RE: Using WindowsXP to Make RAID 5 Happen

["Phil Harris" <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Phil - at this point, would it not be a lot safer to remove=20
> the firewire drives from their caddies, and "go native"?

Safer, yes, but what's life if you play it safe all the time...

> You remember how much I bitched/whined/moaned about the=20
> Rocketraid 404 card in the past

Did you? I can't remember... ;-)

> - since the firmware got=20
> sorted out, that card has been utterly stable in my media=20
> server (and on NT4 server of all things). I had a genuine=20
> bona-fide disk failure (rather than a sync loss) and it coped=20
> perfectly.
>=20
> I'm now at the limits of my first build (the heady heights of=20
> .6Tb, 4x200Gb Raid 5) and am looking at one of the=20
> coolermaster Stacker cases (ten bays, seven of them front loadable)

CM Stacker has (IIRC) 11 bays and if you use the Coolermaster 4-in-3
module=
s
(which are good because that means that each block of four drives have
thei=
r
own 120mm fan) then you can get in an optical drive, a boot drive and 12
data drives. The CM Stacker also has provision for two PSUs and comes (or
a=
t
least used to come) with a cable so that the second PSU powers up in tandem
with the first - so you don't have any "lack of power" problems
either.

Problem is I have a lot more drives than that. :-(

> The RR404 only has four controllers on board, hence 8 drives=20
> - I believe that you can run two of them in a PC though.

Yup - as far as I know you can.

> I'm just thinking, that's a lot of pain to go through, and I=20
> can't help but think you wouldn't have the same hell on=20
> straight IDE rather than firewire.

Oh you are absolutely right - stick 'em on IDE and everything would be
spiffing. However I don't have a big enough case for that and I'm bloody
minded enough to think that firewire *SHOULD* work and so I'll be f*cked if
I'm going to give up until it *DOES* work. It's only half arsed support for
firewire in Linux and Windows that stops it working.

I have been playing with a Mac the last couple of days and that seems to
have *FAR* more stable firewire support!

Phil