[nmglug] More RAID Questions

[Andres Paglayan]

1. Paragraphing Sam's tech speech, Software raid uses a little bit of 
your powerful P4 1.8 mhz, hardware raid (unless a 'pro' level one) uses 
a crappy chipset that runs slower than the little bit of your P4.
It sounds logic to me, even more if not using X. It also might be better 
to expend $100 in a beefy CPU rather than in a puppy raid controller. 
But take this advice at your own risk.

2. dunno

3. Math for raid 5 is: use identical drives, at least 3, subtract 1 
drive from the total storage capacity.
ie. 3 * 100MB = 300MB |  -  100MB=  200MB or  ie. 4 * 100MB = 400MB |  
-  100MB=  300MB

4. looks like you'll need an extra controller for the fifth disk, (or 
move sys and backup to the 200G one)
    I wouldn't buy 40G if for extra $10 you can get $60, you might 
regret later.

5.?

Tim Emerick wrote:

>After considering all of the kind replies I received in response to my last
>RAID post I have a couple more questions that didn't seem to be clearly
>addressed in any of the links that were sent.  Looks like I'll be nixing the
>simple RAID0 or RAID1 controller that is on my motherboard in favor of a
>RAID5 scenario.
>
>1. Someone noted that software raid was just as fast as hardware raid.  This
>machine will be a mostly dedicated Samba Server on a P4 1.8ghz machine.  Does
>this still hold true or should I get a dedicated Promise Controller that
>supports RAID5?
>
>2. I thought I read somewhere that you should only use Drive0 on each
>controller when using with RAID or you will get horrible performance.  Does
>that hold water?  My onboard Promise RAID controller can be configured for
>RAID or normal ATA100 IDE controllers.  As normal IDE controllers that would 
>give me 4 controllers with 2 drives each.  With the above limitation it
>sounds like I would only be able to use the Drive0 on each controller for my
>raid array.  Could I use Drive1 for occasionally used devices (IDE-DVD/CDrom,
>Large Backup HD) without a performance hit?
>
>3. What is the math for RAID5?  I really only need around 60 gigs of storage.
>
>
>4. I'm looking at getting 3 40 gig ATA100 HD's for the raid array to add to
>the existing small HD for the linux OS, a 200 GIG HD for a rolling couple
>days backup, and the IDE-CDrom drive.  How would you suggest hooking all that
>up considering question #2?
>
>5. Any tuning tips for Samba with WinXP workstations?
>
>Thanks in advance
>
>Tim Emerick
>
>
>
>
>		
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