[AccessD] Raid controller

...thanks for the tip JC ...as a matter of fact I was about to look into 
just that for a client :)

William Hindman

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "JWColby" <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com>
To: "'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'" 
<accessd at databaseadvisors.com>; "'Discussion of Hardware and Software 
issues'" <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>; 
<dba-sqlserver at databaseadvisors.com>
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2006 9:00 PM
Subject: [AccessD] Raid controller


>I purchased an Areca 1220 SATA 8 disk raid controller, with (7) Seagate 
>10.1
> 320 gb hard disks to create a raid system with.  One of the disks was
> damaged and had to be RMAd.  I went ahead and created a Raid 5 array using
> the 6 remaining drives.  This gave me about 1.0 terra bytes on one volume
> and about 370 gb on another volume, both Raid 5.  I just received the RMAd
> drive back, popped it in, added it to the array and told the controller to
> convert to Raid 6 for both volumes.  That was early this afternoon, and 
> the
> controller has finished the conversion of the large array to Raid 6 and is
> about 50% finished converting the smaller array to Raid 6, all consuming
> ZERO CPU and doing so while I was using the arrays pretty heavily.  The
> controller is also very fast.  Raid 5/6 writes are about the speed of the
> individual drives and reads are much faster (~raid 0 speed according to
> Areca)
>
> These disks are about $95 from Newegg and can be purchased with free
> shipping if you keep your eyes open so that is a real $95 / disk.  This
> particular controller is currently about $500.  This made my actual cost
> about $1200 for 1400gb in a Raid 6 config.
>
> Someday I hope that the Seagate 10.1 750 gb drives drop into this price
> range in which case I will upgrade.  ATM those drives are about $375-$400
> each which makes them out of my range.
>
> I am impressed with this Areca controller which is the point of this 
> email.
> Areca makes controllers that handle various numbers of disks.  The
> controller uses a PCI-X8 connection to the CPU so you must have a PCI-X
> capable motherboard.
>
> If you need more disks, they also have a 12, 16 and 24 disk controller, 
> for
> more money of course.
>
> Nice controller so far!
>
> John W. Colby
> Colby Consulting
> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>
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