OliWarner
asked on
NForce 4 and RAID5
I'm really keen to get into RAID5 having just lost a HD and most of its data.
My new NForce4 board claims to support RAID5. I also read a while back this would need special types of SATA drive.
So yeah, my question is two-fold. a) What HDs do I need b) how do i get them into the array once the disk're here?
My new NForce4 board claims to support RAID5. I also read a while back this would need special types of SATA drive.
So yeah, my question is two-fold. a) What HDs do I need b) how do i get them into the array once the disk're here?
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
Yeah that's the one. I'm not so much looking for a review of the board. I did that bit of research last year... I'm looking for its RAID5 performance against other systems and storage methods.
The A8N comes with a Silicon Image 3114R RAID controller... A review of that would do just as well i guess... and as it uses this, does that still mean its going to drain my CPU in RAID5 for all its parity bits?
The A8N comes with a Silicon Image 3114R RAID controller... A review of that would do just as well i guess... and as it uses this, does that still mean its going to drain my CPU in RAID5 for all its parity bits?
>does that still mean its going to drain my CPU in RAID5 for all its parity bits?
Yes, it will snatch away some cpu cycles, unlike dedicated RAID cards which have their own cpu on it.
Yes, it will snatch away some cpu cycles, unlike dedicated RAID cards which have their own cpu on it.
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ok I skimmd the answers and didn't see this - but its posted already - my apologies. Note that I would go with some quiet samsung drives. http://www.newegg.com/app/SearchProductResult.asp?DEPA=0
"RAID 5 stripes both data and parity information across three or more drives. It is similar to RAID 4 except that it exchanges the dedicated parity drive for a distributed parity algorithm, writing data and parity blocks across all the drives in the array. This removes the "bottleneck" that the dedicated parity drive represents, improving write performance slightly and allowing somewhat better parallelism in a multiple-transaction environment, though the overhead necessary in dealing with the parity continues to bog down writes. Fault tolerance is maintained by ensuring that the parity information for any given block of data is placed on a drive separate from those used to store the data itself. The performance of a RAID 5 array can be "adjusted" by trying different stripe sizes until one is found that is well-matched to the application being used." from http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/singleLevel5-c.html
"RAID 5 stripes both data and parity information across three or more drives. It is similar to RAID 4 except that it exchanges the dedicated parity drive for a distributed parity algorithm, writing data and parity blocks across all the drives in the array. This removes the "bottleneck" that the dedicated parity drive represents, improving write performance slightly and allowing somewhat better parallelism in a multiple-transaction environment, though the overhead necessary in dealing with the parity continues to bog down writes. Fault tolerance is maintained by ensuring that the parity information for any given block of data is placed on a drive separate from those used to store the data itself. The performance of a RAID 5 array can be "adjusted" by trying different stripe sizes until one is found that is well-matched to the application being used." from http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/singleLevel5-c.html
here is a fantastic table explaining the value points, storage effiencies, number of disks required etc. for the various levels of RAID
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/comp.htm
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/comp.htm
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER