Asus P5W DH Deluxe - which is the best RAID controller ??

[Synapse Syndrome]

I've got the OS and applications installed on two WD Raptors in RAID 0 on an
Asus P5W DH Deluxe. I put them on the orange SATA sockets for "EZ-Backup",
changing the jumper for RAID 0 from RAID 1, so that I wouldn't have to mess
around with drivers.

The current OS installation was just a test run to try out the different
software and drivers on the CD and to play around with things until I make a
fresh install with just the things I need, and then all my apps, before it
takes front-line service as my primary machine.

So now, when I reinstall everything properly which RAID controller should I
use for the best RAID 0 performance? I might as well mess around with
driver floppies if it's worth it.

Jmicron JMB363 (I guess this is ruled out as the second SATA socket is an
external one, is that right?)

Intel ICH7R South Bridge

Silicon Image 4723

Is there any advantage for me to use the Intel controller for the OS drives
in RAID 0? I would be using the other controller for RAID 1.

ss.

[Paul]

Post by Synapse Syndrome
I've got the OS and applications installed on two WD Raptors in RAID 0 on an
Asus P5W DH Deluxe. I put them on the orange SATA sockets for "EZ-Backup",
changing the jumper for RAID 0 from RAID 1, so that I wouldn't have to mess
around with drivers.
The current OS installation was just a test run to try out the different
software and drivers on the CD and to play around with things until I make a
fresh install with just the things I need, and then all my apps, before it
takes front-line service as my primary machine.
So now, when I reinstall everything properly which RAID controller should I
use for the best RAID 0 performance? I might as well mess around with
driver floppies if it's worth it.
Jmicron JMB363 (I guess this is ruled out as the second SATA socket is an
external one, is that right?)
Intel ICH7R South Bridge
Silicon Image 4723
Is there any advantage for me to use the Intel controller for the OS drives
in RAID 0? I would be using the other controller for RAID 1.
ss.

I just had a look at the manual, and that is one crazy architecture.

PCI-E x1 Hub_bus
| |
| |
JMB363 Southbridge ------ PRI_IDE
| | \ | | | \
SATA Ext Pri Sata Sata Sata \
RAID Sata EIDE 1 3 4 \
1 Silicon
Image
4723
| |
(EZ_RAID1) Sata Sata (EZ_RAID2)

* FAST/RAID 0
* SAFE/RAID 1
* BIG/Spanning
* JBOD/Port Multiplier

The Silicon Image 4723 is a Port_Multiplier/RAID_Controller
that connects to a SATA port and not to a system bus. That
means the 4723 performance is still dependent on the Intel
Southbridge DMA performance, in transferring the data from
the 4723 port, to system memory.

The benefit of the 4723, is it is hardware RAID. That means
the bandwidth of two disks in RAID 0 would be seamlessly
added together. There is supposed to be no software overhead
in operating the 4723, so your processor has slightly less
overhead when the RAID is on the 4723.

There will still be a bit of software overhead, to get the
Southbridge to transfer data over the fourth SATA port.

I think if I was designing this, I'd stick the 4723 off the
internal JMB363 SATA port. Just to make the architecture
a little cleaner and easier for tech support to provide
support for it.

If you want to use "4 disks on the Southbridge", you connect
one disk to the 4723, and run it in JBOD mode. Then the
Southbridge cannot tell the difference between the 4 disks
it would have seen if the 4723 was not there.

What I cannot tell you, is if the Intel Southbridge storage
software is smart enough to operate a port multiplier and
have a total of five disks. My guess would be it is not
ready. To date, the only implementation I know of that
understands port multipliers in software, is RAID products
from Silicon Image (i.e. a SIL RAID controller used with
a SIL Port Multiplier).

Port multipliers are part of the SATA standards. At some
point, all companies will add support for the use of
port multipliers. For example, there is a $100 hardware
box you can buy today, that has a SATA cable on one end,
that plugs into a motherboard SATA port. On the other
end are five SATA connectors for five disks. That
means, if you connected four of those boxes to an
ICH7 Southbridge, you could have a total of 20 separate
disks running from the Southbridge. As of today, the
widespread use of port multipliers, depends on BIOS
support for booting from one of the twenty drives,
plus chipset software support for the presence of
twenty disks. The Southbridge would have to understand
FIS (frames of data of some sort) to deal with the
port multipliers. So the situation with this area of technology
is still a dynamic one, and requires research on the
part of the user, as to whether all the necessary component
parts are present to make it work. As of today, you can
buy the $100 box, but there are precious few places
to plug it.

Paul

[Synapse Syndrome]

Post by Paul

Post by Synapse Syndrome
I've got the OS and applications installed on two WD Raptors in RAID 0 on an
Asus P5W DH Deluxe. I put them on the orange SATA sockets for "EZ-Backup",
changing the jumper for RAID 0 from RAID 1, so that I wouldn't have to mess
around with drivers.
The current OS installation was just a test run to try out the different
software and drivers on the CD and to play around with things until I make a
fresh install with just the things I need, and then all my apps, before it
takes front-line service as my primary machine.
So now, when I reinstall everything properly which RAID controller should I
use for the best RAID 0 performance? I might as well mess around with
driver floppies if it's worth it.
Jmicron JMB363 (I guess this is ruled out as the second SATA socket is an
external one, is that right?)
Intel ICH7R South Bridge
Silicon Image 4723
Is there any advantage for me to use the Intel controller for the OS drives
in RAID 0? I would be using the other controller for RAID 1.
ss.

I just had a look at the manual, and that is one crazy architecture.
PCI-E x1 Hub_bus
| |
| |
JMB363 Southbridge ------ PRI_IDE
| | \ | | | \
SATA Ext Pri Sata Sata Sata \
RAID Sata EIDE 1 3 4 \
1 Silicon
Image
4723
| |
(EZ_RAID1) Sata Sata (EZ_RAID2)
* FAST/RAID 0
* SAFE/RAID 1
* BIG/Spanning
* JBOD/Port Multiplier
The Silicon Image 4723 is a Port_Multiplier/RAID_Controller
that connects to a SATA port and not to a system bus. That
means the 4723 performance is still dependent on the Intel
Southbridge DMA performance, in transferring the data from
the 4723 port, to system memory.
The benefit of the 4723, is it is hardware RAID. That means
the bandwidth of two disks in RAID 0 would be seamlessly
added together. There is supposed to be no software overhead
in operating the 4723, so your processor has slightly less
overhead when the RAID is on the 4723.
There will still be a bit of software overhead, to get the
Southbridge to transfer data over the fourth SATA port.
I think if I was designing this, I'd stick the 4723 off the
internal JMB363 SATA port. Just to make the architecture
a little cleaner and easier for tech support to provide
support for it.
If you want to use "4 disks on the Southbridge", you connect
one disk to the 4723, and run it in JBOD mode. Then the
Southbridge cannot tell the difference between the 4 disks
it would have seen if the 4723 was not there.
What I cannot tell you, is if the Intel Southbridge storage
software is smart enough to operate a port multiplier and
have a total of five disks. My guess would be it is not
ready. To date, the only implementation I know of that
understands port multipliers in software, is RAID products
from Silicon Image (i.e. a SIL RAID controller used with
a SIL Port Multiplier).
Port multipliers are part of the SATA standards. At some
point, all companies will add support for the use of
port multipliers. For example, there is a $100 hardware
box you can buy today, that has a SATA cable on one end,
that plugs into a motherboard SATA port. On the other
end are five SATA connectors for five disks. That
means, if you connected four of those boxes to an
ICH7 Southbridge, you could have a total of 20 separate
disks running from the Southbridge. As of today, the
widespread use of port multipliers, depends on BIOS
support for booting from one of the twenty drives,
plus chipset software support for the presence of
twenty disks. The Southbridge would have to understand
FIS (frames of data of some sort) to deal with the
port multipliers. So the situation with this area of technology
is still a dynamic one, and requires research on the
part of the user, as to whether all the necessary component
parts are present to make it work. As of today, you can
buy the $100 box, but there are precious few places
to plug it.

Hi Paul
Thanks for your reply. Bit over my head, but I think I got the gist..

So I suppose I should just stick with the 4723 controller for the OS drives
for convenience, as it requires no drivers and has no real CPU overhead?
I'll just stick to what I have already done in that case.

The Intel southbridge seems to have three SATA ports, and is RAID 5 capable.
I don't have any choice than to put the RAID 1 HDDs in that then. The
Jmicron controller has one internal and one external port, so I don't
understand why they suggest that that is useful for RAID. I think they must
have just included that controller for the extra IDE interface for ATA HDDs.

I don't really understand what the benefit of JBOD is. And I don't know
anything about RAID 10 either.

Cheers.

ss.

[Xplanes]

Post by Synapse Syndrome

Post by Paul

Post by Synapse Syndrome
I've got the OS and applications installed on two WD Raptors in RAID 0
on
an
Asus P5W DH Deluxe. I put them on the orange SATA sockets for "EZ-Backup",
changing the jumper for RAID 0 from RAID 1, so that I wouldn't have to mess
around with drivers.
The current OS installation was just a test run to try out the different
software and drivers on the CD and to play around with things until I make a
fresh install with just the things I need, and then all my apps, before it
takes front-line service as my primary machine.
So now, when I reinstall everything properly which RAID controller
should
I
use for the best RAID 0 performance? I might as well mess around with
driver floppies if it's worth it.
Jmicron JMB363 (I guess this is ruled out as the second SATA socket is an
external one, is that right?)
Intel ICH7R South Bridge
Silicon Image 4723
Is there any advantage for me to use the Intel controller for the OS drives
in RAID 0? I would be using the other controller for RAID 1.
ss.

I just had a look at the manual, and that is one crazy architecture.
PCI-E x1 Hub_bus
| |
| |
JMB363 Southbridge ------ PRI_IDE
| | \ | | | \
SATA Ext Pri Sata Sata Sata \
RAID Sata EIDE 1 3 4 \
1 Silicon
Image
4723
| |
(EZ_RAID1) Sata Sata (EZ_RAID2)
* FAST/RAID 0
* SAFE/RAID 1
* BIG/Spanning
* JBOD/Port Multiplier
The Silicon Image 4723 is a Port_Multiplier/RAID_Controller
that connects to a SATA port and not to a system bus. That
means the 4723 performance is still dependent on the Intel
Southbridge DMA performance, in transferring the data from
the 4723 port, to system memory.
The benefit of the 4723, is it is hardware RAID. That means
the bandwidth of two disks in RAID 0 would be seamlessly
added together. There is supposed to be no software overhead
in operating the 4723, so your processor has slightly less
overhead when the RAID is on the 4723.
There will still be a bit of software overhead, to get the
Southbridge to transfer data over the fourth SATA port.
I think if I was designing this, I'd stick the 4723 off the
internal JMB363 SATA port. Just to make the architecture
a little cleaner and easier for tech support to provide
support for it.
If you want to use "4 disks on the Southbridge", you connect
one disk to the 4723, and run it in JBOD mode. Then the
Southbridge cannot tell the difference between the 4 disks
it would have seen if the 4723 was not there.
What I cannot tell you, is if the Intel Southbridge storage
software is smart enough to operate a port multiplier and
have a total of five disks. My guess would be it is not
ready. To date, the only implementation I know of that
understands port multipliers in software, is RAID products
from Silicon Image (i.e. a SIL RAID controller used with
a SIL Port Multiplier).
Port multipliers are part of the SATA standards. At some
point, all companies will add support for the use of
port multipliers. For example, there is a $100 hardware
box you can buy today, that has a SATA cable on one end,
that plugs into a motherboard SATA port. On the other
end are five SATA connectors for five disks. That
means, if you connected four of those boxes to an
ICH7 Southbridge, you could have a total of 20 separate
disks running from the Southbridge. As of today, the
widespread use of port multipliers, depends on BIOS
support for booting from one of the twenty drives,
plus chipset software support for the presence of
twenty disks. The Southbridge would have to understand
FIS (frames of data of some sort) to deal with the
port multipliers. So the situation with this area of technology
is still a dynamic one, and requires research on the
part of the user, as to whether all the necessary component
parts are present to make it work. As of today, you can
buy the $100 box, but there are precious few places
to plug it.

Hi Paul
Thanks for your reply. Bit over my head, but I think I got the gist..
So I suppose I should just stick with the 4723 controller for the OS drives
for convenience, as it requires no drivers and has no real CPU overhead?
I'll just stick to what I have already done in that case.
The Intel southbridge seems to have three SATA ports, and is RAID 5 capable.
I don't have any choice than to put the RAID 1 HDDs in that then. The
Jmicron controller has one internal and one external port, so I don't
understand why they suggest that that is useful for RAID. I think they must
have just included that controller for the extra IDE interface for ATA HDDs.
I don't really understand what the benefit of JBOD is. And I don't know
anything about RAID 10 either.
Cheers.
ss.

Download and install HD Tach. Test the burst speed of your HDDs while on EZ
Backup Raid controller. It sux! You get about half the bandwidth of the
Jmicron mounted disks. I had a RAID-1 setup on the Silicon Image controller
and my SATA-II Seagate drives were showing a burst of 120MB. I moved them
to the Jmicron controller (not in RAID but booting to the first "boot"
socket) and the burst speed then measured at 245MB I then used a floppy to
setup the OS in a true RAID-1 on the Jmicron and remeasured using HD TACH to
rule out any raid vs non-raid measurement issues and it is indead twice as
fast on the Jmicron controller. Posts concerning this in the ASUS forum got
a reply that stated the Silicon Image system uses a single chip solution
which splits the bandwidth between the two drives. I don't know if this is
true or not but I have measured the speed on both controllers and I am very
dissapointed that half my drive capability is kneecapped, by design
possibly.

Lou

[Xplanes]

Sorry for replying to a cross-post

[Synapse Syndrome]

Post by Xplanes
Sorry for replying to a cross-post

There's nothing wrong with relevant crossposting. What ever gave you the
idea that there was anything wrong with that? It is much better than
multiple seperate posts to different groups for obvious reasons.

ss.

[Xplanes]

Post by Synapse Syndrome

Post by Xplanes
Sorry for replying to a cross-post

There's nothing wrong with relevant crossposting. What ever gave you the
idea that there was anything wrong with that? It is much better than
multiple seperate posts to different groups for obvious reasons.
ss.

Many ppl would disagree with you on that.

Lou

[Synapse Syndrome]

Post by Xplanes
Download and install HD Tach. Test the burst speed of your HDDs while on
EZ Backup Raid controller. It sux! You get about half the bandwidth of
the Jmicron mounted disks. I had a RAID-1 setup on the Silicon Image
controller and my SATA-II Seagate drives were showing a burst of 120MB. I
moved them to the Jmicron controller (not in RAID but booting to the first
"boot" socket) and the burst speed then measured at 245MB I then used a
floppy to setup the OS in a true RAID-1 on the Jmicron and remeasured
using HD TACH to rule out any raid vs non-raid measurement issues and it
is indead twice as fast on the Jmicron controller. Posts concerning this
in the ASUS forum got a reply that stated the Silicon Image system uses a
single chip solution which splits the bandwidth between the two drives. I
don't know if this is true or not but I have measured the speed on both
controllers and I am very dissapointed that half my drive capability is
kneecapped, by design possibly.

How did you connect two internal drives with the Jmicron controller?? The
second one is an external port. Have you got any evidence that this is also
the case with RAID 0 ?

Cheers.

ss.

[Xplanes]

Post by Synapse Syndrome

Post by Xplanes
Download and install HD Tach. Test the burst speed of your HDDs while on
EZ Backup Raid controller. It sux! You get about half the bandwidth of
the Jmicron mounted disks. I had a RAID-1 setup on the Silicon Image
controller and my SATA-II Seagate drives were showing a burst of 120MB.
I moved them to the Jmicron controller (not in RAID but booting to the
first "boot" socket) and the burst speed then measured at 245MB I then
used a floppy to setup the OS in a true RAID-1 on the Jmicron and
remeasured using HD TACH to rule out any raid vs non-raid measurement
issues and it is indead twice as fast on the Jmicron controller. Posts
concerning this in the ASUS forum got a reply that stated the Silicon
Image system uses a single chip solution which splits the bandwidth
between the two drives. I don't know if this is true or not but I have
measured the speed on both controllers and I am very dissapointed that
half my drive capability is kneecapped, by design possibly.

How did you connect two internal drives with the Jmicron controller?? The
second one is an external port. Have you got any evidence that this is
also the case with RAID 0 ?
Cheers.
ss.

Sorry for miss-speaking. I was refering to the Intel Matrix controller with
the ports labled SATA-1 boot, SATA-3 SATA-4 They are the black connectors.

I have no evidence this is the case with RAID-0 as my explination never
mentioned that. I mearly stated that the same drive on the two different
controllers had greatly different performance and what explination I was
given for this. I began by asking you to test it yourself with the free HD
Tach download so you could enlighten us all on RAID-0 :)

Lou

[Synapse Syndrome]

Post by Xplanes
Sorry for miss-speaking. I was refering to the Intel Matrix controller
with the ports labled SATA-1 boot, SATA-3 SATA-4 They are the black
connectors.
I have no evidence this is the case with RAID-0 as my explination never
mentioned that. I mearly stated that the same drive on the two different
controllers had greatly different performance and what explination I was
given for this. I began by asking you to test it yourself with the free
HD Tach download so you could enlighten us all on RAID-0 :)

OK, cheers. I'll give that a go then with this HD Tach..

ss.

[Paul]

Post by Synapse Syndrome
Hi Paul
Thanks for your reply. Bit over my head, but I think I got the gist..
So I suppose I should just stick with the 4723 controller for the OS drives
for convenience, as it requires no drivers and has no real CPU overhead?
I'll just stick to what I have already done in that case.
The Intel southbridge seems to have three SATA ports, and is RAID 5 capable.
I don't have any choice than to put the RAID 1 HDDs in that then. The
Jmicron controller has one internal and one external port, so I don't
understand why they suggest that that is useful for RAID. I think they must
have just included that controller for the extra IDE interface for ATA HDDs.
I don't really understand what the benefit of JBOD is. And I don't know
anything about RAID 10 either.
Cheers.
ss.

Well, the 4723 has to be set up some how. There must be RAID
manager software. And I notice in the manual, there are some
jumper positions for the 4723. But I guess you've figured all
of that out.

The RAID management software should not put a significant load
on the processor, as it does not interfere with data movement
to and from the array.

The purpose of devices like the JMB363, is to allow a RAID 1
mirror to be constructed. You plug a "backup" disk into the ESATA
connector, then "rebuild" the array. This makes a cheap way to
copy data from the internal disk to the external disk. Or
perhaps just connecting the ESATA disk by itself, allows a
fast and easy connection of an external SATA disk, when you want
temporary disk access. Sort of like a fast USB connection.

About the only downside of using an external disk, might be
how the BIOS handles the boot order. In the past, BIOS
boot order changes every time the complement of disks on
the system changes. So I'd want to check the boot order
after any reconfiguration has happened. Maybe if the
JMB363 supports hot plugging, a data disk could be plugged
into the ESATA port after the system was booted.

Paul

[Synapse Syndrome]

Post by Paul

Post by Synapse Syndrome
Hi Paul
Thanks for your reply. Bit over my head, but I think I got the gist..
So I suppose I should just stick with the 4723 controller for the OS drives
for convenience, as it requires no drivers and has no real CPU overhead?
I'll just stick to what I have already done in that case.
The Intel southbridge seems to have three SATA ports, and is RAID 5 capable.
I don't have any choice than to put the RAID 1 HDDs in that then. The
Jmicron controller has one internal and one external port, so I don't
understand why they suggest that that is useful for RAID. I think they must
have just included that controller for the extra IDE interface for ATA HDDs.
I don't really understand what the benefit of JBOD is. And I don't know
anything about RAID 10 either.
Cheers.
ss.

Well, the 4723 has to be set up some how. There must be RAID
manager software. And I notice in the manual, there are some
jumper positions for the 4723. But I guess you've figured all
of that out.
The RAID management software should not put a significant load
on the processor, as it does not interfere with data movement
to and from the array.
The purpose of devices like the JMB363, is to allow a RAID 1
mirror to be constructed. You plug a "backup" disk into the ESATA
connector, then "rebuild" the array. This makes a cheap way to
copy data from the internal disk to the external disk. Or
perhaps just connecting the ESATA disk by itself, allows a
fast and easy connection of an external SATA disk, when you want
temporary disk access. Sort of like a fast USB connection.
About the only downside of using an external disk, might be
how the BIOS handles the boot order. In the past, BIOS
boot order changes every time the complement of disks on
the system changes. So I'd want to check the boot order
after any reconfiguration has happened. Maybe if the
JMB363 supports hot plugging, a data disk could be plugged
into the ESATA port after the system was booted.

Cheers Paul, you seem to know your stuff..

So would a single HDD from a RAID 1 array (half of it) be identical to a
normal unRAIDed HDD? Is there no difference at all and the whole RAID 1
thing is contained within the RAID controller?

ss.

[Paul]

Post by Synapse Syndrome
Cheers Paul, you seem to know your stuff..
So would a single HDD from a RAID 1 array (half of it) be identical to a
normal unRAIDed HDD? Is there no difference at all and the whole RAID 1
thing is contained within the RAID controller?
ss.

Operating a mirror array, without the second drive, is the same
as using a single disk. The only difference physically, is a
drive connected to a RAID controller, has info stored in the
reserved sector. The RAID controller has to be able to store
config information somewhere, and the disk is a good
place for that info.

Paul