
install base, the memory was not that much different in reliability than
the chips. A few issues with UV EPROMS, but those are in the antique
shop anyway.

Maxim S. Shatskih wrote:
I can't speak for their RAID cards, but the SCSI card in my old desktop
was flaky from day one. After numerous tech support equiries, driver &
firmware updates, it still bluescreens my computer occasionally.

I will never buy another Adaptec product.

I run the Adaptec SCSI card (160MB/s, the one with Windows driver "adpu160m")
for 8 years or so. No issues.

I've had pretty good luck with the old Adaptex SCSI cards...the ones
with the MIPS chips in them. Measured across a pretty wide sample of
machines.

Not familiar with their RAID Adapters, as in dunno if they are Adaptec
designs or came from Eurologic.

The 4 channel Mylex is decent, but you need a good fast array to notice.