Re: (OT) Storage (8*IDE HDs) any experiences?
On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 12:49:13AM -0500, Rahul Jain wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 09:33:19PM -0700, Brandon High wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 09:42:16PM -0400, mdanish@andrew.cmu.edu wrote:
> > > IDE causes a bit of a performance hit, I don't think we're talking high
> > > speed file access here though... cheap is the objective.
> >
> > You'd be suprised at the performance hit. I had 2 drives/channel and
> > suffered from really bad performance with the on-board Ultra66 controller. I
> > installed a PCI controller (Promise Ultra 66) and put every drive on its own
> > channel. Things are much happier now and about 3x faster. The best part is
> > that the card only costs about $25.
>
> Yep, but the problem there is figuring out how to get each channel on a unique
> IRQ. With some BIOSes, it's just not possible.
Yeah but we don't need no stinkin' performance for this particular
application. We expect to receive large volumes of data (1TB/yr) that
will be backed up on tape upon arrival. Occasionally somebody will want
to retrieve some of it. So, they could just send us an e-mail and a tape
monkey could restore the file in question. It's just that a) we'd like
to have another copy of the data anyway, just in case, and b) all things
considered, IDE drives are cheaper than tapes.
Of course, a wall of 8-drive peecees will have heaps of its own problems.
Dima
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