HoTWiReZ's DoMaiN

[HoTWiReZ]

I'm trying to think about what I should do. I have 4 SATA ports, 2 in use with my 2 120 gb hd's (I'm using an adapter), one maxtor controller with a promise chipset that doesn't allow raid, and 2 onboard EIDE ports, for my cd/dvd-rom's. I'm looking to get 500 gigs more of storage or so, to make it 1.004 Terrabytes of storage on my desktop, using either 2 250gb sata hd's in raid with a new controller, or a single hd that's less than 500gb.. I can get 2 250's for 200 dollars on newegg.. Has anyone else seen better deals for fairly large drives?

Last edited by HoTWiReZ on Fri Jan 27, 2006 1:54 pm; edited 1 time in total

[CoLDWiReZ]

i got one refurbed from new eg and it was great so far but it wasent as large as you want it was 160 gig.

[CoLDWiReZ]

i know you just got a few HD's what was the deal...

[HoTWiReZ]

I got the two that I was going to get and a promise tx2300 controller when they went off sale. If I would have acted sooner, I could have saved about 30 dollars. The two I purchased were WD2500RE's, which are WD's industrial versions, specifically made for RAID setups. Since I got the controller, I should be able to use the 2 drives in any computer, as if they were a single drive. I believe the bios on the card will remember that the 2 drives connected to it are there in a RAID setup. Also, I can only use them in a RAID config, since the card doesn't support single drive use. I'll let you know how it goes when I get them and install them, but I think it is looking fairly well, since they have faster than normal seek and access times, and the throughput in tests with standard RAID controllers is almost 100MB/s. As always, I ordered from Newegg, and should be receiving it by the end of the week I do believe.

[CoLDWiReZ]

how are those hd's working out for you?

[HoTWiReZ]

Well I'm working on getting that up and running. I spent the better part of yesterday backing up my main drive since the new controller wouldn't work with my onboard raid at the same time. I had to RMA the first card to Newegg to get a tx4300, which has 4 sata2 ports. The new card recognized all the data on my C drive from the start, and I didn't have to reformat, except for the fact that XP wouldn't boot, not knowing what to do once the registry was loaded.. So, after a 1 am reinstall, I'm up and running, working to reinstall everything else. I have 2 120gb wd jb drives in a RAID 0 setup as the boot drive, and the 2 250 gb wd re drives as the new D drive, also in a RAID 0 setup. The good news is that the system will be a little faster acting, with less crap in the registry, etc, but the bad news is that it will take forever to get it back to the setup I liked so much. I am currently taking all the images off of my server to put them on the new drive, and also all of the *videos*.. Together, that is freeing up most of the space on the server.

[HoTWiReZ]

Oh, btw, I just did some tests on the hd's using Atto, and the new ones running on my new promise tx4300 are getting 113 MB/sec read times and 80 MB/sec write times!! That's way better than the 2 I already had on raid, and both the drives and controller support NCQ and TCQ also! (The times with the same controller on my 1200JB's in RAID 0 is 90/70 or so.. I'll have to redo the tests to confirm that as I can't remember, except that they were slower, lol)