Hi all

 

I have an unRaid system built around a dual-xeon Asus PCH-DL (2x 2.8GHz underclocked to 1.6GHz).

 

My drive config presently comprises 2x 500gb ata drives on motherboard channels 1 & 2 and a 1TB SATA drive employed as parity on motherboard SATA and a 120GB SATA Drive as cache, on a separate mb sata controller.

 

I'm getting between 25 - 30 Mb/s. read/write

 

I'm wondering if I add in something like an Adaptec AAR-1420SA PCI-X-133/66; 4-Channel RAID-0/1 and add on a couple of 3 TB sata drives, will I see improved performance? (will likely retire the 2x ata drives)

 

If yes, and in this config, should I be adding my cache drive and/or parity drive to the card as well?

 

Should I consider adding two of these cards and having all my SATA drives connected via pci-x and bypassing motherboard sata?

 

Thoughts appreciated.

 

Peter

 

 

25 / 30MBs is pretty good.

Not too much you can do to improve this by adding a card.

 

If you want to expand I would go with the Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 card instead.

8 Ports PCI-X and cheaper.

 

Retiring the 2 ATA drives and going to all SATA will improve your parity check/sync speeds.

Not regular write speeds unless you parity is on one of those drives.

 

Using the fastest parity drive available will also help.

I use the Seagate 7200RPM 1.5TB drives.

Putting that drive on the fastest bus will help.

I have not determined if the onboard motherboard ports are PCI. (I'm trying to download the manual, but it's taking forever).

 

Migrating drives to the PCI-X bus will also improve speed.

The PCI-X bus is double width of the PCI bus (64bits vs 32bits) and it is probably 66MHZ which makes it twice as fast as PCI (66Mhz vs 32Mhz).

So the possibility exists for a great improvement in speed. yet realize that your drives still dictate the maximum sustainable speed.

 

I would not invest significantly into this board, but $100 for the Supermicro card is a decent option.

The prices I saw for the adaptec were @ $250 and I would not recommend that path.

 

EDIT:  manual

http://dlcdnas.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/Socket604/PCH-DL/e1571_pch-dl.pdf

 

It looks as though 2 ports are off the chipset which means they may not be limited to the PCI bus.

The PCI-X are 66Mhz/64 bits. Faster the regular PCI.

The other boards are on the promise chip. Undetermined if it is on the PCI bus or hooked to the PCI-X bus.

It could also be running at 66Mhz which is a boost over regular PCI.

Many thanks for your speedy and comprehensive reply.

 

I'll find a local supplier of that particular card and see what results I get. You're correct, of course, pointig out that I don't want to invest too much in the Asus board, however, it's hardware I have and is doing the job.

 

Peter

 

My adaptec 1420SA doesnt play nice with unRAID when I last checked it, also it only runs at 66Mhz (OK for your bord currently but your next one might be faster). The on board promise is a PCI device so 133mb/s. The PCI slots are also 33mhz/133mb/s shared. The other two sata ports sit on the SB but appear to be bridge type IDE/SATA convertors so could be slightly better performance wise than the Promise.

 

Write speed of 25mb/s to a protected array is good. If that is writes to a cache drive you could do better with a newer drive and a PCI-x controller. If you could pick up a 3ware 9500s 4 port cheap that would be a good match (66mhz limited). As weebo mentioned the Supermicro is good card. A 8 port 3ware 9550sx should also work if you can find one at a reasonable price.

 

PCI-x at 66Mhz is 512MB/s, 8 drives @ 64MB/s. This is shared so if you add two contollers they theoretically get 256MB/s each.

 

You dont mention your current parity speed. This where you would pickup most speed with a PCI-x controller, that and the new disks being faster.

I'd keep one of the ATA drives a cache drive (133mb/s and no device contention). PCI-x controller with new parity disk, new data and current 1tb parity disk.  I'd retire the 120GB sata as it is probably the weakest link performance wise.