New Pulsar Base System - Questions

rebornonline · Post by **rebornonline** » Wed May 30, 2007 2:33 am

I'm in the fortuante sitution to be able to get a Dell GX280 for a bargain price (well, nothing!)

It's got the Intel 915 chipset, HT Processor, SATA but no RAID.

Q1) I would like to get a PCI RAID card for it, to run RAID1 (Mirroring) on my audio drive. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Q2) Secondly, I've seen a few mentions of disabling HyperThreading (HT). Is this really necessary? Seems a shame to loose this extra CPU power.

All advise appreciated!

Griff
www.rebornonline.com

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Wed May 30, 2007 6:48 am

I guess the the raid is supposed to increase safety in a convenient way...
well, still 95% of all 'errors' with data loss are eventually user based - at some point in time simply the wrong decision was made

A backup/disk imaging tool is probably more efficient in that context.

If you're concerned about disk failure - and imho you (and everyone else) have good reasons to be, consider the following:

Production flaws are usually related to a series of drives - if you order 2 or more, they're likely to have been manufactured shortly one after the other.
I's not unusual that if one drive fails, several others are about to follow within the next couple of days (according to experiences with storage arrays - though not my own).

Drives only have a limited 'on-the-shelf-capability'. A 'new old stock' without proper sealing is a complete no-go. Even sealed 4-5 years is supposed to be the maximum.

Hyperthreading is a marketing buzzword.
If someone is able to squeeze a 15% performance increase out of one specific CPU task (due to HT) then he may consider himself lucky.
On the other hand it's not a problem at all to replace an arbitrary piece of software with an alternative that may achieve (say) 50-600% more performance because it's better coded...
... well there is one problem, though - how to find that piece of code ?

cheers, Tom

rebornonline · Post by **rebornonline** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 5:34 am

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

Guess I'll not worry about Hyperthreading.

As for RAID : While I appreciate your opinions on RAID, I'm just really asking if anyone out there can recommend a RAID card?

Or at least, if there's any RAID chipsets to avoid?

Thanks

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 6:59 am

rebornonline wrote: As for RAID : While I appreciate your opinions on RAID, I'm just really asking if anyone out there can recommend a RAID card?

Or at least, if there's any RAID chipsets to avoid?

1) I personally use a 3Ware 9500 sata card. there are also 9xxx series that have 2 ports, which should be sufficient for setting up a system mirror.
afaik the icp vortex series is a good choice, too.

2) avoid cards that have no hardware raid engine on board and do raid with the help of the driver only, for it uses the main cpu for everything. the overall performance is mostly expected to be much less than with hardware raid. I also doubt that one of those solutions has a monitoring and maintenance software.

I agree with tom that faulty drives from the same production line happen to fail within a short interval, if you're unlucky. statistically your data has, nevertheless, a better chance to survive on a raid volume since the possibility of simultaneous failure of 2 disks is a bit more unlikely than the failure of a single drive only.

but expect hardware raid to be expensive. if you want to have the flexibility to ad drives later, it would be wise to take a model with a higher port count, which increases, of course the initial costs even further...

-greetings, markus-

rebornonline · Post by **rebornonline** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 7:58 am

Thanks kylie, that helps alot.

I have a 160Gb Seagate SATA drive, and will be using a Western Digi 160Gb alongside it in the array.

So different brands, different batches

As long as it's contacntly backing up my files should be good.

Plus, the P4 2.8 CPU will be *slightly* quicker than my P3 800

So I'm sure even if I go with a semi hard solution, will be better than I am at the moment.

Appreciate the advice. If anyone else has recommendations I will be keeping an eyeon the thread

rebornonline · Post by **rebornonline** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:36 am

The 3ware ones are well out of my budget.

But I think I might try this little bugger

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductI ... tID=225506

100 Percent Hardware RAID Engine

64Mb On-Board Cache

64-bit Processing with L2 Drive Cache

NICE !!!

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 9:31 am

rebornonline wrote:...
As long as it's contacntly backing up my files should be good...

it's also backing up your (decision-)errors or whatever you messed unintentionally...

regarding hardware controllers:
if they apply a specific driver to the disk, then the latter may not be accessible from a 'standard' controller anymore.

cheers, Tom

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 11:07 am

astroman wrote:
rebornonline wrote:...
As long as it's contacntly backing up my files should be good...
it's also backing up your (decision-)errors or whatever you messed unintentionally...

as with a single drive

real backup would go alot further. but that would be OT...

astroman wrote: regarding hardware controllers:
if they apply a specific driver to the disk, then the latter may not be accessible from a 'standard' controller anymore.

we recently booted off a drive that was formerly part of a mirror on a 3ware card, and we used the onboard sata controller (afair that particular machine was equipped with an intel chipset).

so it can work if properly implemented.

-greetings, markus-

Post by **garyb** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 2:12 pm

i've NEVER had a drive issue where i wish i would have had a mirror. raid is just wasteful. in the old days you had tape, which was WAY more likely to get damaged, lost or erased and somehow people lived. unless your music is worth milllions, i can't see worrying about it. in the one in a million chance that something gets lost, deal with it, life is messy sometimes. having a mirrored drive assures you of nothing. the whole array can fail.

just use top quality drives and replace them after a couple to a few years....it's just my opinion, but i think the money could be more happily spent somewhere else.

if you must have a pci raid card, i suggest a pci-e card instead to keep the raid on a seperate bus from the audio.

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 10:36 am

well, gary, you're free to decide what to do with your data. if he wants raid (and please don't mix that with backup), then he should get that.
and it was only there to make him feel less uneasy...

you could, btw, spend lots of money happily elsewhere if you got rid of all your computer equipment

-greetings, markus-

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 11:29 am

kylie wrote:
astroman wrote:
rebornonline wrote:...
As long as it's contacntly backing up my files should be good...
it's also backing up your (decision-)errors or whatever you messed unintentionally...
as with a single drive

in my estimation you're safer if you have to be aware from time to time about what to backup - instead of simply assuming '... my machine already did that...' and just forget about it

Admittedly, the latter is tempting (and convenient)... humans are lazy by nature, cats are lazy by nature, apparently nature is lazy by nature anyway...

actually he's talking about raid only in 'backup context', but of course it's his cash, his data and his very own decision - the points are just to complete the picture.

cheers, Tom

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 11:56 am

astroman wrote: actually he's talking about raid only in 'backup context', but of course it's his cash, his data and his very own decision - the points are just to complete the picture.

well, should that be the only reason, you're right. an external usb disk where data is sent to periodically would do the job probably better, and cheaper too, even if he backed up the backup to another disk...

I personally use hw raid for continuous work and do backup additionally to external resources. well, and maybe a certain affinity to computer hardware plays a role in that, too

-greetings, markus-

Post by **garyb** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 1:46 pm

hold up, don't misunderstand me. i express my opinion, but i don't see a problem with using raid if that's really what you want to do. go ahead, you don't need it, but you have my permission.

rebornonline · Post by **rebornonline** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 1:19 am

Seems I've created quite a conversation

I think I may actually get removable drive bays for the array, so I can swap out one drive at the end of each session as a backup. (I used this config before on a server and it worked very well).

The Revo 64 actually looks better and better the more I read, the only concern as others have mentioned is the PCI bandwidth. But then I previously ran a Highpoint IDE controller alongside my Pulsar without any problems, so fingers crossed.

Post by **garyb** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 1:24 am

it all depends on how you use the card. likely, it'll all work just fine.

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 3:25 am

rebornonline wrote:Seems I've created quite a conversation

I think I may actually get removable drive bays for the array, so I can swap out one drive at the end of each session as a backup. (I used this config before on a server and it worked very well).

you mean, you rip out one disk, install a fresh one, let the array resync, and then swap again?
well. I hope you take care that the mirror (I assume a raid 1) has completely rebuilt before you take the disk out...
the performance is always degraded while rebuilding, but if you're not after maximum performance, this should be no issue.

removable single disk bays have a big disadvantage: small fans that happen to fail soon and make big noise. if you have the chance, take a multidrive cage. they are (mostly) equipped with an 80mm fan (or more).

-greetings, markus-

rebornonline · Post by **rebornonline** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 7:47 am

Yes, I've run this config in RAID 5 for a server and it worked fine.

The Rivo card uses RAID 3, and an independent review shows that the performance is essentially unaffected when rebuilding

Clever stuff!

I've ordered the card and two more drives today. I managed to get a "today only" bargain on the card too, - £17.99. Can you believe it?

Should be with me on Thursday. So I'll let you all know how I get on. At £17 I can chuck the card in the bin if it's no good.

On a nother note, a couple of familiar names popping up here, namely Tom and Markus. Have you guys been on the scene for a while? If so, I probably spoke to you many moons ago when I first got the Pulsar

(I used to work fo Red Submarine who were a retailer for SCV London)

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Mon Jun 04, 2007 11:26 am

rebornonline wrote: The Rivo card uses RAID 3, and an independent review shows that the performance is essentially unaffected when rebuilding

it should not be able to do raid 3 with 2 drives, btw. but I somehow remeber this card to have 3 ports, which is minimum requirement to do other levels that 1 and 0.
well, I guess you have read all documentation available to decide that's the card you want, and if it works like expected, it's really a cheap one. I read once about the netcell raid engine on toms hardware (no I don't think it's astro behind it

), but I don't remember what they said. maybe I should reread that article...

I've ordered the card and two more drives today. I managed to get a "today only" bargain on the card too, - £17.99. Can you believe it?

mh... I even didn't trust the original price...
with the drives you can't be wrong, at least. there are only new drives and full drives...

On a nother note, a couple of familiar names popping up here, namely Tom and Markus. Have you guys been on the scene for a while? If so, I probably spoke to you many moons ago when I first got the Pulsar (I used to work fo Red Submarine who were a retailer for SCV London)

well, concerning myself, I can only point to the lines below my name

I joined PZ less than a year ago, so when it comes to "many moons ago" it wasn't probably me you spoke to. with tom you are certainly right

and not to forget garyb, of course...

-greetings, markus-

rebornonline · Post by **rebornonline** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 6:16 am

Hmm, I'm sure there was a Markus who used to be very much on the scene, possible a Creamware emplyee or just very enthusiastic.

The RAID gear arrived yesterday, and I've just started to get it installed. Looking good so far.

And yes, it is 3 drives. I already had a 160GB SATA and have bought "two more"

End result should be approx 320Gb HDD space, with RAID 0 performance, and redundancy, with no CPU overhead.

All good on paper, will let you know how it works in practice

sunset070 · Post by **sunset070** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:30 am

In my sistem hyper treading work fine,no freeze,try to enable ht

I have ;
P4 3.600 HT
ASROCK 775i945GZ 945 intel chipset
3 scope cards