Promise SX4000 RAID 0, 1, 3 & 5

[Dr Mordrid]

I've been testing the SX4000 for a while and it's a very nice hardware RAID 5 card. It can also do RAID levels 0, 1 and 3.

There is driver support for WinNT4, Win2K and WinXP. Its support of I2O prevents it from working in Win9x/ME.

Promises blurb;

"FastTrak SX4000 satisfies the increasing demands of users and system builders seeking fast, dependable and affordable storage. This 4-channel host adapter uses your choice of Ultra ATA drives for performance, capacity, and value. 66 MHz PCI bus support, up to 256 MB cache memory, and rapid RAID 5 parity calculations assure maximum data transfers."

RAID 5 is a redundent array which interleaves parity information across all drives in the array.

RAID 3 is a redundent array which uses a single party drive.

As noted this is both a PCI/33 and PCI/66 card, so it's all ready for those upcoming 64 bit systems. You use your own PC100 for the cache, so now there is something to use those old memory sticks in

The SX4000 MSRP's at $199, but should street at about $165-$175 or so.



Yes, it's a full sized card. 10 inches from stem to stern and 4.25 inches from the bottom of the edge card connector to the top of the card. Not quite as big as the SuperTrak100, but still pretty large

Dr. Mordrid

[BuddMan]

Now all we need is a SATA card to match.

[Marshmallowman]

whoa yeah, I want RAID 3..the party drive

[R.Carter]

One question, does it support ECC PC100 RAM? I wouldn't want to use a RAID without ECC memory that acutally uses the ECC functionality of the memory.

[the maddman]

Any chance of testing it's I20 support under linux? I've got a dual processor server that would fit nicely in.

[Taz]

Re: Promise SX4000 RAID 0, 1, 3 & 5

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
The SX4000 MSRP's at $199, but should street at about $165-$175 or so.

Damn that's cheap all the other RAID 5 capable IDE cards are around twice that.

[Dr Mordrid]

ECC or non-ECC memory can be used for the cache. It should be unbuffered 168 pin PC-100 or higher SDRAM.

I also want to correct a typo I made in the specs. It supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5...not RAID 3. I was thinking of my SuperTrak100's specs. Sorry.

As for Linux; Promise has supported Linux on some its IDE RAID's in the past, so it's probably not impossible.

Also, and this was a suprise to me: they have lowered the MSRP to $169 USD...so the street prices might well be even more reasonable.

Here's the press release;

http://www.promise.com/company/press_news_detail_eng.asp?press_id=41

Dr. Mordrid

[Taz]

Now the long wait for them to become available in the UK

Gives me time to save my pennies though

[JerryH]

Weeeeeeeee!!!!!!

Thanks for teaser, Doc. I'm sure you would've mentioned this (and forgive my redundancy), but I must ask and must know...

do you have even the slightest inkling of a release date?

Also, while being touted as true hardware RAID, doesn't that automatically imply that the OS should'nt matter (save for OS-dependent monitor/maintenance programs)? I thought everything required to setup and maintain the RAID would/shoudl be handled through its BIOs.

[KeiFront]

According the specifications:

Operating System Support: Windows XP/2000/NT; RedHat Linux 7.2 / 7.3; TurboLinux Server 6.5 / Workstation 7.0; SuSE Linux 7.3 / 8.0

So I guess Linux will be supported

http://www.promise.com/product/subsys_detail_eng.asp?pid=94&fid=2

[Dr Mordrid]

It's already been released. Several online retailers have it in their catalogs and it's shipping.

It still needs OS hooks and to open the SCSI miniport. And it does have monitoring etc. so it needs some code there to interface with the PAM utility.

One more thing for the RAID-heads out there: the RAID5 XOR is done in hardware as well. Fast.....

Datasheet

Didn't notice the Linux support and my disk only had NT/2K/XP so....glad to be wrong

Can you imagine this thing with four of those new 200 gig HDD's? Sheesh.....

Dr. Mordrid

[Wombat]

Promise's Linux support is weird. It's only for Redhat, and I'm having a bitch of a time trying to get things working with my RAID as the only HD. Promise would really rather have a boot drive in there on another controller (can't seem to make a boot floppy either). It's pretty frustrating.

[JerryH]

It's already been released. Several online retailers have it in their cat

Hahaha...maybe they saw my other post about that "inexpensive hardware raid" from a competitor and decided to hurry things up a bit. ah heck, who am I kidding?

after a quick dig on the internet, PCstop has the lowest price running, right at $163.41 (not in stock)

[Dr Mordrid]

Probably waiting for UPS :P

SX4000 supports RedHat Linux 7.2 / 7.3; TurboLinux Server 6.5 / Workstation 7.0; SuSE Linux 7.3 / 8.0.

Dr. Mordrid