Possibility of a crasy RAID setup?

[TheHolyLancer]

So now, I have a 2500 budget for either a new machine, or something that I wanted to do....

 

 

So what I have now is a A64 s393 3200+ Venice

A DFI nF4 Ultra-D UT

a 7900GS

 

so, why in the drives and storage forum?

 

I want to purchase a PCIe SCSI raid controller and buy some 15k 74GB or 32 GB drives and use raid 5 setup and boot from it...

 

the adapter should be something like (http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/scsi_hbas/lsi20320ie/ or http://discountechnology.com/Dell-TD977-PE...RAID-Controller since the first one does not say hardware RAID) but I'm here to look for people whom have done this.

 

Right now, i would prefer that it is NOT a PCIe 4X since that the Video card slot is taken up by the 7900GS and a modded 6800GT NV silencer on it (I sawed and poked holes and did some other stuff) an I have an Thermalright SI-120 on it that I wish to continue to use, which leaves almost NO room for the 4x slot, but I guess there are always alternatives... (where is my hacksaw?)

 

But the more important thing is that had anyone actually done this before, and is the BIOS on the DFI able to detect and use the RAID5 array upon start up (I mean it suppose to naively support it on the sata and the pata arrays, this is *just* a SCSI deal (i know i know how much IO at this level differs with the different interfaces and what nots...))

 

Also, would love to know a place to either cheaply buy new 15k SCSI U320 drives, or else a place to buy second hand 15k stuff, as I want to go to a dual core opertron and a 280GTX in this upgrade as well.

Edited May 12, 2009 by TheHolyLancer

[Verran]

SCSI is old news, you should be looking at SAS.

 

Also, I'm sorry but this seems like a huge waste. You have $2500 to spend and you're NOT upgrading your 939 parts? This is seems like chroming the wheels on a rusted out '84 Tempo. SCSI RAID-5 and a 280GTX on a 939 Opteron? That's bottleneck city!

 

Just build a new i7 or PhenomII system and put an SSD in it. Most enthusiast boards support SATA RAID-5 natively, so why spend all the money on the controller card and SCSI drives?

[mikeock]

Also, I'm sorry but this seems like a huge waste. You have $2500 to spend and you're NOT upgrading your 939 parts? This is seems like chroming the wheels on a rusted out '84 Tempo. SCSI RAID-5 and a 280GTX on a 939 Opteron? That's bottleneck city!

 

Best quote ever!

 

I agree with Verran

[TheHolyLancer]

SCSI is old news, you should be looking at SAS.

 

Also, I'm sorry but this seems like a huge waste. You have $2500 to spend and you're NOT upgrading your 939 parts? This is seems like chroming the wheels on a rusted out '84 Tempo. SCSI RAID-5 and a 280GTX on a 939 Opteron? That's bottleneck city!

 

Just build a new i7 or PhenomII system and put an SSD in it. Most enthusiast boards support SATA RAID-5 natively, so why spend all the money on the controller card and SCSI drives?

 

Hmm perhaps you are right on that, since SSDs kills any spinning hard drives in random access times. Has the rough edges of SSDs been smoothed over like the issues with its relatively short life expectancy or drives and support?

 

Next question is which of the new i7 motherboards have hardware RAID (a DEDICATED chip that does the work, not just done through software or some other method)

 

I will be using raid 5 with any of these setup tho, to use the best price/GB ratio drives (btw which size should I go for? and i livei n canada, so i can only use the limited newegg.ca, ncix, tigerdriect and what nots so maybe that has an effect)

Edited May 12, 2009 by TheHolyLancer

[TheHolyLancer]

Hmm perhaps you are right on that, since SSDs kills any spinning hard drives in random access times. Has the rough edges of SSDs been smoothed over like the issues with its relatively short life expectancy or drives and support?

 

Next question is which of the new i7 motherboards have hardware RAID (a DEDICATED chip that does the work, not just done through software or some other method)

 

I will be using raid 5 with any of these setup tho, to use the best price/GB ratio drives (btw which size should I go for? and i livei n canada, so i can only use the limited newegg.ca, ncix, tigerdriect and what nots so maybe that has an effect)

 

Hmm after some price checking, maybe a raid setup isnt a good idea for now, since the cost of lower cap drives do not seem to be cheaper per GB

[Verran]

Answers in red:

Hmm perhaps you are right on that, since SSDs kills any spinning hard drives in random access times. Has the rough edges of SSDs been smoothed over like the issues with its relatively short life expectancy or drives and support?

On the higher end drives, yes.

 

Next question is which of the new i7 motherboards have hardware RAID (a DEDICATED chip that does the work, not just done through software or some other method)

Plenty of high end boards have dedicated RAID chips (you might even say most do). Sorry, but I'm not going to list all the models here because that would be a long list.

 

I will be using raid 5 with any of these setup tho, to use the best price/GB ratio drives (btw which size should I go for? and i livei n canada, so i can only use the limited newegg.ca, ncix, tigerdriect and what nots so maybe that has an effect)

How can we recommend sizes when we don't know what you're using it for or how much you need?

[TheHolyLancer]

Ok it is used for the OS and games, and thats it. I expect maybe 320 GB+, but looking at the prices... maybe not so much

 

tbh the size can be as little as 100GB but that just means that I will most likely not be able to install all the games and what nots I want, storage is most likely a raid setup of lots of cheap 7.2k drives