I have a Highpoint RocketRAID 2300 controller. It is software RAID. I am planning on acquiring a Highpoint RocketRAID 3320 (or similar, for RAID6 on 8 drives). It is hardware RAID.
If the controller is in the southbridge, it is software RAID. A software layer sits above the disk device drivers and provides an abstraction layer between the logical drives and physical drives.
Where exactly do you think the processor is located for the ICH10R chipset?
Antman, I stand corrected :).
I got fooled by having BIOS options at boot time and being able to configure the RAID array there. So although there is some level of hardware control, the low level RAID functions are actually performed by the driver loaded in the OS. I always thought there was some amount of logic / microprocessor in the chipset that performed the lower level RAID functions while the OS ran the management / configuration options side.
I doublechecked and saw that there IS CPU activity while running HDTune on the ICH10R array, even though HDTune reports -1.0. So I'm actually quite impressed I'm getting ~450MBs from that RAID 0 from 4x Seagate 1.5TB, which is a better than the 400MBs I get from my Areca 1220 that has an Intel IOP333 and 6x Seagate 500GB, same series. The different platter configuration may play some part there though.
Thanks for the new insights!
Your challenge did motivate me to a bit of reading. It seems that a new terminology has emerged to address advances in technology. MOBO RAID can be labeled Firmware/Driver RAID. Wikipedia made me wikilaugh at the term "fake RAID" - because there are those that consider RAID0 as not being true RAID due to its lack of fault tolerance. I count myself among that number. I remain old school, nonetheless - it is either soft or hard, 0 or 1.
Sweet website. An Eritrean friend of mine has introduced me to roasting my own coffee over an open flame, one pan at a time.
Thanks! I do use a small programable roaster for my roasting. You may want to check this place out:
Home Coffee Roasting Supplies - Sweet Maria's
So, maybe we can have as generic (RAID) flavors:
TRAID - True RAID (with its own CPU),
HARAID - Half-A$$ed RAID (Mobo-hardware-assisted), and
FRAID - Fake RAID (basic drives RAIDed by the OS)
They do have a point with RAID 0. Handy as it is, there's no redundancy to be found in that (non) Redundant Array. So what could we call it??? OTOH, RAID 0 would seem to imply Zero Redundancy. Ahh, the eternal semantical discussions.
Since a single drive also offers null redundancy, I recommend RAID0 for all OS installs that will support it. Now for the evil reveal -
I get paid to fix things.
And, and thank you so much for showing me home roasting equipment?!? Did I mention that we have a one-year old? Did I mention that I am shoppping for a 8 port RAID card? Now I have to figure out out to budget for those two completely unnecessary things now that I am about to spend $1000 on a roaster.
technically RAID0 offers negative redundancy since it increases your risk of fault/failure x2. i still recommend using it though...
1. because its sweet
2. because you should be backing up your data anyway
One piece of advice I have would be to install the drivers by the manufacturer of the motherboard rather than use the ones installed by microsoft. At least in my case I noticed improved stability.
Always glad to help! Do check out the Areca boards in your shopping spree.
I should add, I've been running my system partition on RAID 0 for quite a while in several incarnations of my workstation, and have never had a disater. I have had the array go into check mode after a couple of BSODs, but nothing unrecoverable, and no problems even after most of the BSODs I've incurred while tweaking my overclocking. And of course there are those handy backup images - just in case.
So you're getting no money from me, pal (knock on silicon). But I will help you spend it :).
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