Adaptec 6805 boot time

If you'll be using the same hard disks, then I wouldn't expect much difference.

You still need to backup important files to external media because a RAID is not a good backup strategy. What if the system gets stolen, destroyed or files are deleted by mistake?

Dont worry, I know how to do safe data storage, that's not the point of this post.

As for the fact of using the same drives. Its not the drives that are in question here. The card takes about 20 seconds just to bootup and 3-4 seconds to scan the arrays. The 20 seconds bootup time is what I am looking to reduce. At that point, the card is just getting ready and its not doing anything else but that, with or without an array to scan, its gonna take those 20 seconds.

So how long does the 6 series take?

You should contact Adaptec and ask them, but even if you saved 15 seconds, is the upgrade worth it? Most RAID controller that I'm familiar with take even longer to initialize, but since they usually are installed in servers that rarely are rebooted, it's a moot point.

Did you read this review? http://thessdreview.com/featured/lsi-9265-8i-megaraid-c... It won't answer your original question, but it's an interesting test. Note that the LSI probably doesn't initialize any faster than the Adaptec.

Yeah I checked with Adaptec, no answer for now but its still too short a timeframe to have an answer, I'm expecting something by the end of next week.

A 15 second less boot time won't be the main point in me buying an adaptec vs something else but it has a say in the final decision. If two similar cards with similar specs compete and one has considerably shorter boot time, then I'll be going towards the one with less boot time delay. If instead I would get the adaptec vs the LSI you suggested in the review, knowing the LSI "could" have a longer boot time, then the LSI might still be the best solution.

So don't worry about it, i'm not just gonna go senslessly towards a card that has less boot time and forget about evrything else. Having the stat would help me make a better decision tho.

I checked a few reviews of different cards like the one toms did here and the adaptec had its plus and minuses depending on the situation and need and price target, however the LSI you are pointing at on the review appears to be quite awesome, I especially like the particularly lower response time in the tests. I doubt that my array will push any of the 2 cards to their limit, but response time can have an effect overrall even if the card is not being stressed. Hmm, not the same price range tho but still worth considering.

Will have to ask LSI about their boot time too heh.

(BTW, if someone still has a series 6 adaptec card and knows the boot time, I am still looking for an answer should adaptec itself decide not to answer!)

You should refer to the card's initialization time. Testing the cache memory, starting the hard disks, making sure that they are online and ready to use, etc. takes time, no matter what controller is installed. Using SSDs should decrease the initialization time, but their cost still is rather high.

raid cards are always slow to start THERE A SERVER PRODUCT its expected

raid 10 is not "safe" it mirror's corruptuon, virus's and deletion it only defends again a single drive failure dont kid yourself

SSD for OS and main commonly used software/games the rest on another average large drive make sure you back your stuff up thats about it

Raid 10 can defend against more than one drive failure depending on how many drives you've got and which drives fail. If you are not lucky, its possible that a raid 10 fails if 2 drives fail at the same time. But whatever, that's not the point of this post argh.

Lets limit the thread to the card's init time only, leave out the array scan time then.

I don't need to know anything else other than that. I understand you are trying to help me and thanks for that but I already know the general stuff. I just need to know the init time.

Its months later... did you get an answer... I just hooked mine up it takes 2-3 minutes and it's annoying, what else is annoying is that you said your computer is always on... so who cares about boot time for a one time event?

Thanks for asking! A friend of mine bought a series 7 so I asked him and it appears to take about as long as my series 3 to boot.

As for the always on, not quite sure you understood right, I am actually closing my computer everyday when i'm not using it so its not staying 100% of the time up. More like 25% during a whole day heh.

Still, can't fault Adaptec for that. The card is more meant for an always online setup, I am a bit of an odd case for that kind of card. Budget on my end changed a bit since the last post on this thread so I am holding to my series 3 card for the moment.

GOTCHA. when I originally read your post I thought you said on 100% of the time, now I see it says NOT online 100%,,, yeah it's a big pain, but what can you do.

What I find more frustrating is I am building a 4 X 3tb RAID5 and I can't see the progress anywhere...

My 6805 takes over 1.5 minutes to POST. It's extremely annoying. Without it my PC boots to desktop in 5 seconds. I finally moved it to my server and am accessing my array over iSCSI. I'm considering using InfiniBand to get over the 1Gbps Ethernet limitation.