Unified Serial RAID Controllers for PCIe

Features
By Patrick Schmid
published

ICP 5085BL

Firmware Version: 5.2.0 Build 12415

This product technically equals the Adaptec RAID 3805, mostly because ICP Vortex is part of the Adaptec group. The sample we had lacked RAID 6 and the copyback feature at first, which was due to an outdated firmware version. An update unlocked RAID 6 support and even the copyback spare feature. There is, however, a significant difference between Adaptec’s RAID 3805 and the ICP 5085BL: ICP uses the faster IOP processor IOP333 running at 800 MHz, while the Adaptec RAID 3805 has a 500 MHz clock speed. ICP also uses 256 MB DDR2 of cache memory with ECC support, while Adaptec sticks to 128 MB. The result is somewhat higher performance in RAID 5 across the benchmarks. The features, software and the box content equal what we found inside the Adaptec box.

Patrick Schmid
4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Rik
    ...well,
    - Unless RaidCore is trying to peddle their VST Pro software,...aka as Fulcrum proprietary based ? which BTW you said no to, I don't see any advantages here.
    Why?, ZFS is free !
    And, where are the Drives for Solaris, or the xBSD's , or even MacOSX !!!?
    -and still no, becuase their newer 54xx series doesn't support the other 'ix OS's.
    Nope, unfortunately, not much to see here.
    so, based on the above, Adaptec 5805,... or Areca,... blows this.

    -Rikster
    Reply
  • aapocketz
    For SAS, the two connector segments were merged, which makes it possible to attach a SAS drive to a SATA controller using the continuous connector, but you cannot hook up a SAS hard drive to a SATA controller using the SATA connector (SFF 8482).


    I think this paragraph has an error. I believe it should read

    For SAS, the two connector segments were merged, which makes it possible to attach a SATA drive to a SAS controller using the continuous connector, but you cannot hook up a SAS hard drive to a SATA controller using the SATA connector (SFF 8482).

    In fact I believe the statement should have less emphasis on the connector as its the actual controller that appears to limit the connectivity, the connector is just keyed to allow you to plug SATA drives into SAS but not the other way around.

    from wikipedia: "SATA 3.0 Gbit/s drives may be connected to SAS backplanes, but SAS drives may not be connected to SATA backplanes."

    I believe the fact that signaling voltages are nearly double on a SAS drive is significant to mention.

    Let me know if I am wrong, I just started playing around with a bunch of SAS drives so I am figuring this out as I go.
    Reply
  • Factors like spindle speed, density, latency etc. effects drive performance as much or more than bandwidth. A 300GB 2.5 15K SAS drive will smoke a 1TB 7200 SATA drive simply because it has about twice the IOPS. The bandwidth is meaningless if you can't get the data on and off the disk at the speed of the bus. Furthermore, except for the WD Velociraptor 10K+ spindle speed drives are non-existent in SATA but are prevalent in SAS. So from an interface standpoint they are very close but SAS drives are really intended for entirely different markets and applications and budgets I might add.
    Reply
  • Bicom Systems
    Great article - thanks for the comparison! We also did a piece on SAS and SATA, if you're interested : http://blog.bicomsystems.com/sas-vs-sata
    Reply