> > > > > > Synopsis: Slaving the Cdrom should be OK. > > > > > > > That makes sense as I recall civileme describing a quite > elaborate soft RAID > > setup on a board with only 2 IDE channels. > > > > But am I remembering correctly that having a slower device (my CDROM is > > ATA33 while the disk is at least ATA100) on the same channel > mandates that > > both drives operate at the lower transfer rate? SCSI, at least > once upon a > > time,worked like this. Has this been an issue for you (balancing the > > increased speed of the raid against the slower disk speed)? Or > this just the > > case when both devices are being accessed at the same time? > > I am fairly certain that caveats you refer to for SCSI don't apply to > IDE. For one thing, I've never noticed a slowdown myself with > dissimilar devices on the IDE bus. For another, devices are recognized > individually (type and speed) when the system boots up. In addition, if > there was a problem, then anybody with an ATA100 drive would be wasting > their money if they bought a CDROM and put it on the same bus. I > believe that one of the positive things about IDE (besides being cheap) > is that the devices are dealt with pretty much on an individual basis. >
Cool. So worse case, the 372 _isn't_ supported but I can use my second controller to stripe the RAID. Maybe 9.0 will solve the problem and in the meantime... > The problem comes in when you have a raid array in which one of the > devices is a slave. When that happens, the master device must oversee > data transactions (during stripe operations) not only for itself, but > also for it's slave. This makes the concept of dividing the work > between two peripheral devices impotent. When you *do* have only master > devices in the array, it equates to a (x * 100)% performance increase > (if it's Raid 0) where x is the total number of devices. Because the > work that was done by one is now done by several. > > The Highpoint and generic IDE buses can be maxed out throughputwise, but > not, I think, by only one master device per channel. > > > > > > Right and I'm only bothering with this because I need this box > to be as fast > > i/o wise as it can be and the hardware budget has already been > spent for the > > year... > > I know where you're coming from..been there and got the t-shirt > and sweatband. You are headed in the right direction. > > The cool thing is that your generic IDE channels can be freed up for > experimenting with other peripherals; and you won't ever have to muck > around with the channels your primary devices are on. > > > > This is what I figured I ought to be doing--leaving the RAID disabled in > > BIOS--but, as I indicated, DiskDrake does not see the Highpoint > controller's > > IDE channels at all. Do you know if there a secret handshake I > have to give > > DiskDrake to get it to see the controller? > > This is worrisome. I can't offer advice on the 372, since I don't have > one; but I'm surprised that Diskdrake is croaking. Have you tried an > install with the drives already partitioned, and highpoint raid > deactivated? > My other disk is partitioned so I'll check that tonight. cheers, ::mark
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