RT2000 Video Raid Uh,...

[Stewman]

Jeepers,..check this out (ignore my use of "jeepers" please,...)

Anywayz I'm getting the medea video raid (4 drive/67 gig) and I relaized that video raids are handled differently according to the OS. On NT and 2000 it can be done via hardware, but on 95/98 it's done in software. Is there a sigificant performance hit between these two? Would I be better going with hardware raid (it would mean using an ultra raid adapatec card in Win2000) or 98 (using the 2940UW with software raiding)?

[Rick6612]

Hi Stewman,

Why not just save a huge pile of money and get a Promise Fast Trak and four ~20GB, 7200 RPM UDMA 66 drives?

Rick

[DrMordrid]

Stewman,

You have it backwards. NT4 and Win2000 are the ones with software RAID support. Win9x is the one that requires hardware.

That said hardware RAID is more stable IMHO. I've had software RAID's get unstable then crash & burn with no warning in NT4 while my Fasttraks have been rock solid with no problems at all once set up.

My oldest Fasttrak setup has been running 18/6 for well over a year. No lost files. No fragmentation. No nothing except for working day in and day out.

Give me the Fasttraks in ANY OS.

Dr. Mordrid

[Stewman]

Thanks for the info DrMordrid

Hmmm, I spoke to Adaptec and they said NT had the hardware raid,..in anycase, the whole point of using their 131U2 card (which is NT/2000 only) is that it supports any scsi cable length - unlike the older scsi cards that required device cables be no longer than like, 8 feet.

Rick:

As for the saving money and going with UDMA drives; I need portability, a common standard, and upto 36mb per sec capture rate from start to finsh. Not sure if the fast tracks do that, the medea drives can.

-Stew

[DrMordrid]

You can put a hardware RAID on an NT4 machine but NT4 has the software RAID support as part of the OS. Win9x doesn't.

As for 36 mb/s I'd say the Fasttrak66 can likely do it.

One of my systems is pulling ~32 mb/s with just two 18g 7,200rpm IBM ATA66's on a Fasttrak66. One or two more drives should easily put it over 36 mb/s.

Also the new Maxtor DiamondMax Plus ATA66's are pulling ~21 mb/s as single drives. Putting 2-3 of them on a Fasttrak66 should be interesing.

Just make sure you stay within the FT array size limit for your OS: 64 gigs for Win9x, 128 gigs for NT4.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 06 January 2000).]

[Stewman]

Dr Mordrid:

Thanks man, your info definitely helped. I've looked into it and everything should be okay under windows 98.

As for your drive suggestions, I chose the medea drives because they can sustain 36mb a sec trasnsfer rates over the *entire* storage volume (zone stripe technology).

Regards,
Stew

[Elie]

Doc, I thought it was a bios limitation where the fast track can only support a 64g raid regardless of the OS, and I'm talking FT 33.

That's cool if it supports 128g under NT cause you can imaging the possibilities when Win2K becomes available

Cheers,
Elie

[DrMordrid]

Using a drive test program I can't reveal (G) my Fasttraks show no more than a 3-4% change in capture rate across the array. Very consistant.

Elie: the limit is 128g for NT4 and 64g for Win9x. This is an OS issue with the Promise BIOS.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 06 January 2000).]

[Rick6612]

Hi Stew,

Just out of curiosity, what are you going to be doing that requires a 36 MB/sec capture rate? Even uncompressed RGB doesn't get quite that high, does it?

Rick