Hi-Rely RAIDFrame: External Disk-To-Disk Backup Via eSATA

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Benchmark Results: Windows Backup

Since the RAIDFrame is a backup device, I decided to see what the backup performance would be like on each RAIDPac configuration. I also added a couple of the other drives for the sake of comparison, including our internal SATA Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB drive and a USB SimpleTech (re)drive external drive. For the backup software, I stuck to using the Windows Backup Utility that comes with Windows Server 2003. I generated a directory of 782 files totaling 30.1GB and ran five backups to each drive using a quick batch script that executed the Backup Utility via command line.

For granularity’s sake, I decided to show the resulting times for each disk’s five tests. The fastest average backup time goes to drive I:, which is the RAIDPac configured with three 1TB disk drives set to RAID 5. The fastest this RAIDPac finished a backup job in was 2,548 seconds (roughly 42.47 minutes), and as the illustration shows, three of the five test runs ran in under than 2,750 second mark.

The drive with the slowest average backup speed was the SimpleTech external USB (re)drive, which should be expected, since it’s the only non-SATA connected drive in the test. Compared to the SATA disks, none of its test runs finished below 2,750 seconds (45.83 minutes). 

The last test I ran was a full recovery of all 30.1GB worth of files from each of the disks, including the SimpleTech (re)drive USB external drive. As in the backup test, I ran the Windows Backup Utility to see how long it would take to get files recovered from each drive into a designated local folder on the main disk. The average presented is based on the drives being tested five times, one after the other. This produced the following results:

23 Comments Comment from the forums
  • paxiam
    A good solid well written article. Keep up the good work.
    Reply
  • yyrkoon
    Perhaps I missed something, But I am curious as to how they got 3 drives per port on the port multiplier. I am familiar with port multipliers, but not the technology they use here apparently.

    Also, on a side note, I think this device would be more useful if it allowed you to run RAID 10, but with two out ports. Perhaps even multilane would be in order in this case ?
    Reply
  • yyrkoon
    Let me clarify what I said above. I feel the device would be "better" if they allowed it to be configured to run RAID 10 using two RAIDPacks.
    Reply
  • jeffunit
    Nice hardware, but a bit spendy. My software based raid 5 array has higher performance over gigabit ethernet, uses commodity parts, and is much cheaper. I am sure my array costs well under $1000 with 8 750gb drives. Since I am using supermicro hot swap sata drive cages, all I have to do is press a button and the drive comes out. 4 screws, and the drive is removed. Takes well under 5 minutes to remove a drive and put in a new one, and it just takes a philips screwdriver.

    And why are there two 450w power supplies? Even if the box is full, that is 30 watts per drive, which is a crazy amount of power. If they stagger the drive spin up, they would never need more than 225w tops.
    Reply
  • climber
    This should be a 6Gb/s SATA 3.0 design with port multipliers. If you wanted to back up serious amounts of data to this thing you'd never finish, it would always be in backup mode.
    Reply
  • micky_lund
    wow...this is really cheap stuff
    Reply
  • ZakTheEvil
    Highly Reliable Systems? The company name is Highly Reliable Systems???

    Reply
  • so if one of the three drives should fail inside a RAIDpac, you have to eject the whole RAIDpac to replace that drive?
    That sets the RAID offline ... a RAID 5 should be allow hotswapping a failed disk.

    And two PSU but not redundant ? ... doens't seem very HIGH RELIABLE
    Reply
  • thehighrelyguy
    Although some of these points were mentioned in the article, not being on the front page, these important features may have been missed by a few readers and may answer some of your questions.

    1. Each RAID pack has an integrated RAID 5 / RAID 0 controller. This means the RAIDPACs can operate completely standalone without the addition of any special controllers or driver software. Thus, left with nothing but a RAIDPac, you could connect it via eSATA to your motherboard and restore the data.

    2. The RAIDpacs use standard SATA hard drives. At present, 2.0TB drives are available making the available capacities 4TB in RAID 5 and 6TB in RAID 0 per RAID pack.

    3. There is also a 1 bay RAIDFrame available which can use RAIDPacs interchangeably with the 5 Bay if necessary. The one bay has both ESATA and USB connections for portability and ease of connection. The one bay is substantially cheaper than the 5 bay.

    4. The dual ATX power supplies were chosen over specialty redundant power supplies because they are the most widely available power supply in the world making field service for this unit in the dead of the night, practical. The 1 bay has this same feature. By using two instead of one, if a power supply dies, you're not dead, the unit is still usable although some bays may not function.

    Reply
  • thehighrelyguy
    yyrkoonPerhaps I missed something, But I am curious as to how they got 3 drives per port on the port multiplier. The RAIDFrame is not a single RAID system. The RAIDFrame 5 bay is 5 RAID systems. Each hot swappable RAIDPac is a volume. Port multipliers allow up to 5 volumes (drives) to one SATA channel. Hence one SATA channel, 5 RAIDPacs.
    Reply