GA-8KNXP RAID and CD-rom config help
 

I had a RAID0 array (2x100gb WD1000JB) on another board with a Highpoint
controller, but any performance improvement was only apparent on benchmarks.
The ITE setup on the 8KNXP is renowned for its mediocre performance,
although I've never tested it, and when I set this new system up I went
instead with one drive. Performance is excellent and I have no plans of
implementing RAID0 on this mobo, at least not 'til I go SATA, and even then
will only do so as before if performance is more than slightly better. I
work with large photo image files and originally thought RAID0 might give a
meaningful performance boost, but I find that I'm missing nothing with this
single drive. YMMV.

I am not sold on the value of RAID1. If you have a corruption of the main
array, the mirror will likely also be corrupted. If you get a irreparable
virus on one, it'll show up on the other. What I've been using for over a
year is a cloning/daily-update system with Norton Ghost, performing a disk
clone (not image file) to one of four rotated HD's. These HD's are mostly
older drives (20, 20, 40, and 80gb) that I no longer use, but are still
useful for backups. Since I keep C: lean (usually 15gb), I have no trouble
cloning to the smaller drives. Also, one of the 20gb drives is kept
off-site for security against fire, theft, etc. The cloning process takes
about 1 min/gb on this system depending on how fast your drives are. My
slowest drive clones at about 700mbps, and about 1600 mbps using two
8mb-buffer drives.

My daily update consists of a backup of critical files (business databases,
email, OE configuration, address book, etc.). I use eBackup for the OE
files and a batch file for others. These backups go to D:, which is a 100gb
WD drive that was in my RAID0 array. The C: drive is a new Maxtor 160gb
(8mb buffer) unit.

This cloning scheme has proven its value more than once. If a newly
installed program goes awry and FUBARs everything, I can simply use my
latest clone to restore C: to its state when cloned, then restore the other
files from D:. The only things that won't be restored are programs and
updates installed since the last clone, but that should cause little trouble
getting back to current.

"Davek" wrote in message
...
I am considering buying 4 Western Digital 120 GB drives to
set up on the GigaRAID IDE RAID to handle RAID (0+1) but had
a few questions before I spend the money for the drives:

1. How does a 0+1 array compare in performance to a simple
single drive...is it slower due to the RAID-1 part of the
array? Or does the RAID-0 component of the array completely
make up for the RAID-1 overhead? If this setup is going to
end up in slow drive performance I don't want to spend my
money on the 4 drives.

2. I will also need to place two IDE optical drives (DVD
writer and a CD burner) on this board. For optimum
performance where would you place these? There seems to be
a lot of different ways to configure drives and roms on this
board. Right now I have no immediate plans of using any
SATA drives. I just want to do the 4-HD's in a RAID 0+1 and
hang the 2 ROMS for best performance.

TIA

- Dave Kistner