RAID controller $24 + shipping

[chizow]

The fans are made by Adda, not one of the most known out there, but decent I suppose. I'm thinking they push 29-30CFM max, but probably less, more in the range of 25-27CFM on high. Ball bearings are better than sleeve bearings, dual bearings are better than single, and liquid is supposedly the best (found on Panaflos). Its not that the Sunon are any quieter, they push as much air on L2 than the Adda's do on L3, maybe even more. I think they are also quieter, but it might also be b/c I've adjusted to their sound (had em about a year).

You're gonna have some fun tomorrow, this case is a joy to play around with. Thanks for the info on the Koutech, I may have to give it a shot. I've been getting a few lock-ups here and there and the HDD hangs. I don't think its necessarily a RAID card problem, its a video overlay issue between my Rad 9700pro and my TV tuner....its locking up the PCI bus, but it won't hurt to try.

Chiz

 

[drewdogg808]

for those who have this card, did you guys get a IO-PIR133 or did you get a IOFLEX-PIR133, like the description says? i just got mine today from neutron, and it's the IO-PIR133....it looks like just an ata133 controller, but some of the description says "optional raid". did i get screwed? the card itself is black, with one ide blue and one white.

 

[Samus]

i have one of these with a wd 300bb 60gb stripe (30gbx2)

...and it'd work fine if one of the drives wouldn't just decide to power down sometimes. im pretty sure its warranty time for it.

 

[kevman]

Originally posted by: Samus
i have one of these with a wd 300bb 60gb stripe (30gbx2)

...and it'd work fine if one of the drives wouldn't just decide to power down sometimes. im pretty sure its warranty time for it.

what do you think is an optimal stripe size? also can you change the stripe size after you've set it or will it destroy the data on the drives?

Kevin

 

[LostHiWay]

Originally posted by: drewdogg808
for those who have this card, did you guys get a IO-PIR133 or did you get a IOFLEX-PIR133, like the description says? i just got mine today from neutron, and it's the IO-PIR133....it looks like just an ata133 controller, but some of the description says "optional raid". did i get screwed? the card itself is black, with one ide blue and one white.

You got the a cheaper version of the card. Newegg has both cards.

This is the one you got ($27 shipped)
Image of it

The one you should have got..( $33 shipped)
Image

 

[soltrain]

what do you think is an optimal stripe size? also can you change the stripe size after you've set it or will it destroy the data on the drives?

I second that question...

I think that the manual for card is the same as the manual for the plain 133 controller. So I don't believe that you were 'screwed', you can always plug it in and try it out..

 

[TerryMathews]

Originally posted by: kevman
[\what do you think is an optimal stripe size? also can you change the stripe size after you've set it or will it destroy the data on the drives?

Kevin

16KB is the generally accepted optimal size.

You can't (usually) change the stripe block size after creating the array without destroying all of the data on the array in the process. Changing the stripe block size is akain to changing the partition layout using fdisk.

Also, I just wanted to point out that while the specs on this card indicate that it is a PCI66 compatible card, it appears to be 5v only, which makes it incompatible with all AthlonMP systems based on the 760MPX chipset. That eliminates the most prevalent and cheapest PCI66 boards on the market.

OTOH, the Promise card (TX seires) are 3.3v PCI cards, so they will work in the 64/66 slots of the AthlonMP boards.

 

[drewdogg808]

Originally posted by: LostHiWay

Originally posted by: drewdogg808
for those who have this card, did you guys get a IO-PIR133 or did you get a IOFLEX-PIR133, like the description says? i just got mine today from neutron, and it's the IO-PIR133....it looks like just an ata133 controller, but some of the description says "optional raid". did i get screwed? the card itself is black, with one ide blue and one white.

You got the a cheaper version of the card. Newegg has both cards.

This is the one you got ($27 shipped)
Image of it

The one you should have got..( $33 shipped)
Image

thats what i figured. i just didn't know if everyone else who ordered it from neutron got the cheaper version or not.
thanks though.

 

[soltrain]

You got the a cheaper version of the card. Newegg has both cards.

Woah. Now that I see the pictures, the cheaper version is the one that I got also..
What's the difference? I'm using RAID 0 on my card, and (i thought) it was fine..

 

[drewdogg808]

Originally posted by: soltrain

You got the a cheaper version of the card. Newegg has both cards.

Woah. Now that I see the pictures, the cheaper version is the one that I got also..
What's the difference? I'm using RAID 0 on my card, and (i thought) it was fine..

great, so neutron is advertising the better model and shipping the cheaper one? i could've gotten it for cheaper at newegg then. :|

 

[mechBgon]

I was a little surprised at the fellow proposing that a 4-drive RAID0 beats SCSI "hands down." RAID can't make slow-seeking IDE drives seek faster. Which is faster, a top-fuel dragster or a Formula1? The dragster, by far. Which one's faster around a road course, though? Hmm... the F1. Why? Because it can corner, not just sprint. Anyone with the money for a four-drive RAID0 and controller owes it to himself to try a Cheetah 15k.3 first. Sub-4ms seeks, 0.1ms track-to-track, 75Mb/sec on the straightaways...

Yeah yeah, so it won't hold 200Mb of stuff you downloaded from the Internet. But if you DL that much stuff, you sure don't want to be buying 4 tickets to the Data-Loss Russian Roulette known as RAID0 or you'll be DL'ing it again. Eh?

 

[drewdogg808]

did everyone else get the cheaper version from neutron?

 

[Exelion]

I got the cheaper one too. Is it worth sending back to get the one they advertised?

 

[drewdogg808]

Originally posted by: Exelion
I got the cheaper one too. Is it worth sending back to get the one they advertised?

i don't know, but it's not good that they're advertising one thing and sending something else. we could've gotten it at newegg then for $27 shipped if that was the case. i'm gonna send them an email and see what they say. how is the performance one the one you got? any atto or hdtach or sandra scores?

edit: of course they have a little product description disclaimer saying they're not responsible if their product description is not "accurate, complete, or current".

but the bigger thing is that the cheaper version only has a 1 year warrany instead of 5, and NO end user support according to newegg. i can't find the cheaper model on koutech's website either. did u guys get any updated drivers for this version, or does the IOFLEX-PIR133 drivers work with it?

 

[tran1981]

Is this card the same as the one on compgeeks?

Raid Card

 

[frogster220]

do your drives get re-formated when you raid? i have 2 drives of equal size but i don't have an easy way to back them up.

 

[fastman]

Yes, you will loose all info on them.

 

[Sesopedalian]

Stripe size is a good question. There is no "fastest" stripe size, because there are so many file sizes being accessed, that a larger or smaller stripe size with different file sizes will more or less average out. Take the default, if there is one. About failure - Windows itself will screw itself up before your HDD's fail, so back up critical stuff no more or no less than usual. Remember, the hardware failure is not because of RAID itself, but just because you are running more drives. One thing I didn't see mentioned here as a benefit of a RAID card, is that it frees up two primary IDE channels, so you can put your CDRW and DVD both as masters on different IDE connections, or another HDD on a seperate channel acting as a backup for critical data from the RAID. Of course, the best backups would reside on another computer entirely, or another building, city, state, country, or as recently proposed - the moon.

 

[frogster220]

should you use your "raid drive" as your boot and OS drive?

 

[kevman]

Originally posted by: Sesopedalian
Stripe size is a good question. There is no "fastest" stripe size, because there are so many file sizes being accessed, that a larger or smaller stripe size with different file sizes will more or less average out. Take the default, if there is one. About failure - Windows itself will screw itself up before your HDD's fail, so back up critical stuff no more or no less than usual. Remember, the hardware failure is not because of RAID itself, but just because you are running more drives. One thing I didn't see mentioned here as a benefit of a RAID card, is that it frees up two primary IDE channels, so you can put your CDRW and DVD both as masters on different IDE connections, or another HDD on a seperate channel acting as a backup for critical data from the RAID. Of course, the best backups would reside on another computer entirely, or another building, city, state, country, or as recently proposed - the moon.

Well said. I put all my documents and such on a different Non-raid drive.so if the raid goes bad I at least I have my term papers and all.

On a side note, my company is looking to move backup site beyond

 

[Brown Sugah]

I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but I'll say it anyway.

This is software RAID, which can be easily detected by the lack of an onboard processor and cache. It is hardware doing the RAID, but the hardware is simply using software on an EEPROM. Hardware RAID controllers are much more expensive, there was one mentioned earlier in this thread and Adaptec also makes one.

Software raid is fine for raid 0/1 applications, as long as you don't need to calculate parity, but you would see a substantial improvement with the introduction of a reasonable size cache 64MB~1GB

 

[isaacmacdonald]

How ever raid 1 in mirroring that copies that same date on both hard drives at the same time. Thant way you have a backup. But this does not speed anything up.

not entirely true. raid 1 will (obviously) not increase the write speed, but it WILL improve read performance substantially.

 

[Sesopedalian]

Originally posted by: Brown Sugah
I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but I'll say it anyway.

This is software RAID, which can be easily detected by the lack of an onboard processor and cache. It is hardware doing the RAID, but the hardware is simply using software on an EEPROM. Hardware RAID controllers are much more expensive, there was one mentioned earlier in this thread and Adaptec also makes one.

Software raid is fine for raid 0/1 applications, as long as you don't need to calculate parity, but you would see a substantial improvement with the introduction of a reasonable size cache 64MB~1GB

Chu had a good explaination of this about 50 posts up.

 

[ozone13]

I can't believe this thread is still alive

I still have this Koutech raid card and its working perfectly fine!

 

[Cubexco]

Just thought someone might be interested in the new firmware, which adds 2 new RAID levels -
RAID 1/0 and RAID 5.