Hdds on Raid PCI + Hdd on Mobo IDE, is it possible

[quadmaster]

Hi All

I am new here and i am having lot of doubts related To RAID

1. When Hard Disks are connected in PCI RAID Configuration
be it any 0/1/2/3/4/ .... and the IDE Hdd sockets on my motherboard are empty can i connect hdd over there for extra storage or is it so when hdds are connected to the
Raid controller we cannot use the IDE connectors which are free on the motherboard.

Setup I Want

Mother Board
|
|-PCI RAID Controller (any RAID Config)
| |
| |--HDD In Master and Slave Attached To PCI RAID
|
|
IDE Connectors On The Mother Board (ATA/SATA)may be 2
|
|--HDD Master (Is It Possible to connect)
|--HDD Slave (Is It Possible to connect)

2. Can A Raided HDD be partitioned into any number of partitions using Fdisk.

3. Can we have diffrent File Systems with diffrent OS on a
RAID based HDD eg. FAT32,NTFS,ext2/3 etc..

4. When Using Raid 0 i.e. Stripping it has been observed that the performance increses to a very good extent what is the probablity that one of the hdd might not fail and if it fails is it no way in the world possible to recover data from it.

Please Help me in my doubts i am new to the concept of RAID.

I hope you can understand my doubts.
I tried the best on my part.

Also Recommend the best RAID config for
-Faster Performance.
-Easy Backup After Crash.
-Security.
Tell me the minimum no. of HDD's that would be required for it.
And a Suitable PCI Raid Controller for It.

Expecting a Lot from your Side.
Please Post your Valuable Views

Thankyou

 

[sjonnie]

Answers

1. Yes, you can use onboard IDE and PCI card IDE drives together. There is in essence no difference, the onboard controller is plugged into the PCI bus the same as your add-in card.

2. Yes, software sees RAID arrays as just one disk to do with as you please.

3. On separate partitions, naturally, just like you could on any other disk.

4. The chance of failure is naturally the chance of failure for 1 drive multiplied by the number of disks in the array, i.e. for 2 drives, twice the chance of failure, for 3 drives three times the chance and so on. When a hard disk goes belly up there is no easy way to recover the data. A RAID0 works likes one big disk so if any disk in the array fails you will loose everything on the disk, just like you would loose everything on a single disk.

So the minimum requirements for

Performance - depends what you want to acheive. Some people need fast continuous reads (loading large files into memory during games) in which case RAID0 will help with that.

Backup - should always be separated from the used data. RAID isn't security against data corruption. Say you had a RAID1 and deleted a file accidentally or overwrote some data. This would automatically be mirrored on the other disk so your only means of recovery would be your backup.

Security - RAID1. This is security only against disk failure. Say you have a server with maximum uptime requirement. Then you might want to put the OS on a RAID1 so in the event of disk failure the other disk can substitute whilst you replace the failed disk and rebuild the array. There are variations on this kind of security, RAID10, RAID5 etc.

The minimum number of disks for RAID0 and RAID1 is 2. For RAID5 it is 3 and RAID10 is 4. Get a controller from <A HREF="http://www.highpoint-tech.com" target="_new">Highpoint</A>.


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[quadmaster]

First Of all i would like to thankyou for answering my question - sjonnie

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Quote
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1. Yes, you can use onboard IDE and PCI card IDE drives together. There is in essence no difference, the onboard controller is plugged into the PCI bus the same as your add-in card.
-----------------------------------------------------------

The onboard IDE Controller is not a RAID Controller is a normal HDD Connector i would like to make it clear

What if the onboard IDE Connector is a RAID Connector will i would be able to use it with the PCI RAID Controller

Please POST your views thanks again

 

[sjonnie]

The onboard controllers are no different to add-in controllers, they are just built-in PCI devices. So your on board IDE controller or onboard RAID controller are no different from an add-in card you might install in the add-in slots.

RAID controllers are not always compatible with each other. If you want more than 1 in a system it is advisable to check that they are going to be compatible first. You cannot use more than 1 Promise controller in a system. Highpoint controllers are more compatible but sometimes the drivers will have the same file name which means you would have to use the same driver for both devices, which can lead to problems. I've never had enough money to try multiple 3ware or Adaptec cards.

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[Crashman]

Onboard/offboard doesn't really matter, you can use as many drive controllers as you like. You do have to make sure only 1 drive controller is bootable. For example, if you have 1 PCI RAID controller and you want to boot from that, you set your motherboard BIOS to boot off SCSI first, since it treats any PCI drive controller as SCSI (even if it's IDE or SATA, the board doesn't know the difference).

You could have 2 or 3 RAID cards and still use the onboard controller. You would have to set only 1 of those as bootable in RAID BIOS, or set the onboard controller as bootable in motherboard BIOS.

The only problems I've seen is where drive controllers share an IRQ.

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