Very Computer

I am considering RAID 1 for a workstation configuration.  Choices
are SCSI or IDE.

Product literature for Mylex KT-950 (Flashpoint LW) states the
card does Raid 0 or 1.  If you have used this card to configure a
Raid 1 system, I would like to hear your comments.

I have also seen Promise Ultra66 RAID  Controller (0, 1) for IDE
drives.  Does Linux support the card?  If so, it might be serve
as a more economical solution.

Any gotchas/comments would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance
A. Khan
--
A. Khan
EMAIL address is ->>  knura at yahoo dot com

The ATA interface (often incorrectly called IDE) requires a lot of
CPU attention, regardless of controller.   (If the interface is enhanced
to reduce this problem, it isn't ATA anymore - and requires special
drivers.)

So, a system with many users should go with SCSI.  A single user or half
dozen user system can get by with ATA to reduce cost.

I would avoid cards that use a proprietary protocol to reduce
CPU overhead.  You will be shackled by driver quality/availability.

I have seen a dramatic reduction of CPU utilisation using the
Fastrak controller on DOS, WIN31, Win9x, WinNT & Beos on my
DESKTOP WORKSTAION. Linux is the ONLY OS i have found that
requiers a special driver.

I would not ever entertain IDE RAID for a Server for the obvious
reasons, but, if like me you have noticed that modern desktop
OS's are getting very disk intensive then striping across two
fast ide drives is very effective at speeding things up. (Also
makes video editing possible if not spectacular, for us poor
people who can't afford the Rolls Royce solution to everything!)

The issue of driver availability & quality pertains to SCSI just
as much as any other device. At least due to Linux's server
origins it has some generic SCSI support out of the box.

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Quote:> I would not ever entertain IDE RAID for a Server for the obvious
> reasons,

We do have Servers running with IDE-Raid-Systems, the last Server we
built contained 600 GB brutto. I must admit that we do not use PCI to
IDE-Raid systems (like the Adaptec+Promise ones) but IDE to
SCSI-Systems, means you have a SCSI-Bus on the Host-side.  The RAID is
typically a RAID 5 so there is fault tolerance. The Raid-Systems
mentioned above each had a net capacity of 6*40=240GB and were at
approx. 4.500 USD including the disks.

There is another HW-possibilty I recently found: a HW-controller for two
IDE-drives. default RAID 1 (dunno if RAID 0 possile),
host-interface:IDE. perhaps interesting for not so often used but
important data.

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