Onboard EIDE vs. PCI SATA Card

[technochick]

I want to build my first unRAID system from an old Dell Dimension 8300. I plan to use this system to archive family photos. Since it will not be used to stream video, performance is not as critical. But I would like to ask a few "performance" questions just to make certain this system isn't too old to be a reasonable platformer.

 

System specs:  3 GHz Pentium 4, 1 GB RAM, 2 SATA I ports on motherboard, 10/100 Mb/s Ethernet on motherboard, PCI bus, PCI Gb/s Ethernet NIC, 350 Antec BP350 ATX power supply.

 

I've removed the 2 DVD drives and plan to install a 3-in-2 ICY DOCK drive bay (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994026) to hold three data drives. I plan to mount the parity drive internally.

 

I'll need to add additional SATA ports through a PCI card. I've seen a post recommending the PCI SATA II Promise Tx4 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816102065&cm_re=promise_tx4-_-16-102-065-_-Product) and the PCI SATA I Rosewille 209-EX 4 port (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132013&Tpk=rosewill%20209).

 

Questions:

 

1) Is there any reason to pay extra for a PCI SATA II controller or will the PCI bus be maxed out by several drives at SATA I speeds? (BTW, I  plan to connect the parity drive to one of the SATA ports on the motherboard.)

 

2) Any comments on the performance hit of having to use a gigabit Ethernet controller and SATA controller on the PCI bus instead of directly on the motherboard?

 

3) If I understand correctly, the Antec BP350 is not a single rail power supply. Comments on running four hard drives with it?

 

4) This motherboard also has EIDE ports. Comments on EIDE ports on motherboard vs. SATA I ports on PCI bus card?

 

I know there's not a lot of interest in this type of old system. But if you have knowledge you wish to share or can point me to earlier posts that address any of these questions, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks for any information you can share!

 

 

 

[BRiT]

On typical non-server motherboard the PCI bus is a basic version 2.1 32bit 33mhz bus. That particular bus has a maximum combined bandwidth of 133 MB/sec for ALL devices. For this reason, it is best to not put your parity drive or frequently written to data drive on the PCI bus. You should put those two on the motherboard SATA ports.

 

1) Not particularly. You'll be limited by the PCI bus anyways.

 

2) The speed limitation comes into play when doing parity checks (reads of all drives), parity builds (reads of all drives and writes to parity), rebuilding of a failed drive (read of all data drives and parity drive and writes to new replacement drive), or simulating a drive that failed (read of all remaining data drives and parity drive). Assuming you will have 3 equal sized drives on the PCI SATA and the parity (and possibly 1 additional data drive) on the mb, you will be limited to a maximum parity check speed of 44 MB/sec. This is calculated by taking 133 MB/sec and dividing by the number of drives 3. The situations of parity builds and rebuilding of a failed drive will have a lower limit since it must also perform disk writes.

 

3) -

 

4) It may be a wash since EIDE drives are significantly older than SATA drives and will naturally be slower since they're using older technology relating to platter density, sector density, smaller caches, and extra overhead in the protocol. It also depends if you're using EIDE SLAVE and MASTER devices on the same channel, since only one can be in use at a time.

[technochick]

Thanks so much BRiT for your reply! You have helped quantify my generalized performance expectations. I appreciate you taking the time to provide that clear explanation.

[Kaygee]

On a cheapie system like this, an IDE/SATA dongle maybe just what you need. They are cheap, work reasonably well, providing you dont want to use a big HDD (500GB should be OK, 1TB might work, might not) are quite effective.

 

I found using the single channel convertors work best. Assuming you have two SATA channels on the M/B.  A sata dongle will get you you extra channel for the basic unRAID "3 drive" config. Minimal cost (no licence). Adding fourth disk means running licenced version. Just running three means they are all easily accessible.

 

Now the potential advantage to using a EIDE connector on some older boards is that they don't necessarily sit on shared PCI bus, often instead sit directly on the S/B or wired into a separate PCI channel into the S/B. One of my older gigabyte boards did just this and left me baffled for a while why it was better performance wise than the same system running just on pci/sata.

 

I'd definetly get a PCI Gb NIC, they are cheap and generally well supported. Most of the time >95% you'll be reading from the array so performance wont be an issue.

 

PSU should be OK with three hard drives. Four might be fun. Try to stick to low power green drives. Cooling will be fun with four drives. Dell machines do not tend to have either great PSUs or cooling.   

[technochick]

Thanks, Kaygee. I wasn't aware that there are IDE/SATA converters. That opens up new possibilities. The system currently contains an ATA/IDE 7200 rpm 160GB drive connected to one of the two ATA-100 ports. Perhaps I'll use this as my second data drive for a while. Later I could replace it with an inexpensive 500GB SATA drive using a dongle. Thanks for this useful information!

[WeeboTech]

Later I could replace it with an inexpensive 500GB SATA drive using a dongle. Thanks for this useful information! Smiley

 

The only problem with this is the converters may or may not operate at full speed.

I had this issue with a set of converters.

I used an EIDE -> SATA converter and they ran really slow.

Just be aware they are not all created equal.

[stoner]

You may check out my previous thread below for reference. The IDE interface can be useful if it is implemented on a separate bus from the PCI one.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4285.0

[technochick]

Thanks! I've got a WD black 1.5 TB parity drive on order. This weekend I'll try hooking it up to one of the onboard SATA I ports. To get started I'm going to use an old 160GB EIDE data drive on one of the onboard IDE ports and an old 120GB SATA I data drive on the second onboard SATA I ports. Once I learn my way around managing an unRAID server I'll begin to migrate to larger data drives (as my budget permits). This is gonna be fun! Thanks again.

[PhoenixNZ]

Just a note for connecting a SATA II drive to a SATA I controller.  Some drives have a jumper on them to make them run at SATA I Speed, while other drives/manufacturers have software control, ie:  download a program to set SATA I or II on the drive.

 

I know some drives try to auto-negotiate, but my experience is they don't do this well with certain chipsets.

 

My two cents, hope it helps.