IDE RAID 0 - is it any good?

[UKLee]

I'm just about to buy a new Athlon DDR motherboard and I'm wondering whether or not I should wait until integrated IDE RAID boards become available. Does IDE RAID - offer superior performance to having a single modern 7200rpm drive? I hear conflicting reports about the benefits of it. I'll be using the PC for office apps, stuff like Dreamweaver, and various programming IDEs, as well as games. I have thought about buying a Promise IDE RAID PCI card, but it's pretty steep in terms of price at the moment. I just want to know if anyone thinks it'd be worth waiting for an Athlon DDR RAID board, and spending the extra money - would I get much benefit from it?

[helldiverCDN]

Heh, if nothing else, its nice to be able to put your drives and ATAPI devices each on their own channel.... http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

Cheers,

hell out

[Kuasimodem]

If you're looking for a DDR motherboard with onboard RAID, here's one...
IWILL KA266-R RAID ALI Chipset, 266MHz Bus, Socket A Motherboard. 5-PCI, 1-AGP, 3-DIMM slots for DDR menmory, on-board Audio. Retail Box. Free Fedex Saver Shipping
$157 at NewEgg

Find it here, thrid one on list (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=manufactory&catalog=22&manufactory=1310)

[UKLee]

Thanks for the tip, Kuasimodem. I'm not in the USA, so I won't be able to order it at that price even if I wanted to, but I'll certainly be looking at this one more closely anyway.

[AuraEdge]

There is no doubt that IDE RAID 0 is faster than a single drive, but you would need two identical drives, and if one of the drives fail, you lose all the data on both drives.

[plucky duck]

Stan, how's the Adaptec 2100S scsi raid controller running in Win98SE/W2K? Are there any problems or issues you had to deal with? How's the performance on the SCSI raid drives (assuming you're doing Raid 0)?

Does it use standard PC100/133 ram or sodimms on the controller?

Thx.
Plucky

[Stan]

Hi plucky duck,

I did not encounter any problems during installation. I dual boot Win ME and 2000 and it runs just fine...
The only "down side" (if I can call that a down side) is the boot-up time. I have to go through 2 SCSI BIOS, the 2940UW and 2100s and it does take a long time.
Apart from that, PC is super fast (thanks to dual PIII 1GHz and 512MB SDRAM http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif)

And yes, I have two IBM 36LZX in RAID0.
Here is the info (http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/techspecs.html?prodkey=ASR-2100S&cat=%2fProduct%2fASR-2100S) about the 2100s.

It uses ECC SDRAM. It comes with 32MB standard. I think the max is 128MB

Stan



[This message has been edited by Stan (edited 05-09-2001).]

[Stan]

Hi UKLee,

Well, by looking at your name, you must be living in UK http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

Here is where I do my online shopping:
1) www.insight.com (http://www.insight.com)
2) www.dabs.com (http://www.dabs.com)
3) www.scan.co.uk (http://www.scan.co.uk)
Check out the link "Today only" at Scan's web site, they have great prices !

Btw, RAID0 is way faster that a single disk. I have bought my 1st RAID IDE controller (Promise FastTrak33) 2 years ago. Now, I am lucky enough to own the Adaptec SCSI RAID 2100s (U160, 32MB onboard). I have 2 IBM 36LZX configured in RAID0.... I am flying !

Stan

[This message has been edited by Stan (edited 05-09-2001).]

[UKLee]

Hey Stan, thanks for the link to Scan.co.uk - I had not heard of it before and it looks pretty good, I'm just having a look through it now. I am thinking about buying a pair of Quantum Fireball+AS 30GB IDE drives for the RAID, maybe using a FastTrack RAID controller. However I don't know if I can afford to get the RAID card as well yet, so I may just get the two drives and add it later http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

My only other probem now is that I wanted a 1.33GHz 266fsb Athlon to go with it, but no-one in the country has them in stock! Even the 1.2 chips seem to be running pretty low. Who would've though that AMD would be having Intel-style troubles?

[Stan]

Nice... it is a really nice PC you are building yourself... enjoy !

Stan