RAID & SATA NEWB!

[Astinius]

I am researching buying SATA drives and a RAID controller to plug them into.

I am reading about a new (to me) pci interface called PCI-X. When did this format come out and is it on only newer mother boards?

I believe my motherboard has only a 33mhz PCI 2.2 interface.

My other question is, What size partition can I create safely in Windows XP? Lets say I create a 300gb RAID5 array. What is the largest size partition can I create out of that 300gb array in Windows XP?

Also, can anyone recommend a good SATA controller card that is around $300?

Thanks for the help,

 

[fishmahn]

Do you mean PCI-X, a 66mhz server implementation of PCI? It's been around for years. You probably mean PCIe (PCI Express). Its the next upgrade to PCI and has been out for about a year now. Eventually it will replace PCI. If you buy a PCIe motherboard, for now, you'll have both PCI and PCIe slots and they're not interchangeable.

300GB. The real limit is something in the multiple-terabyte range, and I haven't heard anyone hitting a reliable limit yet. Practical ones, yes, but in a server situation, I'd bet a terabyte partition is quite stable.

I've never needed to use a controller card so I can't help with a suggestion there.

Mike.

 

[Astinius]

Thanks for the help.

BUS: I am looking at a bunch of different SATA RAID controllers and some say:

64-bit 66MHz PCI 2.2
32-bit 33MHz PCI 2.2
133MHz PCI-X

I have a Intel motherboard I bought 2 years ago, so I suppose I have to check the manual to see what bus specifcation I have?

PARTITION SIZE: I am confused, I bought a 200gb IDE HD that came with its own controller and in the documentation it stated that the maximum size partition I could create in Windows XP was something like 127gb before you would start gettting corruption errors. Was this a limitation of the hardware controller or the operating system?

 

[dunklegend]

I think that problem was solved in SP2 if you have Windows XP because I have a 200GB drive in only one partition and I can "see" it just fine

 

[Astinius]

"I think that problem was solved in SP2 if you have Windows XP because I have a 200GB drive in only one partition and I can "see" it just fine"

If this is true then I will be very happy. Can anyone else confirm this?

I have dreamed of creating massive single partitions. I have created 127gb and larger partitions, the OS can see them, but have experienced data corruption with data stored on those size partitions, so I have always created multiple partitions of 120gb or less to be safe.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Astinius on 04/21/05 07:14 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Astinius]

What about creating a 20gb boot partition, installing Base WinXP. Then patching the OS to SP2 and then mounting the 127+ partition within the OS?

Or is the only way this is going to work is to install the OS from a XP CD that has been patched with SP2?

Thanks again for all the help.

 

[dmroeder]

like wusy said, google "slipstream SP2" and it will tell you how to add SP2 to your windows xp disk.