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Best solution

MRFS

Storage Expert

May 11, 2010 12:56:08 AM

> 6Gbps for HDDs is marketing only.

Not exactly: rotating HDDs can still benefit from SATA/6G interfaces
if their integrated controllers run at 6G, particularly in "burst mode"
i.e. when READs or WRITEs do not require platter access and
can be done to/from the HDD's hardware cache.


If you've got "caviar black 6 gb/sec" and you don't want them
in a RAID array, for best performance wire them to the 6G Marvell ports
and follow the directions above -and- in your motherboard manual.

If you want to get a little fancy, you could add an SSD,
install your OS to that SSD, and after configuring those
2 x Caviar Blacks to AHCI mode, you could really speed
things up by enabling an OS software RAID.

We did this recently with the $20 ASUS PCIE GEN2 SATA6G
controller, with 2 x 1 TB Caviar Blacks:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...


Ya ya! I hear a lot of people say that RAID 0 provides
no security: well, for me it's a wash: if one of the two
disks fails, yes you lose all the data on that RAID 0: BUT,
that's also true if the same data set is on a single HDD.

So, there is really no difference. And, I also argue that
a RAID 0 will, over time, use each disk 50% as much
as doing the same workload on a single spindle.

We use several RAID 0 arrays, and we just replace
a failed drive (which rarely happens because we
power all our systems with UPS backup batteries
and cool them properly).


MRFS