P5GD1 - SATA RAID 0+1 ? RAM too...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mr Mister
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Mr Mister

I am a bit confused with this new Intel Matrix RAID stuff; can someone
please clarify if I can use 4 SATA drives to have a true RAID 0+1 (striping
with mirror) array on the Asus P5GD1 or P5GD2 ? If not, isn't a 2 drive
Intel Matrix a bit of a herring?

I am setting up a CAD server to serve large files to 20 users, by the way.

Also, will 2 Gb RAM be better than 1 Gb on a file server? Is DDR2 Worth it
for this application?

Thank you kind people.
 
Mr Mister said:
I am a bit confused with this new Intel Matrix RAID stuff; can someone
please clarify if I can use 4 SATA drives to have a true RAID 0+1 (striping
with mirror) array on the Asus P5GD1 or P5GD2 ? If not, isn't a 2 drive
Intel Matrix a bit of a herring?

I am setting up a CAD server to serve large files to 20 users, by the way.

Also, will 2 Gb RAM be better than 1 Gb on a file server? Is DDR2 Worth
it for this application?

Thank you kind people.
Click to expand...

RAID0 is for speed and RAID1 for redundancy but IMHO if you have more then 2
drives then RAID5 is a better solution. It uses striping for speed plus has
redundancy at a cost of (n-1)/n*size where n is the number of drives. So if
you have 4x20GB drives RAID5 will give you (4-1)/4*20GB = 60GB of space with
data striped across all the drives. You can loose one drive and not loose
any data. Depending on your system you can also add a spare so that one
drive goes down, the spare will automatically replace it. RAID0+1 on the
other hand will only give you 40GB of redundant data and no spares.

Since this is a server, both Windows servers and Linux (any distro) have
software RAID5.

As far as the RAM, it's a waste of money if the system doesn't use it.
Unless you're going to run applications on the server, file sharing isn't
going to use a lot of memory.

If the system is going to be a file server, I'd spend the money on the drive
subsystem. At least a RAID5 card with onboard cache and the ability to use
spares. Your four drives would still get you 2x the capacity but with the
ability to loose 2 drives and not loose data. Two drives down in a RAID0+1
and I think you're toast.
 
Thanks for your informative reply.

However, I am still unsure if the Intel Matrix RAID as on the P5GD1 will do
true RAID 0+1 on 4 SATA drives?

I understand that RAID 5 is better, but also cannot locate a PCI-E SATA
RAID card in Australia; if I could suggestions are it would be quite pricey.
I may have to consider standard ATA instead of SATA, and use the onboard
ITE 8212F controller. Unfortunately I gather that ATA is not as efficient
as SATA.....

Thanks again.
 
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