On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 22:47 -0400, Drew Weaver wrote:
Good luck getting a hw raid vendor (other than 3ware) to help you :-)
FRAID is _not_ hardware RAID. There is *0* hardware on-board. It's a 100% "dumb" ATA controller, with a trick BIOS for 16-bit Int13h disk services, and then a trick driver for the OS that has 100% of the RAID logic. It uses your CPU for 100% of the activity -- even when you are targeting the volume, the raw drives are still visible by the OS.
3Ware _is_ a true, intelligent hardware RAID -- on-board ASIC + SRAM.
From the standpoint of your CPU, it's just sending a stream of data to
the ASIC, not the drives. It can't even see the drive or communicate with them. This is a _core_ difference between FRAID and intelligent hardware RAID.