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Promise RAID 0+1 : Some experiences



 
 
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  #1  
Old October 25th 03, 09:35 PM
Dylan Kucera
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default Promise RAID 0+1 : Some experiences

I'm posting this here because I found a serious lack of information in the
Usenet history regarding configuring the Promise RAID ("FastBuild 1.32") for
0+1 (stripe/mirror). Maybe someone will stumble across this in google groups
and be enlightened. Here is what I was trying to do, and what I found:

I have an ASUS P4T533 with the onboard Promise RAID option (20276 chip I
believe). Initially I had just two 120Gig hard discs that I mirrored for
safety. I wanted to buy two additional drives and go stripe/mirror for the
extra space and speed.

First thing to do, download the Lumberjacker BIOS to get FULL RAID (The P4T533
ships with Lite RAID in the BIOS which does not allow 0+1). I used 1006. No
problems. If you are looking to do the same, use your favourite search engine
to find "Lumberjacker BIOS", the URL has changed at least once since I've
known of the site. You will have to fight your way through the site unless
you speak German, but worry not, the BIOS files and drivers there are all
English.

I thought to myself, no big deal, throw in the two new drives, create a stripe
with them, copy everything from one of the old mirrored drives, then break the
old mirror and use the old drives to create a mirror of the stripe. It's the
last step where things break down. It does not appear that FastBuild supports
adding a mirror to a stripe.

I resorted to buying a FIFTH drive, big enough to hold all my data. Back
everything up to the 5th drive, then break all arrays on the Promise
controller.

What I found wierd was that even when all 4 drives were considered "free", the
option in FastBuild "3. Define Array" still only had Mirror, Stripe, and Span
available as array types. The only place I could find to create a
Mirror/Stripe Array was in "1. Auto Setup". In there, when you choose
"Security" as the type of array, you will see that if (and only if!) you have
4 drives on the Promise controller that are not involved in any other array,
it will want to create a Mirror/Stripe array.

When using the Auto Setup option, you cannot control the Stripe Block size
very much. You have a choice of "Desktop, Server, or A/V Editting". When you
cycle through the choices, it does not tell you what your strip block size
would be. I chose "A/V Editting". Upon array creation and going back into
"Define Array", Array 1 showed Mirror/Stripe with a 64KB Stripe Block. I was
okay with that, so I just left it.

The last thing worth noting is that the drivers that ASUS gives you for the
Promise controller don't support the FULL RAID features. The virtual drive
will show up in the Disc Management, but it'll be of type "Unknown" and you
can't create partitions. Get an appropriate driver update from the
Lumberjacker BIOS site. Since the Lumberjacker BIOS I'm using includes FULL
RAID TX2000 2.0.0.28, I chose what I thought would be the "closest matching
driver", 2.0.0.26. So far so good (knock on wood).

Bottom line, these FULL RAID BIOS "updates" do allow you to use RAID 0+1 (at
least the P4T533 Lumberjacker 1006 does), however, expect to have to do a full
backup to a device not connected to the Promise controller, array break, and
restore if you want to "upgrade" an existing array. Use the "1. Auto Setup"
option after all arrays are broken. Upgrade your Promise driver from the Lite
version that ASUS gave you.

After flashing the FULL RAID BIOS, the boot sequence shows the Promise BIOS as
a "TX2000", so I'm guessing most of the info above regarding the use and
limitations of FastBuild applies to those that have that Promise stand-alone
controller. Infact, I'd guess that most Promise RAID controllers will behave
pretty much the same in this regard.

I hope someone benefits from my hours of tedious trial and error 8-|

DK.


  #2  
Old October 29th 03, 05:31 PM
Gareth Jones
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

In article , Dylan Kucera
writes
I hope someone benefits from my hours of tedious trial and error


Unfortunately, I'm not using your mobo, but I posted a raid query to the
Abit group a few days ago (and haven't had a reply as yet :-(
RAID does seem to a bit of a pain! How reliable are you finding your
mirroring? Is it worth it?

Thank you for sharing your experiences anyway.

Cheers.

--
__________________________________________
Gareth Jones

"Reality sucks - go watch a Star Trek"

To email, remove the '_ns_' from

__________________________________________

  #3  
Old October 31st 03, 04:46 PM
Dylan Kucera
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Gareth Jones wrote:

RAID does seem to a bit of a pain! How reliable are you finding your
mirroring? Is it worth it?


Mirroring on the P4T533 on board RAID has worked flawlessly for me so far,
both in the straight RAID 1 config I had before, and so far in my RAID 0+1
config. BUT, I have yet to have a drive go down on me yet, so the real
question of reliability hasn't been put to the test in my set up.

As for whether it is worth it. That's a bit of a personal decision. For me
it's completely worth it. But that comes a lot from having had a 45Gig IBM HD
crash and scratch it's own platter in my last system, nearly destroying all my
data. Thankfully I ran OnTrack EasyRecovery for 3-4 days straight and it got
most of my data off the damaged drive. But I felt so damn upset for days on
end. So for me, the extra $ in the system for RAID mirroring gives me some
piece of mind. Sure, maybe it'll screw up, I could still lose data. But at
least I won't kick myself saying "why didn't I at least try to protect things
a bit?"

It boils down to how attached you are to your system installation,
configuration, and data. If someone took your hard disc away today, would you
just shrug, go off to the computer store and buy a new one, reinstall your OS
etc., and just keep cruising? If so, maybe mirroring isn't for you.

DK.


  #4  
Old November 8th 03, 05:25 AM
highband678
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

I have a question about XP drivers for the promise controller. Slightly off
thread,( I do have a p4t533 but use Scsi 39160 there.) Anyway, I have a
Tusl2 motherboard with a 1.13 tulatin . I am currently using my promise
controller with windows xp pro and sp1. The problem is I cant seem to find
a suitable xp driver to match the hardware listed. I am currently using a
windows 2000 driver, Win2000 Promise Fast Track100(tm) Lite Controller.

I have not seen any xp drivers for the tusl2 listed on the Asus web site.
I cant find xp drivers for tusl2 listed at the Promise web site.

I try to update the driver with recent XP generic Fast Track 100 drivers and
I get the message: "no better driver found for update".

Is there a proper driver I should be using?

I am looking for the device manager to recognize the right driver and
install it. I also would like to avoid reloading if possible. This is why
I havent forced any driver updates where I am hoping for the best outcome.

With my overclocking and system stalls I have had to rebuild the mirror
array 3 times since June 03. (just corrupted, not a bad drive.) Everything
seems to work with this driver and this system has extremely fast disk
performance. I would just like to use proper XP drivers.

This mirror has (2) 80 gig western digital IDE drives in a 1 x 2
configuration. I do need my configuration protected as the data is
important. In fact I get my disk problems mainly doing backups of my
directories. Sometimes after about one gig into the backup, the system
becomes unresponsive and just quits working and I have to reset. During
this process I sometimes have to rebuild the array. (50 minute BIOS process)
I would feel more at ease using Xp drivers.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I will take a look at the
"lumberjacker BIOS" suggestion mentioned below.

Thanks! (The message below is a great post)
highband678


"Dylan Kucera" wrote in message
...
I'm posting this here because I found a serious lack of information in the
Usenet history regarding configuring the Promise RAID ("FastBuild 1.32")

for
0+1 (stripe/mirror). Maybe someone will stumble across this in google

groups
and be enlightened. Here is what I was trying to do, and what I found:

I have an ASUS P4T533 with the onboard Promise RAID option (20276 chip I
believe). Initially I had just two 120Gig hard discs that I mirrored for
safety. I wanted to buy two additional drives and go stripe/mirror for

the
extra space and speed.

First thing to do, download the Lumberjacker BIOS to get FULL RAID (The

P4T533
ships with Lite RAID in the BIOS which does not allow 0+1). I used 1006.

No
problems. If you are looking to do the same, use your favourite search

engine
to find "Lumberjacker BIOS", the URL has changed at least once since I've
known of the site. You will have to fight your way through the site

unless
you speak German, but worry not, the BIOS files and drivers there are all
English.

I thought to myself, no big deal, throw in the two new drives, create a

stripe
with them, copy everything from one of the old mirrored drives, then break

the
old mirror and use the old drives to create a mirror of the stripe. It's

the
last step where things break down. It does not appear that FastBuild

supports
adding a mirror to a stripe.

I resorted to buying a FIFTH drive, big enough to hold all my data. Back
everything up to the 5th drive, then break all arrays on the Promise
controller.

What I found wierd was that even when all 4 drives were considered "free",

the
option in FastBuild "3. Define Array" still only had Mirror, Stripe, and

Span
available as array types. The only place I could find to create a
Mirror/Stripe Array was in "1. Auto Setup". In there, when you choose
"Security" as the type of array, you will see that if (and only if!) you

have
4 drives on the Promise controller that are not involved in any other

array,
it will want to create a Mirror/Stripe array.

When using the Auto Setup option, you cannot control the Stripe Block size
very much. You have a choice of "Desktop, Server, or A/V Editting". When

you
cycle through the choices, it does not tell you what your strip block size
would be. I chose "A/V Editting". Upon array creation and going back

into
"Define Array", Array 1 showed Mirror/Stripe with a 64KB Stripe Block. I

was
okay with that, so I just left it.

The last thing worth noting is that the drivers that ASUS gives you for

the
Promise controller don't support the FULL RAID features. The virtual

drive
will show up in the Disc Management, but it'll be of type "Unknown" and

you
can't create partitions. Get an appropriate driver update from the
Lumberjacker BIOS site. Since the Lumberjacker BIOS I'm using includes

FULL
RAID TX2000 2.0.0.28, I chose what I thought would be the "closest

matching
driver", 2.0.0.26. So far so good (knock on wood).

Bottom line, these FULL RAID BIOS "updates" do allow you to use RAID 0+1

(at
least the P4T533 Lumberjacker 1006 does), however, expect to have to do a

full
backup to a device not connected to the Promise controller, array break,

and
restore if you want to "upgrade" an existing array. Use the "1. Auto

Setup"
option after all arrays are broken. Upgrade your Promise driver from the

Lite
version that ASUS gave you.

After flashing the FULL RAID BIOS, the boot sequence shows the Promise

BIOS as
a "TX2000", so I'm guessing most of the info above regarding the use and
limitations of FastBuild applies to those that have that Promise

stand-alone
controller. Infact, I'd guess that most Promise RAID controllers will

behave
pretty much the same in this regard.

I hope someone benefits from my hours of tedious trial and error 8-|

DK.




 




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