RAIDCore Unleashes SATA to Take Out SCSI

RAIDCore RC4852

Firmware: RC-100-2003293.1

The key to the functional scope of RAIDCore's Fulcrum Architecture, already described in detail above, is the software it is based on. According to RAIDCore, the employees of the company have some 150 years of combined knowledge about every aspect of storage technologies.

The fact is: The data model is so flexible that an array can practically be "juggled" in any manner lying within the scope of the RAIDCore developers' creativity. The result: migration from one RAID level to another, expansion of a RAID array to additional drives, the possibility of a dedicated spare and restructuring in the case of a crash, and, last but not least, even the use of a hard drive with two or more different arrays.

Unfortunately, even "playing around" with the myriad possibilities takes a good bit of time. Testing all options completely would therefore take weeks. However, we did try to highlight the best features of this controller and test them as extensively as possible below.

We did not stint on the obligatory test of a hard-disk failure. Reading from about 250 MB/s, about 130 MB/s are left in a crash. If a new drive is then inserted and designated as a spare, the rebuild begins automatically. Then the data rate drops, only about 70 MB/s remain.

Bad, but not catastrophic: A hard-disk failure cuts performance in half. If the rebuild starts, about 70 MB/s remain.