Motherboard Hardware RAID

[Einsteiniac]

Seems fine with me then, and a lot more reasonable than some RAID cards out there. As long as it's confirmed to work properly, I'm okay with shelling out the extra $160.

Just to be clear I don't use my 2720SGL to boot from. Chimera does in fact scan the drives though as I see a stall when it does as well. This card is bootable in a real Mac as well as PC's so I see no reason why it shouldn't in a hack.

 

[AvataroftheSun]

Just to be clear I don't use my 2720SGL to boot from. Chimera does in fact scan the drives though as I see a stall when it does as well. This card is bootable in a real Mac as well as PC's so I see no reason why it shouldn't in a hack.

Guess I'll find out then. I suppose, just to make sure everything's set up properly before I do any actual installation, I could probably boot into a Linux live CD, then access the card's web interface to configure everything. Then I could install to it. Maybe?

 

[Einsteiniac]

Guess I'll find out then. I suppose, just to make sure everything's set up properly before I do any actual installation, I could probably boot into a Linux live CD, then access the card's web interface to configure everything. Then I could install to it. Maybe?

The web interface is something that needs to be installed on to the boot drive. Without first installing the drivers you can't access the web interface is what I am saying. If you are doing something really simple like just a Mirrored RAID you can do that from the cards BIOS before you even boot an OS on the machine.

 

[AvataroftheSun]

The web interface is something that needs to be installed on to the boot drive. Without first installing the drivers you can't access the web interface is what I am saying. If you are doing something really simple like just a Mirrored RAID you can do that from the cards BIOS before you even boot an OS on the machine.

Ah, I see. I'm gonna be doing a striped RAID across the two SSD's, but I'll have other hard drives. Suppose I can install it on the Linux live disk I'd be using, since according to their site (http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/rr271x_2x_download_U.htm), Linux drivers are available. Or, once the drivers are erased (i.e. the live session is terminated) do the configured settings vanish too?

 

[Einsteiniac]

Ah, I see. I'm gonna be doing a striped RAID across the two SSD's, but I'll have other hard drives. Suppose I can install it on the Linux live disk I'd be using, since according to their site (http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/rr271x_2x_download_U.htm), Linux drivers are available. Or, once the drivers are erased (i.e. the live session is terminated) do the configured settings vanish too?

After you configure the card all the settings and so forth continue to function as normal.

 

[AvataroftheSun]

After you configure the card all the settings and so forth continue to function as normal.

Alright, that makes sense. I did order everything I needed, and I'm ready to go ahead with this new build when everything arrives. Thanks, you've been very helpful.

 

[DBP]

Ok, so RAID-0 (striping) across two SSDs. This should give you massive throughput and double the space in a single drive.

But just rewinding and considering your system, I'm wondering if you're making it overly complex. Not to talk you out of striping necessarily: I'm just trying to understand your motivation.

• With a decent SSD on a SATA3 port the throughput is pretty damn good already. Are you sure the extra speed is worth it for now?
• As for the space, if you're going to partition it anyway for separate boot partitions for each OS, you could do this with JBODs.

Finally, if this is your first CustoMac I would strongly recommend keeping things simple and keeping things recoverable. That is, have another device on your system with the Chimera bootblocks (even if it's a USB stick) and have another partition/drive on the system which you clone your OS X boot partition to before upgrades (note that in general your boot partition should be separate from massive datasets, etc). Ideally this would be a different physical drive so that you can repartition and not lose everything.

I might even start with just installing onto JBODs (individual SSDs). Sure, when you've got a little more experience under your belt then add a RAID controller and play with upgrading. But I would be tempted to keep things simple early on (even if for only a couple of weeks). Trust me: as someone who spent 15+ years working in Unix sysadmin, has been an OS X user for almost a decade (and has been playing with a CustoMac for a little while now) there is more than a little experience in this advice...

But if you want to be bold then go ahead. You should certainly learn a lot.

 

[AvataroftheSun]

Ok, so RAID-0 (striping) across two SSDs. This should give you massive throughput and double the space in a single drive.

But just rewinding and considering your system, I'm wondering if you're making it overly complex. Not to talk you out of striping necessarily: I'm just trying to understand your motivation.

• With a decent SSD on a SATA3 port the throughput is pretty damn good already. Are you sure the extra speed is worth it for now?
• As for the space, if you're going to partition it anyway for separate boot partitions for each OS, you could do this with JBODs.

Finally, if this is your first CustoMac I would strongly recommend keeping things simple and keeping things recoverable. That is, have another device on your system with the Chimera bootblocks (even if it's a USB stick) and have another partition/drive on the system which you clone your OS X boot partition to before upgrades (note that in general your boot partition should be separate from massive datasets, etc). Ideally this would be a different physical drive so that you can repartition and not lose everything.

I might even start with just installing onto JBODs (individual SSDs). Sure, when you've got a little more experience under your belt then add a RAID controller and play with upgrading. But I would be tempted to keep things simple early on (even if for only a couple of weeks). Trust me: as someone who spent 15+ years working in Unix sysadmin, has been an OS X user for almost a decade (and has been playing with a CustoMac for a little while now) there is more than a little experience in this advice...

But if you want to be bold then go ahead. You should certainly learn a lot.

Hey DBP.

What I was thinking was partitioning the RAID array to provide the increased throughput for every OS installed on the drive, since I will only ever be booted into one at a time. I'd imagine there is quite a performance increase over simply a single SSD.

My other motivation for doing a RAID array is simply learning how to do so, I've never actually tried to set one up. So I'm also just interested in the idea.

Regarding this though, I think my motivations aren't QUITE worth the price of that RAID card, I suppose I can always order the same one later on down the line if necessary, and run on a JBOD setup in the meantime, I'm just a little conflicted. (I already placed the order earlier, so I'm not sure it'd be early enough to cancel, if not, then so be it)

And about keeping the bootloader on a separate drive, such as a pendrive, seems like really good advice. Perhaps I could put a boot partition on one of the extra hard drives I'm putting internally, barring that. I'll figure something out along those lines though, I agree that backups are good ideas.

 

[DBP]

What I was thinking was partitioning the RAID array to provide the increased throughput for every OS installed on the drive, since I will only ever be booted into one at a time. I'd imagine there is quite a performance increase over simply a single SSD.

Yes, although 2x bloody-fast is still.... bloody fast!

 

[AvataroftheSun]

Yeah, a learning experience is what I really want out of the RAID setup, the extra speed is a very nice bonus though