Re: [gentoo-user] 1-Terabyte drives - 4K sector sizes? -> bar performance so far

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wednesday 10 February 2010 02:28:59 Stroller wrote:
> On 9 Feb 2010, at 19:37, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> > ...
> > Don't get me started on those ;)
> > The reason I use Linux Software Raid is because:
> > 1) I can't afford hardware raid adapters
> > 2) It's generally faster then hardware fakeraid
>
> I'd rather have slow hardware RAID than fast software RAID. I'm not
> being a snob, it just suits my purposes better.

I don't consider that comment as "snobbish" as I actually agree.
But as I am using 6 disks in the array, a hardware RAID card to handle that 
would have pushed me above budget.
It is planned for a future upgrade (along with additional disks), but that 
will have to wait till after another few expenses.

> If speed isn't an issue then secondhand prices of SATA RAID
> controllers (PCI & PCI-X form-factor) are starting to become really
> cheap. Obviously new cards are all PCI-e - industry has long moved to
> that, and enthusiasts are following.

My mainboard has PCI, PCI-X and PCI-e (1x and 16x), which connector-type would 
be best suited?
Also, I believe a PCI-e 8x card would work in a PCI-e 16x slot, but does this 
work with all mainboards/cards? Or are some more picky about this?
 
> I would be far less invested in hardware RAID if I could find regular
> SATA controllers which boasted hot-swap. I've read reports of people
> hot-swapping SATA drives "just fine" on their cheap controllers but
> last time I checked there were no manufacturers who supported this as
> a feature.

The mainboard I use (ASUS M3N-WS) has a working hotswap support (Yes, I tested 
this) using hotswap drive bays.
Take a disk out, Linux actually sees it being removed prior to writing to it 
and when I stick it back in, it gets a new device assigned.

On a different machine, where I tried it, the whole machine locked up when I 
removed the disk (And SATA is supposed to be hotswappable by design...)

--
Joost