New PC need some advice

[Wearnsboy]

Hi all,

new to Tek-Tips, reccomended here by a friend and am here to get some good advice. I have just built a new PC.

A few years ago I was a PC engineer, but haven't done any proper PC work for about 4 years now and the new way of doing things has lead me to these questions. Thanks for your help.


Motherboard: Asus rampage formula


Firstly,

I have a 64Gig Solid State Drive which i want to use as my boot (windows and associated programs) drive.

I have 3 1TB Drives which i believe will be best to setup under a raid 5 system?

Secondly..

The EATX connection on the motherboard came with a blanking plate on the top 4 pins. I seem to have a 4 pin connection (which would fit with the plate in place) and an 8 pin connection (which would fit if I took the plate out.)

I take it I 'should' take out the plate and use the 8 pin connection, but I guess I want to know why the top 4 are blanked?


Thanks,

Will pop back no doubt as i think of other things.

 

[Freestone]

I don't normally refer to forums outside of Tek-Tips but kony's reply in the following covers your EATX connection well. The whole thread will probably be of interest to you:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt....ad/848ddf4970b216ad/080949d7b0489b58?lnk=raot

As far as your three 1TB drives, it comes down to a question of how much you value your data. A RAID5 array will be tolerant of a one drive failure, but you will lose 1TB of equivalent drive space to parity striping across the drives. A RAID0 drive will give you the best performance and give all 3TB to use, but at the risky cost of losing everything to a single drive failure. RAID1 mirroring loses one drive worth of space, but the third drive can be used independently, perhaps as a backup to the mirror?

I can't comment on the solid-state drive as I have no experience with them.

I am confident others will post there comments on your RAID question.

 

[SimonDavies]

If you're planning on using the SSD as your boot drive you would be advised not to use Vista as it currently has serious problems with having the bootfiles on an SSD.

The 8pin EATX connector goes back to the days when CPU's needed more power to it, I only use the 4 pin connector on my Striker II Extreme (with a QX9650) so I wouldn't worry too much.

As far as disk usage is concerned, only you can answer how important your data is. Do you want speed or redunancy?

Simon

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[wahnula]

Wearnsboy

If you set up your 3 drives as a RAID 5 array using, I presume, the built-in SATA RAID controller, you will still need a 2TB backup drive. Onboard SATA controllers are not true hardware RAID, since they use the CPU and software to handle the parity calculations.

They are also notorious for failing, and rebuilding an array of this size could very well take out a second drive, then you're SOL. RAID of any sort is never intended as a substitute for backup.

Using (2) of them as a RAID 1 array with the third as backup would be a fail-safe plan, but expensive.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[ArizonaGeek]

I would agree with Tony in that RAID should never replace a good back but I would argue about the on board raid being notorious for failing. I've got an Abit AB9 pro motherboard with the ability to do RAID 5. I've had three 400 gig drives in a RAID 5 config for over 2 years with out one hiccup.

That being said, I would imagine that it comes down to controller, motherboard and CPU being used and the usage on the RAID drives. Nothing is 100% and even a monster $25k server can lose the RAID controller. RAID 5 would give you the cheaper, fault tolerant, solution. But like Tony said, nothing replaces a good back up solution. In the end one good lightning strike, windstorm, ice storm, power surge or flood could wipe everything.

If you need a PCI or PCI-E RAID card don't buy the cheapest one you can find off Ebay, I did that and it cost me my data when it died. I spent about $120 on a RAID 5 card and within a year or two it had failed on me a couple of times. That's why I went with the Abit AB9 Pro motherboard. So far so good.

Hope it all works out for you!

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[wahnula]

Rob,

My attitude is from experience. Built-in RAID controllers have given me nothing but trouble, while true-hardware RAID controllers have proven much more reliable. My experience is with an Asus K8N-DL with both a Sil 3114 (RAID 5) and nForce4 (RAID 1) SATA RAID chips. They both let me down constantly, until I replaced them with a 3Ware card. Now reliable as can be.

My home rig has an Asus P5WDH, with Intel ICH7 or 8 I believe. It drops RAID 1 drives regularly. I could go on, but I guess for home rigs onboard SATA RAID is OK, just don't be surprised when it all turns to mush. And be prepared for it to do just that every so often.

Tony

Users helping Users...