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bovie · Dec 26, 2003, 10:58 AM

I have a Sawtooth 400Mhz upgraded to 1.3Ghz. I bought Panther server and two 120GB Harddrives I would like to raid.

I would like to boot off of them. If I cannot boot off of them safley I do have a 30GB Harddrive I can boot off of and use the RAID 0 (Mirroring) for e-mail storage and file server.

Does anybuddy know of a good raid card I should get and where to buy it? I would like native support that way I don't have to install lots of drivers.

dbergstrom · Dec 26, 2003, 01:00 PM

I have the SIIG hardware RAID card (re-branded ACARD card). This has been a good card - no drivers necessary to install, only firmware updates if the unit does not ship with up-to-date firmware. The performance in RAID 0 is quite good, with noticeably improved reads and writes.

The kicker is that there seems to be an incompatibility between this card and Panther client (one would also suppose Panther server). I do not use this card for my boot drive, but when I boot, the drives on this card do not mount automatically.

They only mount after the OS tries to access data from them, i.e. when a user logs in. The first user to log in gets a generic finder and dock, with an error message that the user's home could not be found. Then, the user's home directory mounts, and the Finder and Dock preferences get overwritten with the generic preferences.

I have avoided this problem by creating a dummy user with minimal access who is always logged in. I have also filed a bug report with Apple but have gotten no response.

Scotttheking · Dec 26, 2003, 01:31 PM

Originally posted by bovie:
I would like to boot off of them. If I cannot boot off of them safley I do have a 30GB Harddrive I can boot off of and use the RAID 1 (Mirroring) for e-mail storage and file server.

Fixed that for ya.

bovie · Dec 26, 2003, 02:34 PM

Thanks I always mix them up. Is there another Mac IDE card I can get then I can use software RAID.

OreoCookie · Dec 26, 2003, 09:54 PM

You can even use Firewire drives to use them in a software RAID. MacOS X's Disk Utility has all you need for that, no additional cards to install.

You have a Sawtooth anyway, so I wouldn't invest big money into it anymore.

tr · Dec 26, 2003, 11:21 PM

Originally posted by OreoCookie:

You have a Sawtooth anyway, so I wouldn't invest big money into it anymore.

hey, man...what's that supposed to mean?!?

i mean, i can see your point, but maybe you shouldn't say it to someone who just stated "I have a Sawtooth 400Mhz upgraded to 1.3Ghz."

as for IDE cards, i'm running a SIIG (with ACARD firmware), striping two 80GB drives in my Sawtooth 450 in 10.3.2. works fine here, although, i'm not booting from it.

tr

OreoCookie · Dec 27, 2003, 05:41 AM

Originally posted by tr:
hey, man...what's that supposed to mean?!?

i mean, i can see your point, but maybe you shouldn't say it to someone who just stated "I have a Sawtooth 400Mhz upgraded to 1.3Ghz."

as for IDE cards, i'm running a SIIG (with ACARD firmware), striping two 80GB drives in my Sawtooth 450 in 10.3.2. works fine here, although, i'm not booting from it.

tr

No offense intended.

The performance and feature advantage IMHO does not justify the extra cost of a hardware RAID card (IDE hardware RAIDs are usually not that good anyway, compared to �real' SCSI RAID cards). I'd advise him to use the built-in software RAID instead.

That's all.

dbergstrom · Dec 27, 2003, 11:15 AM

Originally posted by tr:
as for IDE cards, i'm running a SIIG (with ACARD firmware), striping two 80GB drives in my Sawtooth 450 in 10.3.2. works fine here, although, i'm not booting from it.

tr

tr: Are you not having the same problem I described? With my SIIG card, the RAID will not mount at boot, only when I try to access something on the drive.

What version of the firmware are you using?

tr · Dec 27, 2003, 01:58 PM

Originally posted by dbergstrom:
tr: Are you not having the same problem I described? With my SIIG card, the RAID will not mount at boot, only when I try to access something on the drive.

What version of the firmware are you using?

i'm using firmware 1.5.2 found here.

i do know what you're talking about, though. in 10.2.x, sometimes, my RAID wouldn't mount at boot. it would probably happen once ever 5 reboots or so. my fix was to shutdown, unplug the power, wait a minute or so, plug back in and reboot. yeah, i know, strange. but it seemed like my problem with the non-boot was that the drives weren't getting enough power at a cold boot (including the RAID, i have 5 HD's running off the power supply). when it wouldn't mount, it sounded like the RAID drives wouldn't spin up from cold boot, or they would spin after the other drives.

but in Panther, i haven't had that problem...i think it may have happened once, but that's it. i really don't know if this was an OS related problem or what. i wrote in this thread about it, but no one seemed to have the problem. you're the first person to say you also have the same problem.

tr

tooki · Dec 27, 2003, 04:01 PM

Originally posted by Scotttheking:

Originally posted by bovie:
I would like to boot off of them. If I cannot boot off of them safley I do have a 30GB Harddrive I can boot off of and use the RAID 1 (Mirroring) for e-mail storage and file server.

Fixed that for ya.

RAID 0 isn't mirroring.

"RAID" 0 is striping without parity. (I call it "RAID" because it involves no redundancy at all... in fact, it reduces reliability appreciably.)

RAID 1 is mirroring.

RAID 2-5 are variations of striping with parity.

See http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/...vels/index.htm for details on every RAID level (and combinations of RAID levels).

tooki