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Nice! Four M.2 SSD's in a PCIe x16 slot.

Despite all the jokes about pr0n and large amounts of storage, my MythTV system is testament that that's not necessarily so. High-definition recordings take about 7.5GB per hour and I can record four at once (two from cable over FireWire and two from ATSC over-the-air).

One of the two RAID arrays I devote to MythTV recordings is built around a 16 drive-bay 4U server case with a quad-core processor and RocketRAID 2240 controller card (just for JBOD; I use software RAID 6) inside. The bays are all full in terms of physical disks and almost so in terms of data, and I'm thinking about building another array. I neither need nor want another full-fledged server, though; the 16-bay server already has plenty of leftover horsepower and internal-bus bandwidth. I really just need a box with empty drive bays, ideally at least eight.

Am I correct in believing that I could get an eight-bay enclosure, put another RocketRAID 2240 (or something cheaper if possible; I don't need the hardware-RAID functionality) in the 16-bay server, connect the server and enclosure with two multiband SATA/"Infiniband" cables, and be up and running with capacity left over on the card for another such enclosure add-on down the road?

How about the HightPoint RocketRAID cards? The 1820a supports 8 SATA drives, supports 64-bit 133MHz PCI-X, but is PCI compatible and costs about $200. They have closed source linux drivers for 2.4 and 2.6 kernels.

Because that's when I was spec'ing out the goodies that are making their way to me in the big, brown trucks as we speak. I'm satisfied with my purchases, but it would have been nice to hear what others came up with before blowing my year-end bonus.

4 x Maxtor 7L300S0 300GB SATA drives for $120 each from Newegg. (D'oh! They're $5 cheaper than last week!)
4-drive capable SATA external enclosure with hot-swap bays for $250 from Cooldrives.com.
Highpoint RocketRAID 1820A to turn it all into a RAID-5 with ~900GB capacity. $200, from Newegg.

This will all be driven by a G4/2x450MHz running Tiger Server.

Do you mean something like this?

Why not a rocketraid 1640?

I bought a RocketRaid 100. While I had no problem getting it to work under Windows, I was unable to get it to work under any of a number of flavors of Linux. Of course, my ineptitude at compiling a patched linux kernel may have led to my difficulties.

I wound up using the card as a plain old IDE interface and then build software RAID on the drives connected to it. In retrospect, I should've bought a 3ware card, despite its significantly higher cost because it would've saved me significant time.

Two drive RAID 1 mirroring is good. We've had a lot of trouble recently getting tech support from Promise Technology, so we have switched to HighPoint RocketRAID 133 adapter cards.

These RAID cards use the main CPU, they don't have on-board microprocessors. This causes some problems in Windows XP when you have a script that runs at startup. Some commands in the script will sometimes cause the mirror to break, apparently. Apparently Microsoft has not integrated some of the CLI commands into Windows XP yet. This was such a big problem that I wrote a paper on it for Microsoft technical support: Windows XP problems: Port Re-direction.

If you are willing to spend a little more, a lot of people suggest 3Ware products: 7006-2 adapter cards, for example. We have no experience with them. They have a drawback, compared to HighPoint cards: They won't boot with just one drive, according to 3Ware technical support. After the drives are used in a mirror, they will not boot from the IDE adapter on the motherboard. This could be a big drawback if your 3Ware card is not working for some reason. Possibly 3Ware cards available in the future will not be incompatible, leaving you no way to get your data from the drives. If the card fails, you will at least have to buy another one to be able to see your data.

The advantage with 3Ware cards is that there is a CPU on the adapter, leaving no way for MS bugs to cause the mirror to break. That system is also faster, of course.

I wrote a Slashdot article about RAID 1: Mirroring Controllers - What have been Your Experiences?. Note that the Slashdot software has a bug that will not let you see all the comments in nested mode. That bug is years old.

Slashdot has run a number of articles from people who wrestle with the data reliability problem.

Acronis makes backup software that has been generally good for us. It is possible to do a full hard disk backup of a Windows XP hard drive while Windows XP is running. (This uses XP's Shadow Copy mode.

Slashdot also published a story I wrote about drive imaging software: Experiences w/ Drive Imaging Software?. Best sentence: "Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP have crippled file systems. The file system cannot copy some of the files that are necessary to the operating system. If you don't have experience with Microsoft operating systems, you may find this amazing..."

Windows XP keeps most of its settings in files collectively called the registry. So, no backup is complete unless you back up everything on the boot drive. MS tech support has told me many times that there is no way to do this with Microsoft tools. The recommend a "third party" method. We've tried the third party methods, and had a lot of grief with everthing except Acronis. Symantec has given us poor and unfriendly technical support, in my opinion. Symantec bought its competitor PowerQuest; I view that as a bad sign.

It is really, really miserable for me that Microsoft treats me, and every customer, as a criminal by building in copy protection that mixes all the programs and settings together; the copy protection causes me a lot of grief, and significantly damages the entire design of the OS. Linux is a very strong competitor in that area. Everyone is a friend of Linux, users are not criminals, and the OS design is not degra

I have no idea what its performance characteristics are, beyond the specs offered on the first link, but it certainly sounds tasty. I'm considering this card for my MythTV backend. 8x160G drives in RAID-5 is just a hair over a terabyte.

after posting some hardware sugs, i forgot about the driver issue:most of the newest 64bit driver work from the
major manufacturers appear to be for Windows(ech). ( Here's a review that came out today.)

The latest Linux drivers from nvidia aren't too old; their last nForce3 update was in Dec 2003 and the gpu drivers in Jan 2004

Tyan have a page of drivers, as does Highpoint, and Adaptec

Look into the suse amd64 message boards - they seem to be having some success...

I've recently switched from Debian Linux to FreeBSD 5.2. I was running a pair of RAID-1 arrays off a Highpoint HPT372 RocketRAID 133 controller using Highpoint's rather lackluster, "open source" driver. Of course, contacting them about FreeBSD support greater than 5.0 has yielded nothing useful, so now I am on the hunt for other solutions.

I've come across offerings from 3ware, notably the 7006-2. What caught my eye about this card (well, all of them from 3ware) was that it's actually a hardware-based ATA RAID adapter (where as RAID functionality is implemented in software for most ATA controllers out there). Does this mean that I can use this card without any driver hell? Will a RAID-whatever array simply appear as another /dev/a[dr]* device or is it not that simple? (By the way, I care little about CLI tools for rebuilding the array. I am content to use the card's BIOS to do management.)

Of course, if I can solve the problem with my Highpoint, that'd be useful too. Currently, if I create a RAID-1 array, the two real disks appear as /dev/ad4 and /dev/ad5 but I also get a /dev/ar0 device. However, if I simulate a disk failure, none of the devices appear. It appears to me like FreeBSD indeed supports the RAID functionality of this card out of the box, but a bit of minor tweaking is required.

The bottom line however is I wouldn't mind buying a a RAID adapter with functionality implemented in hardware. That'd be better overall. I just want to make sure it'll work with flying colors in whatever OS I choose to use.

Linux supported only with binary drivers

I powered down and removed the IDE ribbon cable from one of the mirrored drives and then powered up. Same approach as above. Stupid BIOS says that one of the drives is down and hangs until I tell it to come up anyway. Bzzt. Way wrong answer.

What should it have done? The reason linux can boot up it situations like that with the software RAID is because it isn't real RAID. You are mirroring the disk through software -- that isn't RAID.

I've had some experience with the Adaptec 1200A RAID controllers. I was planning on using them in about 5 workgroup file servers I support.

After I purchased them, I noticed that Adaptec's website says that Linux is not supported and they don't offer any drivers for this base-model card. However, if you investigate a little further, you find that the Adaptec cards use the Highpoint HPT372A chipset which IS supported under Linux. The drivers worked fine on a stock RH8 install and the GUI tools for RAID monitoring are exactly the same ones you get in Windows. You can download the drivers at Highpoint's website.

I emailed their support guys and told them they should at least provide a link to Highpoint's site so people that want Linux drivers for the card can be serviced. They replied and told me that Highpoint had provided them the stock Linux drivers for the chipset and they just haven't gotten around to actually customizing them, and that, in the mean time, they would just recommend people bump up to the next higher model RAID controller they sell.

Another caveat if you are planning on purchasing these cards is that they are only 5V PCI cards, not dual 3.3v and 5v or just 3.3v. Ergo, they don't work on some newer motherboards (like the Intel boards that come with the base-model Dell Poweredge 600SC server). I found this out the hard way and ended up going with 3Ware's Escalade cards which I've been happy with.

Specifically, the RocketRaid 133 (based on the HPT372A chipset). The card runs quite well under Linux. The Linux driver from HighPoint is quite good (sadly, only partially open source) and provides a /proc interface. (Don't worry, it compiles just fine in any kernel.) Sadly, I cannot show you output from the interface because Slashdot refuses to let me post it (citing junk characters). Stupid Taco. The interface also allows you to issue commands to the controller without rebooting, but documentation is poor. The BIOS utility is also quite good.

Anyway, the device hosts two RAID-1 arrays, one with 2 80Gb Seagates (ST380021A) and the other with 2 200Gb Maxtors (6Y200P0). They appear as SCSI devices. I have tested the mirroring and I am mostly satisfied.

Basically, I simulated a failure on one disk (removing it then performing some work on the other). When I reattached the drive, the card recognized the "failure" immediately and wanted to build the array. For my first test, I let the BIOS do exactly that. Took a very long time, but the mirror was recreated successfully and there were no problems (I tested by removing the first disk and trying again--the mirror was good). The second test was letting the driver do it after the machine had booted. This was a dismal failure. The card does NOT like rebuilding the mirror once the system is running.

Performance is quite good. Even though this is not HighPoint's latest offering, I am still quite impressed. I don't have any hard benchmarks, but I can post some later if you'd like.

These two arrays are accessed by many machines in my home network over NFS and by on average 5 users logged in remotely. They serve games, web pages, and my software, movie, and music archive. These arrays take a decent amount of stress, but nothing severe.

I'll post more in this thread if I think of anything. I'll answer any questions about the card's performance if you have any.

Specifically, the RocketRaid 133 (based on the HPT372A chipset). The card runs quite well under Linux. The Linux driver from HighPoint is quite good (sadly, only partially open source) and provides a /proc interface. (Don't worry, it compiles just fine in any kernel.) Sadly, I cannot show you output from the interface because Slashdot refuses to let me post it (citing junk characters). Stupid Taco. The interface also allows you to issue commands to the controller without rebooting, but documentation is poor. The BIOS utility is also quite good.

Anyway, the device hosts two RAID-1 arrays, one with 2 80Gb Seagates (ST380021A) and the other with 2 200Gb Maxtors (6Y200P0). They appear as SCSI devices. I have tested the mirroring and I am mostly satisfied.

Basically, I simulated a failure on one disk (removing it then performing some work on the other). When I reattached the drive, the card recognized the "failure" immediately and wanted to build the array. For my first test, I let the BIOS do exactly that. Took a very long time, but the mirror was recreated successfully and there were no problems (I tested by removing the first disk and trying again--the mirror was good). The second test was letting the driver do it after the machine had booted. This was a dismal failure. The card does NOT like rebuilding the mirror once the system is running.

Performance is quite good. Even though this is not HighPoint's latest offering, I am still quite impressed. I don't have any hard benchmarks, but I can post some later if you'd like.

These two arrays are accessed by many machines in my home network over NFS and by on average 5 users logged in remotely. They serve games, web pages, and my software, movie, and music archive. These arrays take a decent amount of stress, but nothing severe.

I'll post more in this thread if I think of anything. I'll answer any questions about the card's performance if you have any.

Slashdot is not Highpoint Technical Support. Your question isn't how a software only IDE RAID stores data, your question is how do you fix your Highpoint config.

You can reach the web page at highpoint-tech.com, and reach support via support@highpoint-tech.com

Good luck to you, but ask your question in a support fourum.

Slashdot is not Highpoint Technical Support. Your question isn't how a software only IDE RAID stores data, your question is how do you fix your Highpoint config.

You can reach the web page at highpoint-tech.com, and reach support via support@highpoint-tech.com

Good luck to you, but ask your question in a support fourum.

High Point 404

True, but you'd also think that after 130 graphs and countless pages of whining about how the RocketRaid 133 had only two controllers he would've realized that the Highpoint 404 would've been a more appropriate choice for this benchmark!

(Still and all, the "404" is a lousy name for anything that's intended to make sure your data can always be found)

Note: At this time, the HPT370 Linux patch is compatible with single disk functions only. (Non-RAID)

Are you sure? I don't know about that particular board, but I have an Abit KA7-100, featuring the Highpoint HPT 370 which does indeed do hardware RAID. So there definitely are a few chipsets out there that support it...

Are you sure? I don't know about that particular board, but I have an Abit KA7-100, featuring the Highpoint HPT 370 which does indeed do hardware RAID. So there definitely are a few chipsets out there that support it...

With the right motherboards, the Duron will be a real winner. Maybe stick a HighPoint chip on there, to circumvent Via's and AMD's disk transfer rates which are in the crapper...and give us some overclocking options...and you've got a great opportunity for overclocking heaven if you stick an Alpha on it!

Hopefully Soyo will make a decent Duron board - the 6BA+ IV, their flagship BX model, which my 500E is on, is the best board I've ever used. It's incredibly stable even running 1.5 times faster than normal (image here), and if they make a Duron board I can't wait to see how far people take these things.