Squeezing 160G on to ATA Motherboards 27
MadCow-ard asks: "With the introduction of the new 160 GB hard drives there comes a problem: they only appear to work with the ATA/ATAPI-6, 48 bit-standard. This means not installing them into systems that I have already built with the de facto 28 bit ATA controllers. I build video editing systems that easily reach 800 Mb, and so the Promise solution with a 2 hard drive ATA controller card doesn't really help. Is there a way squeeze these onto my systems without dropping everything above 137.4 Gb?" 160 gigs on a single HD! How soon before terabyte drives become a reality?
Software matters. Which OS? Which version? (Score:4, Informative)
right tool for the job (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:right tool for the job (Score:4, Informative)
Of course SCSI still has its place with 15,000 RPM drives but for large storage applications with RAID usage IDE is very attractive. Hopefully this will drive SCSI prices down but I'm not counting on it.
Re:right tool for the job (Score:1)
Re:right tool for the job (Score:1)
3ware ide raid [raw-io.com]
The CPU usage is interesting - it would be nice to have a SCSI RAID board to do a comparision... I definately agree that SCSI has some advantages.
Hopefully I can grab a four port board and use RAID 5 or something else that is a bit more sexy than just plain mirroring. In the meantime though StorageReview.com [storagereview.com] has some good tests on numerous RAID products (and a drive comparision database).
IDE Hardware RAID (Score:1)
Maybe that's why they are so cheap compared to SCSI RAID.
Re:IDE Hardware RAID (Score:1)
they use max 5% cpu.
Re:IDE Hardware RAID (Score:1)
The nice thing with the 3ware (and I presume Adaptec) product is that it supports all the nifty stuff like hotswap.
Re:right tool for the job (Score:2)
Many motherboards only support a single 33 Mhz/32 bit(4 byte) PCI bus, that is only 133Mbytes/second. With 3 or more new fast ATA/100 drives (limit 1 per cable) and cheap IDE controllers, you can run out of PCI bus bandwidth.
Under the heading 3ware?, cymen listed some IDE RAID controllers that will work in a 66Mhz/64 bit PCI bus. The motherboards cost more, but the speed limit is 528Mbytes/second.
We use software RAID with IDE, because the main processor is 1.4Ghz or better and has access to 1 or 2 gigabytes of buffer memory. If you are CPU limited, it is much cheaper to get a dual CPU motherboard, than to get a fast hardware RAID system.
Re:right tool for the job (Score:1)
Potentially, anyway. I have a 7200 RPM ATA/66 drive, and usually only get about 23-26 Mbytes/sec when reading directly off the disk (no caching). Some fast IBM ATA/100 disks manage up to 37 Mbytes, which would saturate the bus if 4 of them were working non-stop. How realistic any of these sitautions are, is, of course, depends on the situation.
Of course, there's always 64-bit 66 Mhz PCI, 3GIO [someday], and firewire drives. USB 2.0 too, I guess.
FireWire (Score:2)
3ware? (Score:5, Informative)
Promise [promise.com] has the FastTrak100 TX4 PCI that supposedly has four independent IDE channels (no slave/master crap, everything is master like 3ware products) so you have another option there with support for 48bit LBA in Promise drivers mentioned at linux-ide.org [linux-ide.org] it sounds like a promising solution (no pun intended).
You could always put a couple Promise Ultra100's in there too - it sucks to waste PCI slots but with high end motherboards having onboard LAN, sound, etc I would expect that you have plenty of open slots. I've used both Promise Ultra/FastTrack products (with the kernel drivers, not Promises) and 3ware products and both are great.
From front page of linux-ide.org:
Leading the World to Announce Native 48bit LBA Support
Supporting Maxtor BIG DRIVE TECHNOLOGY
Releasing Support of new Promise Ultra 133 TX2 48bit HOST
Future Release Support of new Silicon Image's CMD 48bit HOST
3ware: supported by everything... (Score:4, Interesting)
The question I have for the original poster is: why bother with 160 gig drives when 100s are cheaper, and a bunch of them (or even a few striped pairs) will be a lot faster than a few, much-more-expensive 160 gig drives?
High-end? (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe it's just me, but I've always thought that the integrated boards were the low-end, since the onboard components are invariably of a lesser quality than what you can purchase and install seperately.
Re:High-end? (Score:1)
Re:High-end? (Score:2, Informative)
It is true for desktop motherboards that integrated features are bad news (although with the newer boards this is changing) but on the high end boards integrated SCSI and NICs are common. This makes it far easier to stuff a nice system into a small rack box. For example you can put a complete server into a 1U which I believe is only 1.75" high (but 19"x?? like rather large pizza box).
Take a look at high end motherboards from Intel, SuperMicro, Tyan, and Asus. There are definately some interesting products out there...
Re:3ware? (Score:1)
The 3ware cards rock; I have a server I take to LAN games. I setup the server as an ftp server and it easily supports 40+ users for 18hours!!!
Re:3ware? (Score:2)
3ware has discontinued [3ware.com] their entire Escalade line. They are now focusing entirely on integrated storage systems.
Is it time to put IDE on the ash heap of history? (Score:3, Insightful)
SCSI offers more devices but can it do more primary partitions per drive?
Maybe it's time to replace the whole ISA-PCI-IDE started out as an 8-bit platform and got patched and kludged time and time again mess with something that anticipates that what now seem like big drives, big RAM sticks, and fast processors and video cards will soon be classed with 8088s and 64K ram chips. And maybe there's something better than x86, or could be.
And while I'm ranting, how about we *don't* go through another episode of incompatible form factors for motherboards, cases, and power supplies (not to mention memory) that make brand name boxes un-upgradeable except by pitching them into the landfill and buying a whole new system.
Isn't GPT meant to fix the partitioning problem? (Score:1, Informative)
I seem to recall an article a while back [slashdot.org] talking about how the 64-bit version of Windows XP has a new partitioning system - GPT ("GUID Partition Table") - which is meant to sort out current problems with partition tables.
And don't worry, 64-bit Linux supports it too [sgi.com]
MS has a document explaining their 64-bit things, including GPT and the associated support stuff -- Designing for 64-bit Windows [microsoft.com]. Things appear to be changing a fair bit -- most software will break on the new hardware they describe, but it should simplify what's left
Re:Is it time to put IDE on the ash heap of histor (Score:2)
The partitioning has nothing to do with hardware. The same 4 primary limitation exists even on SCSI. The problem stems from the choice of MS-DOS type of partitioning. Other partition schemes exist, such as BSD partitions. And Intel is developing a new one for 64-bit architectures that should still work fine on 32-bit machines. It's just a matter of coding in the support portably in the kernel.
You can make an infinite number of logical partitions in extended space, and Linux will support 59 of them (after the 4 primary). You can also stuff the primary partitions with FreeBSD style partitions for a total of 28, or OpenBSD style for a total of 60 (but only 59 devices available).
The whole IRQ system is itself part of the problem in PC design. It is actually a hack done in the design of the original IBM PC in order to delete a real I/O interrupt controller to cut costs. They used the interrupt request LEVELS for separate devices instead of the correct way of having a controller that stored the I/O address of the device generating the interrupt. Mainframes have since the 1960's worked on the latter mechanism, having a single interrupt vector for all I/O and the first thing the handler does after saving context is get the address of the interrupting device. There was never an IRQ problem on mainframes. It is the IRQ design in the PC that needs to be tossed out. Interrupts should always idenfity the precise I/O device.
Incompatibilities will continue to plague the computing industry because designers are limited by cost controls, short sighted planners, having to avoid patents held by other companies, having to push patents held by their employer, etc. Makers of whole systems don't want you to upgrade when they can sell you a whole new system every year. That's how business works. They are not there to make great technology; they are there to sell you stuff. It will include just enough technology to get you to buy it, and no more.
Re:Is it time to put IDE on the ash heap of histor (Score:2)
I really hadn't planned to send you money via Paypal, carrier pigeon, or any other method, but it is an interesting link and worth checking out by anyone having any dealings with them, including contemplating getting in on their upcoming IPO (although I do think there may be some short term money to be made there).
Re:Is it time to put IDE on the ash heap of histor (Score:1)
Say what you like about IA-64, at least Intel does seem intested in killing off all that crap fairly soon. I don't see why you group PCI in with ISA and IDE, however. PCI is a "real" bus, and while it's not perfect, it's high-performance enough for most things, and it's reasonably well designed. I imagine that 3GIO is going to be, for the most part, an extension of PCI to higher clock speeds, rather than completly reworking it (I haven't been able to find any actual info about anywhere, so I guess I could be wrong). Also going out over the next few years are PS/2 [I hope I can find a PS/2 -> USB adapter; I love my keyboard and want to keep using it], floppy drives, serial ports [which is rather unfortunate, lots of old Unix boxen can or have to use the serial port to get an install going], and parellel IDE, replaced by Serial ATA. It's kind of kludgy internally, but I guess from the user's perspective it will be a lot nicer. Similiar to firewire drives, but >4x faster.
un-upgradeable except by pitching them into the landfill and buying a whole new system.
It's funny that you seem to dislike the bad old standards so much, yet you also don't want to throw any of it way. I'm confused.
Re:Is it time to put IDE on the ash heap of histor (Score:2)
Where do you think I get my stuff? (Hey, I've got a PC-XT and an Apple II I'm still planning to find uses for.)
But seriously, if you have a perfectly good Compaq case and power supply holding a 486 board and you find a good deal on a Gateway Socket 7 (or the other way around brand wise), it's really annoying that one's got the video jack where the other has the keyboard and mouse or vise versa and IBM, Dell, and HP also seem to play the almost but not quite compatible game as well, which means a lot of otherwise usable stuff doesn't make it to the end of it's working life before somebody gets tired of trying to pound square pegs into round holes and sets it aside to gather dust and goes out and spends more money. Even if you find what you need on eBay the addition of shipping costs run the price up to where you might as well buy something new from a local store where you can return it if it breaks.
I probably included PCI because of all the suffering I've done with Plug and Pray and the IRQ shuffle on PCI slots as well.
If they're going to bring out new stuff that's not completely compatible with legacy stuff, then why not make a clean break with something new and completely incompatible designed from the ground up with both eyes on the future instead of one on the future and one on the past? Something that eliminates all the problems we've been fighting since '81 and trys to anticipate and avoid any new aggravations.
By the way, just what kind of old computer junk can you use? (if you weren't kidding)
Re:Is it time to put IDE on the ash heap of histor (Score:1)
Yeah, OEMs do love to play those kinds of games. Too bad, but I guess they like being the single source (and being able to charge amounts which match that status for spare parts).
By the way, just what kind of old computer junk can you use? (if you weren't kidding)
I think this sums it up: link [jhu.edu].