RAID board for my MB?

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Smile
Posts: 46
Joined: Mon Dec 27, 2004 1:04 am

RAID board for my MB?

Post by Smile » Wed Mar 16, 2011 3:53 pm

Hi, I have the ASUS NCT-D motherboard. Unfortunately the one without 4 SATA RAID ports.
I have just 2 SATA PORTS !

I would like to ask for controller suggestions depending on hardware I would like to use:

I would like to connect:


1. To controller board:
2x WD Raptor 150GB 10.000 Rpm in Stripe mode to make 300Gb stripe for video rendering.
2x WD Caviar Black 2000GB, 7200rpm in mirror mode for data storage

2. To motherboard SATA ports:
1x WD Raptor 150GB 10.000 Rpm would be my main system drive for apps and windows to motherboard SATA connector
1x BLU-RAY SH-B123L/BSBP LightScribe Black SATA to motherboard SATA connector

3. To motherboard PATA ports:

1x Samsung DVD-RW for burning to DVD to motherboard PATA connector

My Motherboard has these ports:

1 x PCI Express x8 slot (x4 link, PCI Express 1.0a)
1 x PCI Express x16 slots (Graphic card, PCI Express 1.0a)
1 x PCI-X 66 MHz/64-bit slot (PCI-X 1.0a)
1 x PCI-X 66 MHz/64-bit slot (supports ZCR, PCI-X 1.0a)
1 x PCI 33 MHz/32-bit/5V (PCI 2.3)
1 x WiFi slot (ASUS proprietary)

I was thinking about Promise FastTrak TX4310 66Mhz PCI, as PCI Express x8 is very expensive :shock:
Thank you.

washu
Posts: 571
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2009 10:20 am
Location: Ottawa

Re: RAID board for my MB?

Post by washu » Wed Mar 16, 2011 6:37 pm

Why not look for something you can afford between a cheap PCI card and an expensive PCIe x8? There are 4 port PCIe x4 cards that aren't too expensive. Another option would be a cheap 2 port PCIe x1 card plus a PCI card. That would take some of the load off the PCI bus.

That Promise card is fine, but expensive for what you get. You can get a Silicon Image based 4 port PCI card for less than half of the Promise card.

Whatever you get, don't use these cards for RAID5, performance will suck hard. RAID 0 or 1 is fine, but you might want to consider using the RAID in your OS for portability.

fumino
Posts: 298
Joined: Thu Aug 05, 2010 4:38 pm
Location: ontario

Re: RAID board for my MB?

Post by fumino » Wed Mar 16, 2011 7:45 pm

4 ports. PCI-X. slow, but cheap. <-you'll have to look into pci-x bandwidth yourself to see if you think it'll be able to provide enough bandwidth.
4 ports. PCIe x4. fakeraid, but thats fine for raid0 in my opinion, you shouldnt be mirroring for data backup. go with incremental backups, and unplug your secondary drive when not in use. if you delete something you needed, guess what the mirror is gonna be like? thats right. just like the other drive.
8 ports.PCIe x8, not that you'd saturate 4 lanes, so it will be fine. doesnt come with necessary cables, and is the most expensive... but expandability with plenty of ports. not sure if thats worth the cost to you.

fumino
Posts: 298
Joined: Thu Aug 05, 2010 4:38 pm
Location: ontario

Re: RAID board for my MB?

Post by fumino » Wed Mar 16, 2011 8:25 pm

i just want to ask you something before you spend any more money on this motherboard... what ram do you have?



im wondering, because if its compatible, you might just want to buy an AM2+ motherboard, and an athlon II dualcore cpu... the speed boost over a nocona should be large. also, lower power draw, less heat...

Smile
Posts: 46
Joined: Mon Dec 27, 2004 1:04 am

Re: RAID board for my MB?

Post by Smile » Thu Mar 17, 2011 11:47 am

fumino wrote:i just want to ask you something before you spend any more money on this motherboard... what ram do you have?
I have 8GB ECC Registered CL3 RAM, and 2 PCU's 3.8Ghz 2MB L2 cache, so it's a decent PC.
But I beginning to think I need PCI Express x8 card as bus speed is 2GB one way, that 4GB both ways.
And PCI-X 66 MHz/64-bit slot has only 266MB both ways? That's slower than single Sata II hard disk.

washu
Posts: 571
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2009 10:20 am
Location: Ottawa

Re: RAID board for my MB?

Post by washu » Fri Mar 18, 2011 5:47 am

Smile wrote:
fumino wrote:i just want to ask you something before you spend any more money on this motherboard... what ram do you have?
I have 8GB ECC Registered CL3 RAM, and 2 PCU's 3.8Ghz 2MB L2 cache, so it's a decent PC.
But I beginning to think I need PCI Express x8 card as bus speed is 2GB one way, that 4GB both ways.
And PCI-X 66 MHz/64-bit slot has only 266MB both ways? That's slower than single Sata II hard disk.
PCI-X 66 MHz/64-bit is 533 MB a sec, not 266. That promise card is only 266 MB/sec as it is a 66 MHz/32 bit card. There is no single mechanical HD that can come close to 266MB/sec anyway. Running 4 off one card might cause a bit of speed drop, but not much.

PCIe x8 would be pointless as your slot is only x4 in reality.

For the kind of work you are doing your CPUs are going to be the limiting factor long before disk unless you are doing practically no processing on your video. If you are really willing to spend money on an x8 PCIe card then spend it on a modern MB, CPU and RAM with 6 SATA ports built in.

Smile
Posts: 46
Joined: Mon Dec 27, 2004 1:04 am

Re: RAID board for my MB?

Post by Smile » Fri Mar 18, 2011 8:19 am

washu wrote: PCI-X 66 MHz/64-bit is 533 MB a sec, not 266. That promise card is only 266 MB/sec as it is a 66 MHz/32 bit card. There is no single mechanical HD that can come close to 266MB/sec anyway. Running 4 off one card might cause a bit of speed drop, but not much.
So I need to look for 66 MHz/64-bit card then?
washu wrote: PCIe x8 would be pointless as your slot is only x4 in reality.
Well PCI-E x4 is 800MB/s in one direction and and 1600MB/s in both.
So it's way faster then PCI-X why it's pointless, the Promise card is only 1/3rd cheaper than PCI-E x8 card.[/quote]
washu wrote: For the kind of work you are doing your CPUs are going to be the limiting factor long before disk unless you are doing practically no processing on your video.
I will use the PC to render file sequences to a single M-Jpeg file streams, since the file format is proprietary there is no GPU acceleration possible as far as I know. PCI-E even x4 card would allow me to use 2x SSD hard disks for total of 400MB/S read and write speeds it would not be wasted. This motherboard does not have SATA II ports so by using the 2 on the RAID card I could connect storage disks of 2TB or larger in RAID1.

As you know motherboard built in SATA ports would be utilized for optical drives.
washu wrote:If you are really willing to spend money on an x8 PCIe card then spend it on a modern MB, CPU and RAM with 6 SATA ports built in.
I don't have any numbers yet but the previous owner of this PC got a new sistem with:

Intel i5 3.20Ghz, with turbo feature 3.4Ghz 4MB cache,
DDR3 4GB RAM
WD SATA III 2TB HDD BlackArmor
Nvidia GT460 1Gb

The new PC system is slower ! So if you never had dual xeon at that clock rate then you perhaps can't compare it right?

washu
Posts: 571
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2009 10:20 am
Location: Ottawa

Re: RAID board for my MB?

Post by washu » Fri Mar 18, 2011 9:55 am

Smile wrote: So I need to look for 66 MHz/64-bit card then?
You could do that, you might be able to ebay something cheap that would fully use your PCI-X.
Well PCI-E x4 is 800MB/s in one direction and and 1600MB/s in both.
So it's way faster then PCI-X why it's pointless, the Promise card is only 1/3rd cheaper than PCI-E x8 card.
PCIe x4 is actually closer to 1GB/sec in each direction. My point was that an x8 card would be pointless, not an x4. If you found a "x8 RAID" card for that kind of price and it's not used then it sucks, no way around that. You can't get a real RAID card for that kind of money.
I will use the PC to render file sequences to a single M-Jpeg file streams, since the file format is proprietary there is no GPU acceleration possible as far as I know. PCI-E even x4 card would allow me to use 2x SSD hard disks for total of 400MB/S read and write speeds it would not be wasted. This motherboard does not have SATA II ports so by using the 2 on the RAID card I could connect storage disks of 2TB or larger in RAID1.
While M-Jpeg is pretty fast, you are still probably going to be CPU limited before disk. Is format conversion all you do, or is there any other processing involved? While GPUs can sometimes be used to assist with video transcoding, the CPU matters a lot and yours are slow.

I don't have any numbers yet but the previous owner of this PC got a new sistem with:

Intel i5 3.20Ghz, with turbo feature 3.4Ghz 4MB cache,
DDR3 4GB RAM
WD SATA III 2TB HDD BlackArmor
Nvidia GT460 1Gb

The new PC system is slower ! So if you never had dual xeon at that clock rate then you perhaps can't compare it right?
If that system is slower than yours then there is something very wrong with it. It should be much faster than what you have.

And yes, I do have a high clocked P4-Xeon that I own. I also have several at work. My personal one is a dual 3.6 so almost as fast as what you have. Insane disk too, 6 X 15K SCSI on a real LSI controller. A cheap ass dual core Celeron absolutely kicks it's ass. It's not even close, the Celeron wipes the floor with it on anything CPU limited.

I suggest you look at some benchmarks of high end P4s VS core2 and above.

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