From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 7 19:03:19 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DF17016A468 for ; Thu, 7 Jun 2007 19:03:19 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from matthew@digitalstratum.com) Received: from mail.mundomateo.com (static-24-56-193-117.chrlmi.cablespeed.com [24.56.193.117]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AAB9C13C480 for ; Thu, 7 Jun 2007 19:03:19 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from matthew@digitalstratum.com) Received: from 24.56.193.117 (localhost.mundomateo.com [127.0.0.1]) by mail.mundomateo.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B6B72BDC44; Thu, 7 Jun 2007 15:03:18 -0400 (EDT) Received: from 192.85.50.1 (SquirrelMail authenticated user matthew) by 24.56.193.117 with HTTP; Thu, 7 Jun 2007 15:03:18 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <25389.192.85.50.1.1181242998.squirrel@24.56.193.117> In-Reply-To: <20070607164653.GB95991@keira.kiwi-computer.com> References: <4662E72B.70003@digitalstratum.com> <4662F5BF.4090709@razik.de> <4663496A.40202@digitalstratum.com> <466718DC.2030600@razik.de> <46674449.6090109@digitalstratum.com> <46678017.6080602@fluffles.net> <21250.192.85.50.1.1181233456.squirrel@mundomateo.com> <20070607164653.GB95991@keira.kiwi-computer.com> Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 15:03:18 -0400 (EDT) From: "Matthew Hagerty" To: rick-freebsd@kiwi-computer.com User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.5.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Promise TX2300 array not detected. X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: matthew@digitalstratum.com List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2007 19:03:20 -0000 On Thu, June 7, 2007 12:46 pm, Rick C. Petty wrote: > On Thu, Jun 07, 2007 at 12:24:16PM -0400, Matthew Hagerty wrote: > >> >> After the second install, everything came up on the ar0 array >> and worked fine. I ran some basic stress tests and was getting 16MB/sec >> write speed and 46MB/sec read. >> >> So, I'm off to find a "real" SATA2 PCI RAID card... :-( >> > > "real" RAID cards cost an order of magnitude more than fakeraid cards. > What is your reason behind getting real hardware RAID? From my own > personal testing and online research, software RAID outperforms most real > RAID cards. So if your reasoning is based on performance gain, you may > be in for another shock. If your reasoning is so that you can multi-boot > different OSes without requiring drivers, then you may have a compelling > reason to go to hardware RAID. However, most cases fakeraid is good > enough. > > -- Rick C. Petty > > My reasoning for a hardware RAID is so I can set it and forget it. If a drive fails (I'm setting up a mirror), I want to be able to just swap the drive and carry on without worrying about having to do something at the BIOS or OS level (controller should rebuild the mirror). Performance in my case is tertiary to reliability and stability. The TX2300 might have been the wrong choice, but you would not have known from reading the marketing material... The TX2300 was also blowing errors taskqueue timeout errors (http://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org/msg01541.html) on the first machine I had it in, so now I'm a little skeptical about using the card. Matthew