Text 18820, 36 rader
Skriven 2006-06-17 13:30:20 av Jeff Guerdat (1:275/311)
     Kommentar till en text av JAY EMRIE
Ärende: Re: Vista beta.
=======================
JAY EMRIE wrote:

> JG>When I bought the system, I got 512MB to keep the cost down but fully 
> JG>expecting to expand.  Prices on PC3200 ECC memory are starting to drop 
> JG>so I bought 2-1GB DIMMs, giving me 2.5GB.  I want to go to 4GB 
> JG>eventually but have other priorities now, such as geiing an add-in SATA 
> JG>RAID controller to replace the built-in one which has driver issues.  I 
> JG>think I can get one for ~$100, a 4 port Adaptec card...
> 
> I'm a bit curious. Why would you not expect the same problems with the
> add in Adaptec card?

Newer device with current drivers.  Seems like the Promise chipset 
(FastTrak S150 TX4 or PDC20319) is 1) old enough for no current support 
and 2) (perhaps more telling) it's a combination hardware/software RAID, 
hence the need for a driver in the first place.  True hardware RAID ends 
up looking like a single device on the bus and needs no driver.  This 
speeds disk access and eliminates a support problem.

I need to check further but it appears that the Adaptec card, AAR-1420SA 
(http://adaptec.com/en-US/support/raid/sataii/AAR-1420SA/) is the 
lowest-cost hardware RAID with 4 ports which I need since I have 3 
drives for better performance over the more typical 2 drive setup.

I thought I was doing good when I bought the motherboard.  Got bit just 
like I did years ago when I bought a new system with a Seagate Barracuda 
SCSI drive.  Thought I was in fat city (not to be confused with FAT32 
city).  Then I started comparing with cheap IDE drives and found I was 
being blown away.  Checked the specs and found there are Barracudda 
drives and then there are Barracuda drives.  Ever since, I check the 
internal transfer rate before buying.  An easier way to do this is to 
pick a capacity and then get the drive with the fewest heads/platters 
since this means that areal density is highest in this case, leading to 
best performance for the size/buck.
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