Two port RAID card Prim & sec choice

Reeferjon · 24 Mar 2006 at 07:21

Hi.
I have found a nice little two port RAID card (supports 250Gig)....my question is this...
I want to add two identicle 250Gig's in mirror, I also have a spare 160Gig.

What would be the performance effect of having the two 250Gig drives on the same channel (IDE 1) as primary and secondary.
Then using the odd 160Gig on IDE 2.

Thanks.

Monstermunch · 25 Mar 2006 at 09:26

I didn't think you could raid IDE drives, however if you can the performace loss would be similar to that of SATA.

With SATA the following applies: (using 80gb size as reference)

2 x 80gb drives in raid0 = (160gb total) faster than raptor performance but less reliable.

2 x 80 gb in raid0 and then 2 x 80gb in raid1 (still = 160gb total) 160gb storage and 160gb mirrored = Raid0+1 config

The mirror slows performance but the total performance of raid0+1 is still faster than a raptor.

smids · 25 Mar 2006 at 10:40

Hmm, never really a good idea to RAID IDE on the same channel. Not sure of the exact effect but you can bet that there is some performance loss.

Reeferjon · 25 Mar 2006 at 13:44

Thanks guys.
After some checking I ended up binning the RAID card and getting a Adaptec AAR-1420SA SATA-II RAID Controller (4 port) and two 250g SATA II Hitachi drives.

If your new to RAID (like me) make sure that if you get SATA II drives your RAID card supports them.

Once I have the mirror built I will try my PATA drive on channel 3 with a PATA/SATA converter.