Kill SCSI II: NetCell's RAID 0 Performance + RAID 5 Security Equals SyncRAID

High-End RAID On The Desktop PC: NetCell SyncRAID / RAID XL Put To The Test

In fact, the subjective impression of a computer's performance relies heavily on the processing speed of the hard drive and/or the hard drive subsystem. A simple and effective approach is to add a RAID 0 and work alternately with two or more hard drives - this increases the read/write capacity almost directly in proportion to the number of drives used. However, the risk of data loss from a crash rises at the same time, because with four modules being run at the same time, the risk of a crash is also four times as high as when only one hard drive is being used.

As an antidote, we recommend using a RAID 5, which, although it needs an additional hard drive, still distributes parity information alternately across all drives. But access to the RAID in every case means a lot of work on the part of the so-called XOR unit that generates or checks this parity data.

NetCell practically claims to have created a true Renaissance machine, i.e. one that works on a RAID-5 level at top performance and is fail-safe at the same time. This is made possible by reactivating an almost forgotten RAID mode, namely RAID 3. A hard drive is set aside specifically for saving parity data, which on many hard drives acts as a bottleneck. However, according to its own description, NetCell has circumvented this and dubbed the new procedure RAID XL.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.