Todd Cary todd@aristesoftware.com wrote:
I need to replace my current board since it has "fake RAID" (Abit BE7-RAID) and Centos will not install. The disks are IDE. Once it is up, I just let it run and run...nothing special.
Haven't seen anything on-board with "true" hardware RAID. In more rare cases, you have to add a RAID logic board to use the on-board SATA or SCSI channels as such. The Intel ICH7-R and nVidia MCP-04 are absolutely attrocious at their "F"RAID-5 under Windows. Figure sub-15MBps write with even 4 x 7200rpm drives.
Now there does seem to be a whole slew of "pseudo-RAID" solutions coming out for not only PCI-X, but even PCIe. The HighPoint RocketRAID 2320 uses its HPT601 "XOR off-load engine" with a 4 or 8-port Marvell SATA logic+PHY IC. No DRAM buffer, no formal microcontroller, the benchmarks do well against even hardware RAID controllers -- although I'd like to see I/O interconnect load (hard to benchmark in Linux).