Tag RAID

raid5

RAID Cluster Size

Blast from the past: originally published in 2003. Testing RAID cards is a long and arduous process. The most difficult part was deciding on a standard cluster size for all cards. While the Promise cards can have from 8k to 2048k, Adaptec’s limit is 128k, and 3ware’s is 64k. All cards default to 64k cluster size, so who am I to argue? Just for comparison sake, I ran the Promise FastTrak100 with three cluster sizes to see the difference.
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RAID Cache Size

Blast from the past: originally published in 2003. Cache plays an integral part in RAID types that use parity or error checking and correcting (ECC). How much cache to put on a RAID card to get the best performance is a tricky bit of business: the natural reaction is to max it out. Below is a comparison of benchmarks using three sizes: 64, 128 and 256 MB PC133 SDRAM on a Promise FastTrak SX4000 with IBM DeskStar 75GXP 20 GB drives.

RAIDCore BC4852

The BC4000 RAID HBA family, comprised of 64-bit, PCI-X low-profile compliant controller cards, are the only 2U compatible SATA RAID controller cards available today. The product family provides both four-drive (BCM4452-H) or eight-drive (BCM4852-H) support and are based on Broadcom’s…

Promise S150 SX4

FastTrak S150 SX4 Four-port Serial ATA RAID controller with 1.5Gbps per channel 32-Bit/66MHz PCI 2.2 interface Support for RAID level 0, 1, 10, 5 and JBOD Online array expansion and RAID level migration to add capacity on the fly Supports…

Promise SX4000

I’ve been a big Promise fan since the original FastTrak (later renamed FastTrak33 to fit with the product line). At the time I had a bunch of 2 GB Western Digital hard drives that I didn’t know what to do…

2007/04/30: Backup

It’s been a few weeks since my last eWeakly, simply for the fact that I haven’t done anything computer related of interest. Last week Microsoft released the Windows Home Server Community Technology Preview (CTP).  This put a lot more fit…

2007/04/09: Tyan

The great server upgrade took place this weekend, or to be more accurate is still taking place.  I had a lot of spare parts at home and had already built the server.  As I started to remove files from the…

2007/03/26: WHS Redux

My APC UPS problems continue ( see last week for more details ) with random reboots.  I don’t believe the battery is working at all right now.  I have a brand new APC Smart UPS 1500 Rackmount in the garage,…

Promise FastTrak

When one thinks of ATA RAID, the first name that comes to mind is Promise. The first company to mass market a controller for IDE drives continues the FastTrak line from the original to the 66 and 100 models, each…