Category Archives: Hardware

New Board Is Online

0
Posted by admin on July 2, 2007 – 5:33 pm
Filed under Hardware

I’m slowing getting my hardware issues back in line.

First, there I had a failure on a 320gb Western Digital drive (unbelievably cool and quiet drives btw), which took out my main workstation.

Then, my server started crashing, and after some investigation, I had a drive in it’s raid failing too, though not completely, just getting read errors and timeouts that the driver apparently could only sometimes recover from. I’ve been generally happy with Promise RAID cards, but the fact that a read/timeout error can lock the machine bugs me. But, it’s an older FastTrack TX4000 so what can I say.

Next, I discover that the otherwise awesome Gigabyte GA-P965-DS3 motherboard I picked up won’t do anything but a 2 drive RAID. Gotta pay more attention to those specs<g>.image

Eventually I settled on the Intel D975XBX2 board. Nice board, it’s got serial/parallel ports for all those hacking urges, plus FireWire, lots of USB, and 8 SATA ports, with up to 4 drives in one Intel Matrix RAID and 4 in another.

Plus it’s got these nifty flame heatsinks right out of West Coast Choppers.

image

First impressions are that it’s OK, but it’s not all solid capacitor design, and the boot time seems significantly slower than the Gigabyte board. Plus the board itself just doesn’t look as nice. Things aren’t labeled as clearly, etc. From what I can tell, it very well may be that Intel outsources the board to FOXCONN, so this may be a Foxconn board in Intel clothes. Personally, I would have loved to go with the GA-P35T-DQ6. Much nicer looking, sweet heatsinks, solid caps, all the right ports, RAID, etc. And it’ll do Crossfire. But otherwise, it’s got only PCIEx1 slots and it appears to require memory faster than DDRII 800. I’m just not up for buying virtually a whole new machine right now.

One thing the Intel board won’t do is convert a single drive into part of a RAID intact. You have to start fresh (or restore a drive image). Restoring the drive image seems a little risky though. After all, most RAID drivers need to be installed during the initial OS installation process (using F6), so I’m not sure how much mileage I’m going to get from that concept.

Long story short, anyone interested in a used but otherwise completely functional Gigabyte GA-P965-DS3 mobo? Comes with all the original packing, anti-static bag, sata cables, manual, backplate, etc. They’re 130$ on newegg.com. Come on down, make me an offer!

+You+ Program It…

1
Posted by admin on June 27, 2007 – 11:27 pm
Filed under Hardware

Now here’s a nifty little gizmo.


80 Cores on a chip. What is that, Deca-Octa-Core?


You’ll need one hefty 10 core machine just to generate the code to run on it<g>.

RAID Fun

2
Posted by admin on June 21, 2007 – 11:02 pm
Filed under Hardware, Troubleshooting

So ages ago, in internet time (or 9 months ago in real time), I set up a brand new machine, specifically for development with VS2005 and ASP.NET (because, well, it takes a dual core 2.66ghz, 4gb ram beast to be able to write a text file without your keystrokes backing up, but that’s another story).


I’d set up a RAID 0 (that’s striped), mainly for the added performance, which was pretty staggering. My intention was to pick up a couple more drives later and round it out to a RAID 0+1 (which I have in my server, protecting all my actual source, etc).


Anyway, a drive died, quite prematurely, and my machine is thus rendered a doorstop.


I sent off the RMA to replace the dead drive (still under warranty), and picked up 2 more to round the RAID out.


Then I discovered that the Gigabyte GA-965-DS3, otherwise a totally bad-ass mobo, doesn’t actually do raid 0+1. It only supports a 2 drive raid, either RAID 0 or RAID 1. Doh! Tip to manual writing guy: Don’t say things like…



“Before you begin


Please prepare


1) At least two SATA Harddrives…If you do not want to create a RAID, you can only prepare one harddrive.


…”


That is a quote directly from the manual.


In my book, the implication there is that you could use more than 2 harddrives in the RAID. Unfortunately, such is not the case.


So I went off to the local computer store and picked up a PCIE 4 port SATA II RAID card, thinking I’d slap it in and be done.


Nay, spoketh St. Ignacious PCMCIA of the holy hardware. That card is PCIE x4, and my Gigabyte motherboard only has 3 completely unused PCIE x1 slots.


Back to the computer store.


I could get a PCI SATA II RAID card, but SATA II drives can pump 3Gbps, whereas a PCI slot can only manage about 266MBps. Does seem right to build up a smokin’ machine, then force it to breath through a pixie stick.


Ok, new mobo time.


Looks like the Gigabyte GA-965-DQ6 has all the bells and whistles, plus the right combination of RAID, PCI slots, ATI Crossfire compatibility, USB and Firewire, plus, it even has a serial port on the backplane, just right for hacking X10.


Note to self: Don’t bother “presetting” up a harddrive that you might want to mirror in a RAID later. Both the Gigabyte built in RAID and Window’s software RAID (via “dynamic disks”) want to obliterate any disk they RAIDify.


The nice dedicated RAID cards (like the Promise Fasttrack), I believe can handle that. Hell, one I was reading specs on seemed to imply it could convert, on the fly, between RAID 1, 0, 5 or 0+1, provided you have enough free space. Now that’s a good time!

Never joke about Hardware problems

2
Posted by admin on June 17, 2007 – 9:29 pm
Filed under Hardware, Troubleshooting

A few days ago, I posted light-hearted jab about some computer problems on the ISS. Well, never one to walk away from an opportunity, karma visited yesterday with no less than a complete failure of one drive in a RAID 0 I have on my main workstation.
For those that have never run RAIDs, it stands for “redundant array of inexpensive disks” and you can run several different configurations.

  • RAID 0 – striped, 2 drives contain various pieces of files, such that you get double performance because both drives can be busy writing and reading different pieces of the same file at the same time. You get almost twice the performance and still have access to the full capacity of both drives.
  • RAID 1 – mirrored, 2 drives contain exactly the data between them. Speeds up read performance, and provided an online backup of data. You have 2 drives but the effective disk space of just 1.
  • RAID 0+1 – striped and mirrored. Best of both of the above.
  • RAID 5, 6 etc – Even better but typically requires higher end dedicated RAID cards.

I had set up a RAID 0 for performance, intending to add 2 additional drives and mirror the setup later, for fault tolerance.
Well, later didn’t come quickly enough, it seems, and one of the less than 9-month-old Western Digital WD3200KS drives (sweet drives, BTW, unbelievably quiet and cool running), went belly up way before its time.
So, I’m filling out RMAs to return the dead drive and ordering two more to complete the full RAID 0+1 setup.
A question for anyone who’s ever done this before. Can I setup a striped RAID 0 now, and add the 2 additional drives later to convert it to a mirrored/striped RAID 0+1 later, when the 2 drives come in, or do I have to have them all in place when I create the RAID initially?
Haven’t had much luck finding an answer online.