Digsy Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 I'm going to be building a PC for my girlfriend soon but its been a few years since I built mineand things have moved on a bit. She wants as much "future proofing" as possible and also a lot of scalability. Initially she wants it to be a normal home PC but with the option to turn it into a serioud home business machine later on. Amongst other things she wants to have tha capability to add a foolproof backup system later on - I have suggested a mirrored RAID 1 array for this as she does not want to lose any data in the event of a disc crash. As for future proofing ans acalability , I've suggested a socket 775 mobo with a 2.6GHz Celeron to start off with (we've done the Intel / AMD discussion - she's dead set on Intel so don't even go there) with the option to drop in a proper P4 later on. I've also suggested that she goes for SATA drives rather than ATA/IDE. This is where I am having trouble. I'm not exactly spoilt for choice for mobos because she also wants a physically small case and so needs a MATX form factor. I can't find that many mobos with RAID and SATA. The last one I looked at (MSI 915GM-FR) has both ATA and SATA controllers buit from the blurb it looks like RAID is only available on the IDE, which is not what I want. Can this be right? Whats the point of having SATA and RAID hard wired into the motherboard but then tieing RAID to the older type of controller? Or do I have it all wrong? Are all SATA controllers RAID compatible? Could do with some giidance on the whole RAID / ATA / SATA thing. TIA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeordieSteve Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 Never used SATA before so may be talking bollocks but how about setting up two dynamic drives then a mirror through disk managment? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbeh Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 Theres no need for RAID on a home PC setup, just get SATA. Thats damn quick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 Just buy the IDE based board. There's no advantage to most SATA drives above IDE (except Raptors). SATA2 that is just coming out is another story. Our engineers believe IDE to be more stable than SATA. Certainly my own system had two faulty SATA deaths on my striped array These simple software embedded RAID boards are great VFM for home usage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 just get SATA. Thats damn quick. You've been sucked in by the marketing bollocks mate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digsy Posted October 25, 2005 Author Share Posted October 25, 2005 Theres no need for RAID on a home PC setup, just get SATA. Thats damn quick. As I said, she has the intention to start keeping business data on the machine in the future so she wants a way of backing up everything robustly and automatically. I can't see any other way to do this other than using a mirrored array. She doesn't need speed, she's not going to be playing games. What she wants is a PC that is going to last her a few years and be upgradable. Initialy, the machine will only have one disk installed anyway. She'll go to a two disk setup if she ever wants to start doing serious stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digsy Posted October 25, 2005 Author Share Posted October 25, 2005 As for software arrays, IIRC our very own IanC nearly lost everything because he was using software to control his striped array. I know he went to a mirrored array on a RAID mobo and hasn't looked back. So do you think IDE will be around for a while yet then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 Just watch the heat in those small cases. Buy good quality CPU and case fans to keep the noise and temperatures down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 So do you think IDE will be around for a while yet then? How many SATA DVD ROMs have you seen? You can always get little convertor boards from one SATA to IDE and visa versa. Like I say - they're the bloody same. (Except SATA2) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digsy Posted October 25, 2005 Author Share Posted October 25, 2005 How many SATA DVD ROMs have you seen? That's a good point ...but don't a lot of mobos have ony one IDE controller these days? i.e. Once you connect your DVD ROM drive you can only have one IDE disc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digsy Posted October 25, 2005 Author Share Posted October 25, 2005 Ah. I think your edit has answered that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg52_satabridgeboards.htm These are WELL overpriced though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeordieSteve Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 If you were going to save cash... software mirror. If money aint a problem get a RAID card and just run IDE... personally I'd just go software in your circumstance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lewis Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 Just buy the IDE based board. There's no advantage to most SATA drives above IDE (except Raptors). SATA2 that is just coming out is another story. Our engineers believe IDE to be more stable than SATA. Certainly my own system had two faulty SATA deaths on my striped array These simple software embedded RAID boards are great VFM for home usage. What?!?!?! I have never had a SATA die out of the last 2000 installed. Couple to that the controller stability and the transfer rate, coupled with the costs, there is no better solution. We are part of a massive government initiatie to link every secondary school in the country to a single managed AD (15million AD records) and will be using SATA technology extensively. I couldn't disagree more on your comments about this mate. It probably boils down to a poor personal experience you have had, with thousands installed and running already and I have been pesonally using them since they were a prototype I cannot recommend them more. For RAID configurations I have found them to perform excellently. What were the causes of the errors you came across? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest gzaerojon Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 i run a sata 10k rpm western digital raptor, like bloody greased lightening:ecstatic: the windows load screen comes up, then the load bar thing moves a quarter way accross then jumps to welcome screen, and its still fast months down the line with loads of apps loaded... glad i bought one now:D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 What were the causes of the errors you came across? One was a drive that died (hey, it happens) The other I think was down to a dodgy cable. When SATA first came out it was definately more flaky then IDE. We build about 150/200 machines a month. Things seem a bit better now though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest gzaerojon Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 the only problem i had with sata was when my pc just kept freezing, but i narrowed it down (poorly made but looks fecking cool neon blue) sata cable. changed to standard and no probs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 This is an interesting read from a little while ago... http://www.ata-atapi.com/sata.htm Like I say, things have changed some now. Like all new technology, it takes a while for it to settle down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HunterJ Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 I'm using an nForce 3 motherboard (K8NS Ultra-939) which has two seperate hardware SATA RAID controllers. I have 2 7.2k rpm SATA drives configured with RAID 1 (mirroring). As it is hardware RAID, Windows (or any other OS) will see one physical disk - so after configuring the RAID, you can just forget about it (until you need to fall back to the mirrored disk). Motherboard was around £65, SATA drives around £35 - bargin! I've not had any problems - been running 24x7 since the beginning of September. Jamie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbeh Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 You've been sucked in by the marketing bollocks mate. That bollocks that enables me to run a 10000rpm hard drive without the SCSI crap .. yeah whatever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith C Posted October 26, 2005 Share Posted October 26, 2005 Lot of shite being posted here. SATA is about on-par for IDE in terms of failure rate. It's not as good as SCSI, but it is better than 'traditional' IDE. It's probably cheaper to buy SATA than IDE these days. SCSI is still by far and away the 'best' solution, but it's also per GB the most expensive, and probably overkill for a small scale solution. One thing to maybe try and avoid is 'fakeraid'. This usually applies to the on-board RAID controllers that come with motherboards. These usually actually make use of your main CPU for all of the RAID calculations and functionality, with the result that intensive I/O operations can have a nasty impact on the processor. This is because they're just a software RAID, but handled via the driver rather than the operating system (this also means that Linux support is troublesome). Some plug-in cards, for example the Adaptec 2010S, are also 'fakeraid' cards. A google for 'fakeraid' will probably turn up a list somewhere of which controllers are like this. To do it 'properly', spend the money (about £200-ish) and get a 3Ware 9550 RAID card. This is a proper, full-blown RAID controller, with a decent amount of cache (about 128MB), and SATA2 support. I realise that it can be odd to disregard what is already there and spend more money, and whether it's really worth it is down to you, but data integrity is usually of the highest importance, and it's false economy to try and skimp and save. Would you put remoulds on your Supra for example? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted October 26, 2005 Share Posted October 26, 2005 That bollocks that enables me to run a 10000rpm hard drive without the SCSI crap .. yeah whatever. Ah - Raptor?. Like I said earlier up the thread, raptors and SATA2 are different. Raptor is a SCSI based drive anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted October 26, 2005 Share Posted October 26, 2005 Lot of shite being posted here. SATA is about on-par for IDE in terms of failure rate. I agree. This is because they're just a software RAID, but handled via the driver rather than the operating system (this also means that Linux support is troublesome). I think I mentioned this too. Digsy doesn't want to run Linux. He wants a cheap solution. He can only find IDE boards suitable to his case. There's no problem with this.. I wasn't intending to spark of a debate on the merits of hard drive and data bus technologies! Also he wasn't worried about speed issues. To do it 'properly', spend the money (about £200-ish) and get a 3Ware 9550 RAID card. This is a proper, full-blown RAID controller, with a decent amount of cache (about 128MB), and SATA2 support. I think this has just gone over Digsys budget! Really - for home use? nah. Enthusiasts maybe, but not your general plodding user for office applications. Digsys requirements: Cheap failover solution to fit in a small case. Performance not a worry - general home/office usage. (he's got a Celeron in mind!) so budget is limited. IDE boards he's seen will fit his bill. Now stop being so pedantic everyone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HunterJ Posted October 26, 2005 Share Posted October 26, 2005 Just a quick word on "fakeraid", the MB still implements hardware RAID (ie the OS doesn't do the mirroring). If performance and resilience were both critical (which I doubt as we're talking about SATA and IDE) then I would be concerned about the stolen CPU cycles. And from a personal note, I find recovering from a failed disk (that was part of a RAID 1 volume) was significantly easier with the "hardware" RAID than its "software" counterpart... Jamie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkey3 Posted October 26, 2005 Share Posted October 26, 2005 I have 2 machines at home both with 2 identical sata drives in a RAID 0 array. One of them used to have just 1 IDE drive in it, which I wanted to upgrade. So I decided instead of getting a decent IDE, I'd again go for RAID 0 on 2 SATA drives. The difference is unbelievable and I would never go back. As far as I know, there isn't really any difference in speed between SATA and SATA II as yet (but the potential is there), so you will have to pay relatively more for something you will have to upgrade in the future to get the benefits anyway. As far as data safety goes if you were to have a RAID 1, you will probably take a hit in the performance department, or (if space weren't so much of a problem) you could go for a RAID 0 + 1. However, I would say if you want a serious business machine then probably the best way to ensure your data is safe is to back it up. a 16x dvd writer will probably set you back under £30 and you can get a stack of 50 16x dvds for around £6. anyway, that's just IMO I use http://www.overclockers.co.uk for parts, they're cheap and you get a good service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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