Raid x2 IDE drives under OS9? Is this possible?

[part12studios]

I was reading in a Media 100 group that a G4 someone was using had a two drive raid setup internally.  I didn't even think this was possible and while I'm certainly content with my Quicksilver setup, the allure of improved data transfer / access is appealing to squeeze that extra bit of performance out of the system.  imagining two SSDs raided together..  mwhahaha..

[Mat]

There are various software- as hardware raid solutions!

But usuallay a modern SSD is too fast for the bus itselve, so a SSD Raid at a IDE bus makes no real sense, ...

[part12studios]

well understood about ssd / bus limit.. but i'm really just saying two IDE drives (that happen to be ssd) would still (i think) net faster load times even at IDE speeds..  or maybe ssd access times are fast enough to negate any advantage of more heads seeking stuff like mechanical drives had to deal with.

As for software solutions, eh that sounds tweaking.. lol.  I was thinking this would be more at a OS / hardware level.  not a third party thing.  Still, good to know that's how it's achieved.

[Mat]

"Software" can referre just to the software that stripes (or mirrors) the data going to the raid. Combined with good hardware, that may be a good solution, not just some strange ancient "software raid". See for example the the SeriTek/1V4 SATA card that provides through 64 Bit an d 66Mhz a real perfomance boost and true SATA 1 (150MB PER channel). This card combined with using a software raid solution might boost your machine a lot. But here are the limitations the SATA bus again, that is "doubled" by the PCI-X card, not the SSDs speed.

https://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata1v4.html

Real hardware solutions like Sonettechs TempoRAID133 will provide faster speed through the faster 133 IDE bus compared to the onboard 66 or 100 bus. But I doubt that it makes a real difference to have modern SSDs connected to both busses at this card, … But I might be wrong, and this 2 busses are useful?

https://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=284#position_content
https://www.sonnettech.com/support/downloads/manuals/tempo_raid133_qsg.pdf

But always remember, that the PCI bus is still the bottlenec. If you plug in a PCI-X card, maybe all the bandwith is going to the storage card, and your graphiccard or audiocard is suffering bandwith, ... so some people say it is even better to have the MDDs IDE 100 bus in use for the storage, to prevent PCI from "storage load" and thus keeping the overall performance best, …

[part12studios]

that's an interesting point.  i hadn't thought about bypassing the system IDE with a card..  but yea i see what you mean about performance competition with other needs on the bus..  though for music graphics are not intense.. and even video (not 3d) I would think really isn't hitting the video card all that hard as its just showing 2d video..  can't imagine much of the playback is really being offloaded to the video cards back then..  newer software/hardware might better manage dividing tasks.. but i'm totally speculating there..  but music-wise i'm pretty confident wouldn't ask much of anything else on the bus..  unless firewire is competing with PCI slots? 

[DieHard]

If this really interests you guys, this is a great read:

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,803.0.html

Our beloved MacTron actually tested a 64 Bit PCI card in a G4 with 2 SSDs !!

64 bits PCI on G4 working and confirmed!
I put two SSD (Samsumg SSD 840 120 GB) in RAID 0 (stripe)  mode connected to a Seritek 1eVE2+2

If you search the forum you never know what you will find...

[part12studios]

oh man that's awesome.  i may explore that.   

anyone know how this might apply to a G5 tower?  I have one of those as well running leopard.  I have plenty of smaller SSDs (80-90 gb) laying around.  it would be interesting to beef that guy up as well. 

[refinery]

which G5 tower? PCI-X or PCIe?

[part12studios]

It's a 2ghz 7,3 Mac Pro G5 3gb    I'm not sure which type of card slots it has. 

[IIO]

But I might be wrong, and this 2 busses are useful?

in theory 2 disks are 2 times faster than one, but only in theory.

however, i would understand if someone is keen on mirroring.

If you plug in a PCI-X card

PCI-X? in a G4?

[IIO]

.  though for music graphics are not intense.. and even video (not 3d) I would think really isn't hitting the video card all that hard as its just showing 2d video..

a quicksilver with geforce 4 mx can handle an uncompressed video stream of around 35 mb/s, if there is an audio track in the video, it is 5 mb/s less in practice. even firewire is enough for that, given that the HD is newer than ~2004.

throughput of disks and controllers is mostly interesting for copying data or opening huge files.

[part12studios]

I thought all G4 systems would just be PCI..  I assumed only maybe G5s might get into the higher end PCI style cards..  I have the 867mhz quicksilver in the G4 class of computer..   

The G5 is more focused on Video... though I've managed to get Media 100 cards for both systems.  P6000 and HDX respectively to tinker with. 

btw, anyone here who might have old video equipment.  I'm trying to hunt down two Time Base Correctors or maybe one unit that could handle two video sources to TBC them for an analog video switcher i've got working.

Thanks,
Caleb

[IIO]

oh man that's awesome.  i may explore that.   

anyone know how this might apply to a G5 tower?  I have one of those as well running leopard.  I have plenty of smaller SSDs (80-90 gb) laying around.  it would be interesting to beef that guy up as well.

in OSX there is no real difference between the OS´s vanilla software raid and hardware raid. however it is still questionable if it speeds things up, in both IDE and SATA world the latest models of disks almost max out the respective buses.

[Mat]

But I might be wrong, and this 2 busses are useful?

in theory 2 disks are 2 times faster than one, but only in theory.

How shall a recent SSD with 500MB/s at a 133MB/s bus be slower than two 500MB/s SSDs? In theory?

however, i would understand if someone is keen on mirroring.

Thats for sure.

If you plug in a PCI-X card

PCI-X? in a G4?

Yes, like the SeriTek I mentioned above which is a PCI-X card that works as well in the G4s 64 Bit slots.

[IIO]

oh the card, yeah thats right.

[refinery]

How shall a recent SSD with 500MB/s at a 133MB/s bus be slower than two 500MB/s SSDs? In theory?

I think what he's alluding to here is that "in theory" the 500MB/s SSD will actually perform at 500MB/s in our old macs, which they will not. Even speed tests with a full 64-bit pci-x card in a machine with Pci-x slots showed that it will not come even close. The best we can get is SATA-II on our macs which automatically limits you to ~275MB/s theoretical maximum, which, again, you're not going to even come close to.

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,803.msg12088.html#msg12088

[part12studios]

yea definitely looking at what peak performances are possible.  Yea ultimately I was wanting to see if a standard Quicksilver era G4 out of the box could raid.  Getting into PCI cards and such is too much especially since I have no slots free at this time.  Thanks for the insight as always!   

[IIO]

in theory 2 SSDs are twice as fast as 1: 500+500=1000

in practice in a quicksilver you get 85 from IDE and 120 from PCI.

and SATA-300 cards only make sense in an MDD.

however, 85 from the ATA-100 controller ist still a bit faster than the last generation IDE disks give you (70-75)

[part12studios]

yea i get that ide and even the sata to ide bridges are a bottleneck and always will be. i really just mean can two ide drives (spinners or solid state) be raided in a G4 out of the box..   because the point is that raiding an ide should still yield improvement in performance because of the nature of raid..

[IIO]

the next limit then is the "transfer rate" of your RAM - plus the overhead which is required for what you are going to do with the data.

not to speak of the graphics card. which can transport maybe 10% of what a disk offers.

i only hit the border of my HDs and SSDs when offline processing many audiochannels - in a programs which does care if a package gets lost. :/

and of course for copying between disks higher speeds are something fine.

i forgot to mention in my last post that the original drives in a quicksilver offered you only 25mb/s. it was a huge step forward to buy new IDE disks in 2006 which are almost 3 times faster! and then SATA with up to 110mb/s per HD!