RAID

I'm asking this here since I'm interested in upgrading mostly for racing GPL and N4 and am looking for a simple answer if there is one. I notice a lot of the high end motherboards have a RAID controller built in. I think I understand what RAID is, but why would I as a gamer (who has no "mission critical" info on his hard drive) want it?

"mission critical". Hmm, hard disk crashes, you lose your OS, applications, games, game data (such as car setups), etc. It can take an awfully long time to restore things to an approximation of what you had before - I guess it all depends on your definition of mission critical. Those motherboards can also be used with a more conventional hard disk config (i.e. no redundancy), so you are not really any worse off, given that the RAID systems on those motherboards don't add more than a few dollars to the cost. Cheers Hamish "Tanstaafl" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:Wizn6.18054$[email hidden]... > I'm asking this here since I'm interested in upgrading mostly for racingGPL > and N4 and am looking for a simple answer if there is one. > > I notice a lot of the high end motherboards have a RAID controller builtin. > I think I understand what RAID is, but why would I as a gamer (who has no > "mission critical" info on his hard drive) want it? > >

I have one of these you address, the Abit KT7A RAID. I got it becuase it supports ATA100 and 233mhz FSB. The RAID stuff is just an add-on really, but the m'boards typically have other desirable high end features. I haven't decided exactly how to implement the RAID functionality yet, but theoretically they support 8 IDE devices as a result of having 2 extra IDE ports. I haven't tried to use them yet either, and to read the manual it said the RAID ports are the only ATA100 compliant, and the CMOS allows you to set RAIDATA100 as the First Boot Device, but I haven't pushed it as using the regular IDE ports having been working fine for now (Ihave an ATA66 CDROM and an ATA100 HD). The kicker is that this m'board has been hailed for its overclocking ability (done at the CMOS screen using CPU timing and multiplyer numbers), so that may be a reason more and more of them are popping up for these speed hungry guys with budgets for slower processors. I got mine because of the ability (if it is in the future) to take advantage of ATA 100 and a 233mhz FSB. Best of luck, edb Tanstaafl <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:Wizn6.18054$[email hidden]... > I'm asking this here since I'm interested in upgrading mostly for racingGPL > and N4 and am looking for a simple answer if there is one. > > I notice a lot of the high end motherboards have a RAID controller builtin. > I think I understand what RAID is, but why would I as a gamer (who has no > "mission critical" info on his hard drive) want it? > >

With a hardware RAID0 implementation (disk striping only, not for fault tolerance) you can actually use two indentical drives as ONE drive, so they can share the burden of read/write operations, i.e. one drive reads while the other writes. I have a friend that has such a RAID implementation and he says the speed gains are tremendous. Mind you, this does not provide data redundancy, so your data is not protected by virtue of RAID. I have yet to try it, but if you have the means I suggest you try it out, especially if you do full installations of your games to the hard disk. Luis "Tanstaafl" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:Wizn6.18054$[email hidden]... > I'm asking this here since I'm interested in upgrading mostly for racingGPL > and N4 and am looking for a simple answer if there is one. > > I notice a lot of the high end motherboards have a RAID controller builtin. > I think I understand what RAID is, but why would I as a gamer (who has no > "mission critical" info on his hard drive) want it? > >

I just built a system around a KT7A-RAID motherboard and used the RAID controller in a RAID 0 setup. In games like Q3A, UT, and Halflife, the levels load much faster. In N4, the tracks load in about 60% of the time normally required. Basically, RAID 0 helps with the performance of one of the biggest bottlenecks in a computer. Also, I am dual booting Win2K with Me. I installed Me first, copied my I386 directory to my Hard drive(s) and did the Win2K install from there. It was by far the absolute fastest install of Win2K I have ever seen. I was at a desktop in 20 minutes!!!! For the cost of an extra hard drive and the 25 bucks or so extra on the motherboard, in my opinion, the RAID option is the way to go. Russ, MCSE "Luis Soto" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > With a hardware RAID0 implementation (disk striping only, not for fault > tolerance) you can actually use two indentical drives as ONE drive, sothey

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> can share the burden of read/write operations, i.e. one drive reads while > the other writes. I have a friend that has such a RAID implementation and > he says the speed gains are tremendous. Mind you, this does not provide > data redundancy, so your data is not protected by virtue of RAID. I have > yet to try it, but if you have the means I suggest you try it out, > especially if you do full installations of your games to the hard disk. > > Luis > > > > "Tanstaafl" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > news:Wizn6.18054$[email hidden]... > > I'm asking this here since I'm interested in upgrading mostly for racing > GPL > > and N4 and am looking for a simple answer if there is one. > > > > I notice a lot of the high end motherboards have a RAID controller built > in. > > I think I understand what RAID is, but why would I as a gamer (who has

no > > "mission critical" info on his hard drive) want it? > > > > > >

On Thu, 01 Mar 2001 21:58:00 GMT, "edb" <[email hidden]> wrote: >I have one of these you address, the Abit KT7A RAID http://www.amdzone.com/#11 Abit Update Reported by: Chris Tom At: 7:59 AM Source: phone Well Abit just called me from Taiwan. Yep, at about 6:30am, sleepy, can't type. Anyway, they requested that I remove Alan's post with the e-mail from AMD about their KT7 series being removed from AMD's recommended list, which it has. I am supposed to receive some official update about the situation later today. Apparently it involves some changes in AMD's testing procedure. Unfortunately I can not speak from experience with their KT7, KT7 RAID, KT7A, or KT7A RAID, the boards which I assume were the potential boards removed from the AMD list, since I have been unable to get test samples of these boards. If you wish to know the status of these boards stay tuned and we will post details later, or check out our forum for peoples experience with these boards. I did test the KA7, which I did approve of.

This is pretty cryptic, Nos. Can you explain what he means? Where you privy to the post he's referring to? It's hard to believe because the KT7A has been reviewed by a lot of sites and no one has mentioned anything bad about it. Can you elaborate? "Jagg" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> On Thu, 01 Mar 2001 21:58:00 GMT, "edb" <[email hidden]> wrote: > > >I have one of these you address, the Abit KT7A RAID > > > http://www.amdzone.com/#11 > > Abit Update > Reported by: Chris Tom At: 7:59 AM Source: phone > Well Abit just called me from Taiwan. Yep, at about 6:30am, sleepy, > can't type. Anyway, they requested that I remove Alan's post with the > e-mail from AMD about their KT7 series being removed from AMD's > recommended list, which it has. I am supposed to receive some official > update about the situation later today. Apparently it involves some > changes in AMD's testing procedure. Unfortunately I can not speak from > experience with their KT7, KT7 RAID, KT7A, or KT7A RAID, the boards > which I assume were the potential boards removed from the AMD list, > since I have been unable to get test samples of these boards. If you > wish to know the status of these boards stay tuned and we will post > details later, or check out our forum for peoples experience with > these boards. I did test the KA7, which I did approve of. > >

You can connect two (or more) hard drives to the RAID for "Striping" (RAID 0), it splits the load to the two hard drives so it reads and rights very fast. This is used a lot for video editing on a PC (I have mine setup this way to edit video and a separate drive for OS and games). I don't know if it will make much difference during game play because most new drives are fast enough, but loading will be a lot faster. The other setup for RAID is "mirroring" (RAID 1) and the same data is written to two or more drives so that if one drive fails, you still have it on the other. It is not any faster this way and is mostly for businesses that want the extra safety of storing data to multiple drives. Lutrell "Tanstaafl" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:Wizn6.18054$[email hidden]... > I'm asking this here since I'm interested in upgrading mostly for racingGPL > and N4 and am looking for a simple answer if there is one. > > I notice a lot of the high end motherboards have a RAID controller builtin. > I think I understand what RAID is, but why would I as a gamer (who has no > "mission critical" info on his hard drive) want it? > >

In article <mPFn6.3100$[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says... > It is not any faster this way and is mostly for businesses > that want the extra safety of storing data to multiple drives. Depends on who you speak to though. I know not of the RAID controller embedded on these mainboards, but more expensive RAID solutions will decide which drives heads are nearer the location of the data on the drive and pull it from there. Seek time is the real killer with drives. Write operations are no faster, but read operations can be sped up enough to be noticeable. But of course you're halving the capacity running RAID 1, not a solution that most home machines opt for. Cheers, Rod.

On Thu, 1 Mar 2001 20:38:20 -0800, "Tim Elhajj" <[email hidden]> wrote: >This is pretty cryptic, Nos. Can you explain what he means? Where you privy >to the post he's referring to? It's hard to believe because the KT7A has >been reviewed by a lot of sites and no one has mentioned anything bad about >it. Can you elaborate? Sshhh...it's Jag, not Nos. Go to the link I posted. http://www.amdzone.com/#11 I'm just passing along information that I came across for anyone considering purchasing an Abit mb for use with an AMD cpu. If you go to AMD's certified mb site you will indeed see there are no Abit mb's listed. I don't even have an AMD cpu. It's probably something minor too, just passing along the info.

"Jagg" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > Go to the link I posted. http://www.amdzone.com/#11 > I'm just passing along information that I came across for anyone > considering purchasing an Abit mb for use with an AMD cpu. That would be me. <g> Seriously, I did my research and didn't hear a hint about any of this until the order was placed. I'm not worried about it, but I would like more informatoin and the site you mentoin above isn't that informative. > If you go to AMD's certified mb site you will indeed see there are no I looked for this at amd.com but didn't find it. Do you have the URL handy? > Abit mb's listed. I don't even have an AMD cpu. > It's probably something minor too, just passing along the info. Thanks for the info, Jagg. I just wonder what it means.

RAID offers increases in speed and redundancy. There are "basically" 3 configurations you might consider using for GAMING. You can have an ATA RAID (Promise Technologies IDE Raid), or you can have the more expensive but higher performing SCSI RAID. Onboard RAID is usually Promise's IDE config. so we'll go into that for now: 1) RAID 0 (known as striping) - This allows "multiple disk spanning" In other words... you can combine 2 HDD to act as one, with the advantages of having 2 mechanical devides doing different thing simultaneously. It's a sort-of copy of the traditional SCSI architecture which allows you to read/write simultaneously with a single drive (big performance increases). However, IDE RAID achieves this by juggling responsibilities (read/write) between the two drives, and synchronizing. requirements: 2 IDE HDD (same size) 2) RAID 1 (known as mirroring). - This simply allows for a "real-time backup" onto another HDD. Useful for redundancy, but not much good for performance (load times, etc.). requirements: 2 IDE HDD (same size) 3) RAID 10 (first mirrored, then striped) - This is the best, but most expensive solution. You get instant redundancy by mirroring, but you add 2 more HDD, and span the remaining two to the mirrors. Which the result is higher performance, and even if 1 HDD fails, you still have that striping on the other mirror. Which is ultimate peace of mind. It is the best of both worlds. requirements: 4 IDE HDD (same size) RAID is a nice way to go if it's there, but SCSI as a whole is better performing (1 disk is as efficient/fast as 2 IDE HDD in IDE RAID). You add SCSI RAID to the equation, you'll see another increase in performance/redundancy, since you can "hotswap them" (just rip out the broken HDD, replace it, reboot, and it'll auto-restore in the background while your OS is running). Although, SCSI is again more expensive as a whole. That's my 2 cents, hope I helped a bit. Cheers, Schumi "Tanstaafl" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:Wizn6.18054$[email hidden]... > I'm asking this here since I'm interested in upgrading mostly for racingGPL > and N4 and am looking for a simple answer if there is one. > > I notice a lot of the high end motherboards have a RAID controller builtin. > I think I understand what RAID is, but why would I as a gamer (who has no > "mission critical" info on his hard drive) want it? > >

RAID offers increases in speed and redundancy. There are "basically" 3 configurations you might consider using for ***. You can have an ATA RAID (Promise Technologies IDE Raid), or you can have the more expensive but higher performing SCSI RAID. Onboard RAID is usually Promise's IDE config. so we'll go into that for now: 1) RAID 0 (known as striping) - This allows "multiple disk spanning" In other words... you can combine 2 HDD to act as one, with the advantages of having 2 mechanical devides doing different thing simultaneously. It's a sort-of copy of the traditional SCSI architecture which allows you to read/write simultaneously with a single drive (big performance increases). However, IDE RAID achieves this by juggling responsibilities (read/write) between the two drives, and synchronizing. requirements: 2 IDE HDD (same size) 2) RAID 1 (known as mirroring). - This simply allows for a "real-time backup" onto another HDD. Useful for redundancy, but not much good for performance (load times, etc.). requirements: 2 IDE HDD (same size) 3) RAID 10 (first mirrored, then striped) - This is the best, but most expensive solution. You get instant redundancy by mirroring, but you add 2 more HDD, and span the remaining two to the mirrors. Which the result is higher performance, and even if 1 HDD fails, you still have that striping on the other mirror. Which is ultimate peace of mind. It is the best of both worlds. requirements: 4 IDE HDD (same size) RAID is a nice way to go if it's there, but SCSI as a whole is better performing (1 disk is as efficient/fast as 2 IDE HDD in IDE RAID). You add SCSI RAID to the equation, you'll see another increase in performance/redundancy, since you can "hotswap them" (just rip out the broken HDD, replace it, reboot, and it'll auto-restore in the background while your OS is running). Although, SCSI is again more expensive as a whole. That's my 2 cents, hope I helped a bit. Cheers, Schumi

In article <[email hidden]>, "Jason \"Schumi\" Murray" <[email hidden]> says... > You add SCSI RAID to the equation, you'll see another increase in > performance/redundancy, since you can "hotswap them" (just rip out the > broken HDD, replace it, reboot, and it'll auto-restore in the background > while your OS is running). Although, SCSI is again more expensive as a > whole. Depends wholly on the controller and drives attached. Just because it's SCSI, doesn't mean it's hotswappable. But I can't understand your definition of hotswap if you're suggesting that the machine needs to be rebooted? Provided the drive can be hotswapped (and a redundant RAID level is used), the controller will start rebuilding the drive without the neccessity of rebooting the machine, transparently to the OS (the controller may send a trap error to the OS to inform the operator of a status change of the drive - depending on the controller). Cheers, Rod.

There's that darned IDE RAID/SCSI RAID mixup in my explanation again. They are so different, yet so alike in use, that I get mixed up during explanation. You are absolutely right about hotswapable SCSI RAID not requiring a reboot, and again correct on the "hot-swapable" portion too regarding Controller Card compliance. However, I only use Mylex controllers, which hot-swap is basically a standard feature :) Guess after re-reading my comments, I plugged SCSI a bit harder than requested, when the topic was IDE RAID. My apologies if I confused a few, and thanks Rod for the correction. Cheers, Schumi "Rod Prince" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:MPG.150f35af6a14c0219897f5@news-server...

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> In article <[email hidden]>, "Jason \"Schumi\" Murray" > <[email hidden]> says... > > > You add SCSI RAID to the equation, you'll see another increase in > > performance/redundancy, since you can "hotswap them" (just rip out the > > broken HDD, replace it, reboot, and it'll auto-restore in the background > > while your OS is running). Although, SCSI is again more expensive as a > > whole. > > Depends wholly on the controller and drives attached. Just because it's > SCSI, doesn't mean it's hotswappable. > > But I can't understand your definition of hotswap if you're suggesting > that the machine needs to be rebooted? > > Provided the drive can be hotswapped (and a redundant RAID level is > used), the controller will start rebuilding the drive without the > neccessity of rebooting the machine, transparently to the OS (the > controller may send a trap error to the OS to inform the operator of a > status change of the drive - depending on the controller). > > Cheers, > Rod.

There's that darned IDE RAID/SCSI RAID mixup in my explanation again. They are so different, yet so alike in use, that I get mixed up during explanation. You are absolutely right about hotswapable SCSI RAID not requiring a reboot, and again correct on the "hot-swapable" portion too regarding Controller Card compliance. However, I only use Mylex controllers, which hot-swap is basically a standard feature :) Guess after re-reading my comments, I plugged SCSI a bit harder than requested, when the topic was IDE RAID. My apologies if I confused a few, and thanks Rod for the correction. Cheers, Schumi

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> > You add SCSI RAID to the equation, you'll see another increase in > > performance/redundancy, since you can "hotswap them" (just rip out the > > broken HDD, replace it, reboot, and it'll auto-restore in the background > > while your OS is running). Although, SCSI is again more expensive as a > > whole. > Depends wholly on the controller and drives attached. Just because it's > SCSI, doesn't mean it's hotswappable. > But I can't understand your definition of hotswap if you're suggesting > that the machine needs to be rebooted? > Provided the drive can be hotswapped (and a redundant RAID level is > used), the controller will start rebuilding the drive without the > neccessity of rebooting the machine, transparently to the OS (the > controller may send a trap error to the OS to inform the operator of a > status change of the drive - depending on the controller). > Cheers, > Rod.

In article <[email hidden]>, "Jason \"Schumi\" Murray" <[email hidden]> says... > However, I only use Mylex controllers, which hot-swap is > basically a standard feature :) Yuk. Still being required to repair Digital Servers with the 3 channel Mylex controllers, I sympathise. ;) Had too many cases where the failed drive on a BA356 wasn't neccessarily the faulty drive running on a Mylex. Just last week had a replacement drive come up as a standby when it was replaced, used daccf to clear and redo the config and it just blew away everything. Something that's 'not meant to happen' ;/ But my experience with the Mylex stopped with the premature death of the Prioris Server. But give me a SmartArray over a Mylex anyday! ;) Cheers, Rod.

:) Well this conversation is just too cozy. Let's heat it up a bit shall we Rod? I say FREEBSD is King... are you a Linux Lover? Just kidding of course. Haven't had any of the experiences you mentioned on my configs. but I guess I've been lucky. In fact, I've only really experienced a strange Maxtor HDD compatibility problem on an Adaptec 3200S SCSI RAID controller. Firmware update fixed that, but that's about it (fingas crossed). Cheers, Schumi "Rod Prince" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:MPG.150f5efd31bd8b1a9897f6@news-server...

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> In article <[email hidden]>, "Jason \"Schumi\" Murray" > <[email hidden]> says... > > > However, I only use Mylex controllers, which hot-swap is > > basically a standard feature :) > > Yuk. Still being required to repair Digital Servers with > the 3 channel Mylex controllers, I sympathise. ;) > > Had too many cases where the failed drive on a BA356 > wasn't neccessarily the faulty drive running on a Mylex. Just > last week had a replacement drive come up as a standby when > it was replaced, used daccf to clear and redo the config > and it just blew away everything. Something that's 'not meant > to happen' ;/ > > But my experience with the Mylex stopped with the premature > death of the Prioris Server. > > But give me a SmartArray over a Mylex anyday! ;) > > Cheers, > Rod.

:) Well this conversation is just too cozy. Let's heat it up a bit shall we Rod? I say FREEBSD is King... are you a Linux Lover? Just kidding of course. Haven't had any of the experiences you mentioned on my configs. but I guess I've been lucky. In fact, I've only really experienced a strange Maxtor HDD compatibility problem on an Adaptec 3200S SCSI RAID controller. Firmware update fixed that, but that's about it (fingas crossed). Cheers, Schumi

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> > However, I only use Mylex controllers, which hot-swap is > > basically a standard feature :) > Yuk. Still being required to repair Digital Servers with > the 3 channel Mylex controllers, I sympathise. ;) > Had too many cases where the failed drive on a BA356 > wasn't neccessarily the faulty drive running on a Mylex. Just > last week had a replacement drive come up as a standby when > it was replaced, used daccf to clear and redo the config > and it just blew away everything. Something that's 'not meant > to happen' ;/ > But my experience with the Mylex stopped with the premature > death of the Prioris Server. > But give me a SmartArray over a Mylex anyday! ;) > Cheers, > Rod.

As you know RAID 0 is stripping and can decrease your loading time for games. These days , games are VERY big and memory intense. LOADING TIMES is one of my biggest compliant and I really look forward to getting RAID for this purpose !! Hamish Strong <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:Pxzn6.1388$[email hidden]... > "mission critical". Hmm, hard disk crashes, you lose your OS,applications, > games, game data (such as car setups), etc. It can take an awfully longtime > to restore things to an approximation of what you had before - I guess it > all depends on your definition of mission critical. > > Those motherboards can also be used with a more conventional hard disk > config (i.e. no redundancy), so you are not really any worse off, giventhat > the RAID systems on those motherboards don't add more than a few dollarsto

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> the cost. > > Cheers > Hamish > > > "Tanstaafl" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > news:Wizn6.18054$[email hidden]... > > I'm asking this here since I'm interested in upgrading mostly for racing > GPL > > and N4 and am looking for a simple answer if there is one. > > > > I notice a lot of the high end motherboards have a RAID controller built > in. > > I think I understand what RAID is, but why would I as a gamer (who has

no > > "mission critical" info on his hard drive) want it? > > > > > >

JOHN METCOW <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > As you know > RAID 0 is stripping and can decrease your loading time > for games. John, the word is striping. A lot of companies misspelled the word for some reason or another. It relates to the input of information onto multiple hard disks concurrently. As a result, when the computer seeks information from the hard drives, it accesses information from multiple hard drives simultaneously. I doubt however, that your actual game play would improve the performance as a result, as most games, once loaded have a very low requirement for hard disk access

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> > These days , games are VERY big and memory intense. > LOADING TIMES is one of my biggest compliant > and I really look forward to getting RAID for this purpose !! > > > Hamish Strong <[email hidden]> wrote in

message > news:Pxzn6.1388$[email hidden]... > > "mission critical". Hmm, hard disk crashes, you lose your OS, > applications, > > games, game data (such as car setups), etc. It can take an awfully long > time > > to restore things to an approximation of what you had before - I guessit

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> > all depends on your definition of mission critical. > > > > Those motherboards can also be used with a more conventional hard disk > > config (i.e. no redundancy), so you are not really any worse off, given > that > > the RAID systems on those motherboards don't add more than a few dollars > to > > the cost. > > > > Cheers > > Hamish > > > > > > "Tanstaafl" <[email hidden]> wrote in message > > news:Wizn6.18054$[email hidden]... > > > I'm asking this here since I'm interested in upgrading mostly for

racing > > GPL > > > and N4 and am looking for a simple answer if there is one. > > > > > > I notice a lot of the high end motherboards have a RAID controllerbuilt

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> > in. > > > I think I understand what RAID is, but why would I as a gamer (who has > no > > > "mission critical" info on his hard drive) want it? > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >