Got|Apex? Iwill Side RAID100 Review 02/26/2001

[DARTH]

This is where you can post your comments on our review of the Iwill Side RAID100 review.
Thanks for reading,
DARTH

[hojo802]

Nice review!!!

I am currently looking into buying a ATA-100 Raid card. In your review, you basically install the card and install Windows 2000 together. Now, what if you are putting into an existing system with Windows 2000? Do I have to install Windows 2000 all over again? Do I have to turn off the IDE controller on the motherboard? So far I have heard mixed answers so just want to see have run into any of these problems.


Thank you!

[DARTH]

Well I haven't done this but if you are using a RAID you will have to reinstall Win2k as you will have to stripe the drives. As far as I know this will make the data on both drives used useless so you will need to reformat. You also do not have to turn off the IDE controllers. And Welcome to our forums :)

[b0n3z]

Just curious - what stripe sizes are available.. and what did you use to test. Is there a performance gain for certain size files on your drives with certain stripe sizes?

Also - no performance test on RAID 1? I know some people need redundancy - for biz stuff... and Some controllers do RAID 1 better than others.

Can cache be added to the board? or How much is included? (I may have missed that in the article - but I doubt that it has an option for upgrade)

Thanks,

[originally said RAID 0 - ment to ask RAID 1]

[DARTH]

If you read the review you will see that we only tested RAID 0 and that the test ran were using a RAID 0 array. I used a stripe size of 64. No you can not add cache either as I have yet to see an IDE RAID device at the consumer level that allows for such and upgrade.

[wga22]

Last week lpmiller posted a link to a review of a raid motherboard. The performance difference wasnt nearly as dramatic for small files vs ATA100. Have you read this article, and do you have a comment about it?

I think your results make more sense! Good article.

How important would you think raid would be to a hard core user and or gamer?

[LPMiller]

Well, unlike ATA 100, some RAID controllers are just better than others. Also, the harddrives I used were 5400 RPM drives, which will give slower performance. So you will see some variance - storaagereview.com has shown that before in their RAID reviews.

I don't know about darth, but most folks don't need RAID 0 for gaming purposes. Storage Review had a nice piece up about that - RAID 0 is better suited to content providers, those in video editing, sound editing - anywhere that requires large file transfers across the drive.

It won't hurt you, though ;D

[speaks to electric box]

Anyone try the sideraid66 highpointpt368... they are $20 shipped from Computer geeks. Any good?

[wga22]

Originally posted by speaks to electric box
Anyone try the sideraid66 highpointpt368... they are $20 shipped from Computer geeks. Any good?
I am curious too.

[DARTH]

Haven't tried it but I have read numerous complaints about compatibilty problems with the side RAID66.

[Bandito]

I enjoyed the article too, and am looking forward to my profit sharing check! I see computer parts in my future!

[Mr Alien]

I've had trouble in the past with getting an IDE RAID card (a promise one though) to return after going into Suspend To Ram mode in Win2000. Does the motherboard you are using support Suspend To RAM? If it does can you check if it will suspend and then return to Win2000?
I really miss my RAID setup, but want to keep Suspend To RAM (it's a great feature) (: .
Thanks!

[DuyetB]

Ok, I read the review and i kind of like it, but there are several thing i like to point out!

1st. To get a fair performance test out, you can't just use sandra software. there are severa one like winbench 99, hdtach and so on which is very important also. sandra soft is not the best one out there.
2nd. Compare it to a better device then the via 686b bridge controller. Via686B is know to have problems on the UltraATA100 side, it's best to compare to some Intel815 Controller, or Promise Ultra100, or FastTrack100 Raid Card.
You will then see the performance different.
3rd. Please give more details on the how the setup for the benchmark was done, type of harddrive, model, how it's setup, # of drives....

I personally have several system contain
Promise Ultra100
Via 686B
FastTrack100
and it seem to me like that having IDE raid controller is only good when you do video editing, capture....
not much impact on gaming, and so on.
plus the harddrive you have hook up to the raid controller is also very important, if you have 1 slow and 1 fast, will not give performance gain at all. the drivers are prefered to be same rpm, transfer rate... which it will work best.
because the concept of raid is (# of drive * performance of slowest drive) but that's not always true. actual use seem ot be 2(identical drive) give about 40% boost over 1x drive
3(identical drive) give about 100% boost over 1 drive
4(identical drive) give about 180% boost over 1 drive
Programs which will benefit from this stuff is mainly video editing, windows 2000.... and major programs like that, not your internet explorer, or quake 3 games's frame rate....

[DCook]

good review! i am using raid arrays on 3 machines. they are well worth the time and $$. if you get a chance, i believe it would be worthwhile to compare the Promise raid card(s) -vs- the Iwill cards. for folks wanting one, check out computergeeks, they have them for under $50.00

[DoPeY5007]

Ok here we go...I just ordered this card.....

I have one question...

I want to run dual boot on my PC....

I am going to put two Maxtor 30gig 7200rpm drives on the RAID. My question is can I partition the drives on the raid into two drives so I can put Win2k on one?

[BurningSheep]

Is it possible to install Win2k and Win98 on it without also having a diskdrive connected to a standard IDE controller on your mobo? Coz it seems to me your bios isn't going to detect the drive.

And

What about the pci bus? how does it handle this kind of traffic, when it also has to send data to other devices or is this not a problem?

[DoPeY5007]

ok I got my system with 98se and 2k...



I have the two maxtors on the RAID, (formated as two drives)...

I have a 20gig and a 30gig on my on board promise66 controlera, and a 12x dvd and a 12x plextor on the standerd ide...


i only have data fils on the promise drives and when I need to access them it does seam to slow down my system, also the screen savor in Win2k is extreamly slow....

I don't have any IRQ conflicts...


So i do think that the PCI bus get confused with all the trafic...

BUT THE RAID IS FAST AS HELL....