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Transparent IDE Mirroring Hardware

Posted by Cliff on from the not-necessarily-for-PCs dept.

The Fat Guy asks: "I'm having trouble trying to find a device that may not Is there any 'in-line' device out there that can transparently mirror IDE drives? I have a need for a device that will connect to an IDE bus (ATA 100) and will then connect to 2 separate (identical if need be, but ideally allowing different geometries) hard drives and transparently mirror them (RAID 1). I can not install an IDE RAID controller (no PCI slot in the embedded box), and I can't do software RAID (it needs to be OS independent). Ideally, I'd like something that would even work with an external USB or Firewire drive controller. CRU once made something similar to this for older IDE drives, but it appears that they dropped the product and did not update it for the modern drives. Any suggestions? Am I wasting my (and your) time asking this?" It's an interesting idea. Does anyone know of a technical reason why such a device can't be made if it doesn't already exist?

3 of 12 comments (clear)

  1. Right down your alley by jcausey · · Score: 3, Informative

    This link has one that may suit your needs. I bought one (from a different company -- can't remember who) for a client about 8 months ago. It works like a charm, and really fits certain needs.

  2. Not sure if this helps... by CaptainTylor · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...but Promise Technology makes a network-attached storage device that uses ATA drives instead of SCSI. They also make an interesting external storage subsystem which uses ATA drives, but is SCSI-attached. I may get one of those myself and fill it full of IBM Deskstar 60GXP goodness.

    I know that at least one motherboard manufacturer (Iwill) has onboard ATA RAID on some of its more recent boards (according to Maximum PC magazine's August 2001 issue, the KK266-R for Athlons with PC100/133 SDRAM, last I heard it was selling for $110). Do not know anything about usability of this device in various operating systems though. You'd think it would be implemented in hardware, so the OS just sees one disk device that represents the mirrorset, but I wouldn't swear to anything...

    No, I don't work for Promise or Iwill, or any of their suppliers or business partners.

  3. Years ago.... by jsimon12 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I read about why it really wasn't worthwhile to mirror IDE drives. Bascially the MTBF for IDE's in a system are almost identical, so if one device dies, the other will more then likely die as well. Also, if you have them on one controller (I would figure this embedded device would only have one?) then you would be totally S.O.L. if you lost the master.