Can RAID Controllers act as non RAID controllers?

On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 09:52:27 -0500, "Peter Olcott"
wrote:


"~misfit~" wrote in message
...
Somewhere on teh intarwebs "kony" typed:
On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 06:29:18 -0500, "Peter Olcott"
wrote:


A single-drive span is one that only has one member in
it,
is typically how a drive is used on any non-raid
controller.

I must keep the drives separate, yet not in any RAID
configuration. What I must end up with is drive letters
"C"
through "Z".


If the card supports 24 single drive spans, you would end
up
with drive letters C through Z. If the manual does not
make
both the factor of using single drive spans, AND
supporting
24 of them clear, contact the manufacturer.

Is this feature not what they call "JBOD" (Just a Bunch Of
Disks)?

I don't think so. I think that JBOD links the disks together
into a single virtual drive.
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/...evels/jbod.htm

Some people wholeheartedly disagree about this terminology :-)

Spanning is spanning (and usually a bad idea for harddisks).

JBOD is 'just a bunch of disks'. Meaning, that you should be able
to add or remove just any of them, if you whish to do so.

I for one have never seen a good argument for calling a spanned
diskset JBOD. Nor do I know of a (more) proper term to describe a
bunch of independant disks that happend to end up in a single
enclusure :-)

--
Kind regards,
Gerard Bok

On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 09:52:27 -0500, "Peter Olcott"
wrote:


"~misfit~" wrote in message
...
Somewhere on teh intarwebs "kony" typed:
On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 06:29:18 -0500, "Peter Olcott"
wrote:


A single-drive span is one that only has one member in
it,
is typically how a drive is used on any non-raid
controller.

I must keep the drives separate, yet not in any RAID
configuration. What I must end up with is drive letters
"C"
through "Z".


If the card supports 24 single drive spans, you would end
up
with drive letters C through Z. If the manual does not
make
both the factor of using single drive spans, AND
supporting
24 of them clear, contact the manufacturer.

Is this feature not what they call "JBOD" (Just a Bunch Of
Disks)?

I don't think so. I think that JBOD links the disks together
into a single virtual drive.
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/...evels/jbod.htm


With JBOD, the number of discs linked is determined by the
user. You could indeed link 2, 4 or more... up to as many
as the controller supports like this.

On the other hand, with JBOD you can also choose to only
have one drive per *array*, up to the maximum number of
*arrays* (I actually mean logical volumes when array was
written) that the controller supports. With this type of
JBOD it is called a single drive span and is the same
configuration as if the drive were connected to a
motherboard with as many ports for each drive, not even
hooked up to a raid controller at all.

The question is one of what the specific controller card you
are considering, actually supports... not the feature but
how many separate volumes it supports using that feature.

Somewhere on teh intarwebs "Gerard Bok" typed:
On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 09:52:27 -0500, "Peter Olcott"
wrote:


"~misfit~" wrote in message
...
Somewhere on teh intarwebs "kony" typed:
On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 06:29:18 -0500, "Peter Olcott"
wrote:


A single-drive span is one that only has one member in
it,
is typically how a drive is used on any non-raid
controller.

I must keep the drives separate, yet not in any RAID
configuration. What I must end up with is drive letters
"C"
through "Z".


If the card supports 24 single drive spans, you would end
up
with drive letters C through Z. If the manual does not
make
both the factor of using single drive spans, AND
supporting
24 of them clear, contact the manufacturer.

Is this feature not what they call "JBOD" (Just a Bunch Of
Disks)?

I don't think so. I think that JBOD links the disks together
into a single virtual drive.
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/...evels/jbod.htm

Some people wholeheartedly disagree about this terminology :-)

Spanning is spanning (and usually a bad idea for harddisks).

JBOD is 'just a bunch of disks'. Meaning, that you should be able
to add or remove just any of them, if you whish to do so.

I for one have never seen a good argument for calling a spanned
diskset JBOD. Nor do I know of a (more) proper term to describe a
bunch of independant disks that happend to end up in a single
enclusure :-)

I have to agree with you Gerard. Why would you call a spanned set of disks
"just a bunch of disks"?

It is what it is, just a bunch of disks.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

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