IDE RAID Card Roundup

Author: Richard Harris
Editor: Howard Ha
Publish Date: Thursday, June 8th, 2000
Originally Published on Neoseeker (http://www.neoseeker.com)
Article Link: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Roundups/IDE_RAID/
Copyright Neo Era Media, Inc. - please do not redistribute or use for commercial purposes.

IDE RAID Introductions

RAID (Redundant-Array-of –Inexpensive or Independent-Disks) Abbreviated either Inexpensive or Independent, RAID has always been associated with one thing, being expensive! The title is kind of an irony to the technology itself. RAID configurations have never been cheap, simply because of the nature of having more than one drive in a system. This review is going to look at how new IDE drive speeds and IDE controllers are making RAID configurations more feasible for not only high end servers, but for those power users who want more performance from their desktop machine. New cards from AMI, Promise, and Iwill make it all happen.

RAID explained

Modern- mass storage solutions for Computer servers have stayed close to the same pattern as in the past. Usually, for fault tolerant purposes, there is more than one disk configured in a RAID array, and for speed and compatibility purposes, those disks are connected to a fast controller. There are a few different configurations that can be performed depending on the needs.

Different RAID Configurations

RAID level- 0, which is also called Disk striping w/o parity, is the fastest drive array you can have, requires at least two disks, but does not provide fault tolerance. The data in this array gets written across a stripe, or different disks for a faster transfer. For instance, a 100 Meg file can be broken into 64kb chunks and split into three different disks –so that each disk is writing 64 kb of the file until the 100 meg is reached. This makes the whole process of data transfer faster because you have more that one disk reading/or writing at the same time.

RAID level- 1 also called disk mirroring uses(2) duplicate hard drives and replicates all data between them. This is the slowest form of fault tolerance because the data has to be replicated onto two disks at the same time. It also uses a more system overhead than RAID 0, but it does provide the quickest access to the system if one drive should fail.

RAID level 1/0 This RAID combines the best of both worlds. It takes a Disk stripe using two disks, and mirrors it to another set of disks for fault tolerance. So you will have the benefit of speed, and data protection! But this comes at a price –having to buy four drives isn’t very cost efficient, and makes this option not very popular when compared to the Stripe set with Parity –which is slightly slower but utilizes less disk space.

RAID level- 5 uses at least 3 disks and replicates data and parity information to different areas of each disk - it’s the fastest form of fault tolerance, but it’s expensive and requires more system overhead than all the others. It also uses space equivalent to one disk on the stripe set for parity information, but that’s a small price to pay for fast data protection, especially in critical setups like corporate servers. At the present time, this is not applicable to IDE RAID cards.

SCSI hard drives were generally the most popular choice for these kinds of configurations because of speed, and physical drive chaining abilities. But as many of you know, SCSI configurations are expensive, and people with a smaller budgets are sometimes forced to use IDE drives instead, and before the advent of IDE RAID cards, that solution used to impose some serious performance penalties on their machines!

Catching Up To SCSI - How IDE Evolved

When IDE ATA 33 drives were introduced onto the scene a couple of years ago, it left some people scratching their head, wondering just how much faster those drives actually were than normal IDE drives, and how close they were getting to SCSI performance. People soon learned that there was indeed a speed increase, however slight, when ATA33 drives were attached to an accommodating controller, and in spite of the minute performance improvement, the new drives rapidly became the standard for desktop hard drives. In addition, some SCSI owners who were purchasing new machines saw the price difference in replacing their machines that had SCSI configurations with IDE configurations and started to use these drives in their machines to handle multiple network file requests, (like in a File/Print server) and as fault tolerant solutions as well.

In 1999 we saw the emergence of a even faster IDE interface called ATA66. Similar to ATA 33, ATA66 boasted SCSI like performance, yet failed to even push the envelope significantly even in the IDE arena. As with ATA 33, it does require a special controller card to work correctly, an ATA 66 controller- and because of the high-speed data throughout, it also requires a special ATA 66 cable. This cable has 40 pin connectors on both ends, but 80 wires connecting the 40 pins together, to help with things like cross talk, and data corruption.

Now that covers the basics on drives, how about controllers? As mentioned before, SCSI drive arrays require special SCSI controller cards. Although some people were starting to switch to ATA 33 drives, they were generally only doing so with new machines, because only certain system boards would handle the ATA 33 interface, and the new machines were coming shipped with the controller already on board. Some desktop owners who wanted the performance without buying a new system board, however, were buying a separate controller board to accommodate their new ATA 33 drives.

The migration to ATA 66 was no different. Only newer motherboards support these newer IDE drives, and unless you had one, your only other option was to buy a separate controller card to handle these drives as well.

RAID Solutions

Configurations of RAID levels are done in one of two ways: Hardware or Software. Software based RAID are obviously cheaper since there is no other hardware to buy, but tend to be slower because they use OS resources to handle all the data requests.

Hardware based configurations are more expensive, but provide a performance boost in the system, and also provide something else software-based solutions cannot: compatibility. Usually it takes a server OS such as Windows NT to handle any kind of software RAID array configuration. But with hardware-based solutions, all that’s needed is a good set of drives, the hardware controller, and a compliant driver to run the card. This means you can not only have a fault tolerant Network server, but you can speed up that gaming desktop at home running Windows 98 with an ultra fast RAID 0, or a data protecting RAID 1.

So what are your choices for hardware based IDE RAID 0 or RAID 1 solution? Let’s take a closer look at three different IDE RAID cards from Promise, Iwill and AMI.

AMI Hyperdisk

Some people may only know AMI by their production of a great BIOS chip. But they also produce other kinds of computer hardware such as motherboards, SCSI RAID controllers, and yes- IDE RAID controllers. The Hyperdisk lives up to the same great quality we’re used to seeing in AMI products. It offers the ability to run up to four IDE disks in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 or RAID 1/0 configuration and it comes with everything you need (minus the drives) to get your system configured quickly and painlessly.

The Hyperdisk kit comes with the controller card itself, two ATA- 66 cables, and a mini-port drivers disk for setup in Windows NT 4.0,2000, or 98, a quick setup guide, and a CD with online manuals.

Although I’m not a big fan of CD-online docs, those included with the Hyperdisk cover all the subjects of installation and usage of the card (though there’s still something to be said about being able to thumb through an actual hardcover copy of any manual).

I found the setup and installation of this card to be very simple. There is a pre-boot menu (CTRL+M) that allows you to control what kind of array is to be setup, and it’s very similar to other pre-post menus you may be used to seeing on hardware RAID cards. The menus include Array type (Stripe, mirror,etc), adjustment of the stripe size from 32K up to 4096k, and what drive you want to make bootable. There are also advanced options to select disk write caching, and Boot sector virus protection, but for the most part, there isn’t much tweaking that can be done. Overall, I found the installation and navigation of this card was very simple in both RAID 0, and RAID 1 setups - a plus to those just delving into RAID for the first time. After initial setup, my Windows 98 configuration detected the controller as a SCSI RAID adapter –and after inserting the included mini-port driver disk, everything was set to go. The driver also installed perfectly under Windows NT.

The installation procedure also installs a little utility called Spy, which allows you to peek into the BIOS settings of the Hyperdisk controller from within Windows. I didn’t find the spy utility very useful, from an administrative standpoint, but at least it gives you some way of knowing the health of your RAID.

The Iwill SIDE RAID 66

The SIDE-RAID66 card from Iwill is similar in design to the AMI Hyperdisk. It supports up to 4 IDE devices, and one of those devices can even be external, - it’s worth noting that the SIDE RAID66 is the only card in this round-up that supports an external 40 pin IDE connection. The only odd thing about it, is that there isn’t an external power connection, but still it’s a nice addition, and since this card also support hot-swapping, it could come in handy.

Installation of the controller is also similar to the AMI card. The card is rather small, and it should fit into any system without a problem. There is a simple pre-boot menu (Ctrl+H) that allows you to configure your RAID array, and unlike the AMI card –the Iwill doesn’t allow for any tweaking at all.

Windows 98 detected the card as a PCI mass storage controller, and installed without a problem. Installtion in Windows NT also completed without a hitch. Included with the card is a utility similar to the AMI spy that allows you to see what drives are attached to the RAID card and which reports on the health of the RAID itself. Once again, this utility provides no other function and doesn't add any overwhelming technical value to the install, but it does allow you to take a limited peak at what's happening.

One thing worth noting here is the position of the secondary on-board IDE connection. Since the card is so short, Iwill put the secondary IDE connection vertical instead of horizontal (like on the AMI card). This is not a big deal, but it does make for an odd stretch and bend for the secondary cable.

The Iwill kit also comes with a quick-startup guide. It could use a little more detail, but installation is a no-brainer and most people can fill in where the guide drops off. They also thought to include 2-ATA 66 cables, and that was very much appreciated, plus they included a hardcopy manual! (!) Score Iwill! The manual was comprehensive, and even explained a little about RAID for those who might be new to the concept.

The Promise FastTrack 66

Promise has long been a contender in the IDE controller market, and The FastTtrack 66 IDE RAID controller actually isn’t the first IDE RAID controller Promise has ever made. The first edition controller card, (simply named FastTrack) was similar to this one, except the new FastTrack 66 supports ATA 66 drives. (Hence the name).

I know this is starting to sound a little redundant –but the Promise card installed much the same as the other cards. After installing the card there is a prompt to go into the BIOS setup menu, and by pressing CTRL+F you are able to go in and configure the RAID array. Promise also doesn’t allow for much tweaking in the SYSTEM BIOS – although like the AMI card, you can adjust the stripe set size, though generally setting up the RAID 0 or Mirror configuration is simple and doesn't require any special configuration.

Windows 98 and Windows NT installs the controller as an IDE RAID device, and of course – the driver installed flawlessly. Also installed is a utility called Fast check monitoring. Now Fast Check differs from the AMI Spy and the Iwill tool in that it allows some tweaking to be done in an options menu. The tool provides the ability to check the Drive configuration, and monitor the health of the drive array, but then you also get tweaking options. Users can select what type of error notification to receive, in case of drive or array failure, as well as level of PCI Bus utilization, and array rebuild rate. There is also the ability to schedule automatic array synchronization, which is similar to running Disk defrag – and just assures the smooth operation of the drive array.

The FastTrack utility was a nice addition, and provided much more functionality than the utilities included with the AMI, or Iwill cards.

Benchmarks/Testing

So how do these cards measure up when put under the test? Lets see! After all, that’s what it’s all about, performance –and reliability!

My test configuration was as follows

The test parameters were set as follows:

I chose two tests suites for my benchmarks. Sis Sandra 2000 -which is widely used and free. And Winbench 99 from ZDNet, both in Business Disk marks and High end Disks marks. Here are the results from the three cards side by side under Windows 98se using a FAT 32 file system and Windows NT 4.0 (SP6a) using NTFS.

NT Test Results

WIN98SE Test Results

Performance Discussion

Starting with the RAID 0 charts under Windows 98, you’ll notice that the Promise card outperformed the Iwill by only 3-5% but that both the Iwill and Promise card showed 8-15% higher scores than the AMI card. In all the systems tested there was a noticeable increase in the speed and performance of the system when using a RAID 0 (as is expected). The nature of RAID 0 makes it more resource intensive, and the benchmarks show this as a consistent drop in scores.

The Sandra marks were close to the same numbers as the High-end Disk marks on all the tests. Please keep in mind that all the scores are synthetic (Sandra especially), but they do give you a better idea of how each card would perform in a certain environment, especially compared to one another.

In a Windows 98 RAID 1 configuration –scores went down an average of 2-3% across the board. This is because of the system takes a slight performance loss when putting multiple data packets onto two drives. But scores for all three cards show each can handle the task of mirroring hard drives –but once again the Promise card pulled ahead (by a margin) over the Iwill card, and the AMI card stayed consistently 8-15% lower benchmarked than both the Iwill and Promise IDE cards.

Moving onto a RAID 0 configuration in Windows NT. You can see that each card improved its benchmark scores by an average of 2-4%. NTFS is much more proficient at data management than FAT32 and the Windows NT kernel is faster and more stable - both these factors contribute to better data flow from the OS to the mini-port driver and that results in better scores! If you are running Windows NT as your NOS, then you will gain a slight performance increase over Windows 98 with a striped set of drives, regardless of which IDE RAID card you use. This should appeal to not only power users, but to Network administrators as well.

RAID 1 scores in Windows NT showed almost the exact same trend as the Windows 98 scores when comparing RAID 0 to RAID 1. The only thing I found slightly curious here was how these marks compared in the Sandra results – the scores actually became higher when moving from RAID 0 to RAID 1, which is totally against what we expected. Since the Sandra marks are purely synthetic, we can chalk this off and look at the Zdnet high-end disk marks to see what’s really going on, since the scores are more true to life. The high-end disk marks show only a 2-4% performance loss across the table for all cards in a RAID 0 configuration, which is a consistent and expected result.

In all the scores for Windows 98 and Windows NT in both RAID 0, and RAID 1 configurations, it is quite clear that the Promise FastTrack 66 card was the overall performance winner. But coming in just a hair under the top scores was the Iwill SIDE-RAID66 card - 2-3% is not really a very large performance gap. Lastly, the AMI was somewhat of a disappointment and gave us lower scores than what we’re used to seeing with AMI products.

Disk mirroring

Somewhat overlooked thus far is the functionality of disk mirroring or RAID 1 for these cards. Even though benchmark scores can show us how each card performs, it’s hard to translate that into how each card can do what it’s designed to do. With a RAID 0 configuration, performance is all that matters, so the benchmark scores will serve you better. But even though each card is capable of a mirror set configuration, there must be one card that does a better job than the others, right? Well, not really. Each card setup a disk mirror in the exact same manner. Once the drives are installed and Mirror Set was selected from the BIOS setup menu, the data was copied over(mirrored) before the setup goes any further. Each card took an average of 40 minutes to mirror a 20-gig drive, and not one card showed any gain in this area.

It is worth noting, however, that if reliability alerts are a priority for you, than the Promise card shows a strength here due to it’s FastTrack utility having the ability to select what alerts you want to receive when your RAID 1 configuration is showing signs of failure. Neither the Iwill nor the AMI cards include this feature in their utilities, though all the cards will alert you of an unhealthy RAID when booting the system because each card does a quick reliability check upon POST.

And the Winner is…

Picking an overall winner is sometimes hard in a roundup. There are other things to consider besides how well the RAID card performs, factors such as price, bundled utils/software, and ease of installation/configuration should all be key points to remember when making a decision. So let’s do a quick overview of what each card brought to the table.

The AMI Hyperdisk was easy to install and setup, provides the ability to adjust or tweak the BIOS for things like stripe size, or Boot sector Virus protection. It supports RAID 1, 0, 1/0 and even disk spanning, but -showed us relatively lower scores than the Promise or Iwill cards in all RAID configurations. AMI also packs a rather hefty price tag for not being able to deliver better performance scores. With an MSRP of $129, we found the card a bit steep in the price department, but you are buying a well known card with a nice warranty of 3 years, and it’s also fully supported under Windows 95,98,NT, 2000 and DOS. [ MSRP's aside, the card can be found for prices as low as $96-100 online - Editor ]

The Iwill SIDE-RAID66 was also easy to setup and install –although it is a little too easy, giving up any tweaking ability. It supports RAID 1, 0, 1/0, but doesn’t support 4 disks in a single RAID 0 configuration – this is somewhat of a nuissance since you'll have be forced to live with two smaller partitions rather than a single, larger partition. However, this isn’t a big problem and could even be considered a benefit if you want to, say, Ghost from one drive to another for backups. Performance scores from the Iwill card were very good and just fall a hair short of being the top performer in the roundup. Interestingly, Iwill will be releasing a new BIOS that should reduce the CPU overhead from the HighPoint chip, which may translate to some real life performance increases. We'll definitely take a look again at this card once the new BIOS is made available, since it could well give the Promise card even stiffer competition at that point. The RAID66 is one of cheapest cards in the roundup, with an actual listed MSRP of only $99 [ Which means it should be cheaper on the street, but we haven't seen just how much cheaper - Editor ]! There is also the external drive connection that’s worth mentioning. Even though there wasn’t any purpose in our lab for this connector, it might prove it’s worth if Iwill ever decides to develop an external drive to take advantage external hot swapping, which the card supports. The warranty of the Iwill card is also the best in the roundup, 5 years! It’s supported In Windows 98, NT, and 2000. All in all, the card is a great performer and great value for the money.

We're now left with the Promise FastTrack66 - It’s simple to install and configure, and provides a moderate level of tweaking in the BIOS. It supports RAID 0, 1, and 1/0. And Performance? Very solid, with average benchmarks scores consistently higher than either the Iwill or AMI card. The average retail price tag is $125 though, and for us this was fair when you consider the performance and included utilities [ note however, that we have seen prices as low as $99 online - Editor ]. This card is also hot-swap ready. The warranty, curiously enough, is the most disapointing in the roundup, being only 2 years - and that is somewhat surprising because Promise makes some very solid products. This card, too, is supported under Windows 98, NT, 2000, and DOS.

Final Words

If performance is what your after, the Promise card or the Iwill card will both serve you well. Throughout each benchmark, both cards were very close in score, so close in fact you would have to look into other benefits of each card to decide which to buy. The AMI falls too short in benchmarks to be recommend as a 1st pick performance choice.

If price is an issue the Iwill card has your number. It is around $20 cheaper than both the Promise or AMI, but you won’t get the ability to have 4 drives connected in a single RAID 0, and it suffers from a slight performance loss when compared to the Promise card. However you do get a 5-year warranty.

If fault tolerance or RAID 1 configuration is your target, than any of these card will work for you. In setup -there wasn’t any difference between the Promise, Iwill, or AMI, although the AMI card fell way behind in all benchmarks when running a RAID 1 configuration. I would just pick the cheapest card - in this case the Iwill.

IDE RAID is definitely gaining in popularity because of cards like the ones offered in this roundup. During the review of each of the cards included –my system was noticeably more responsive, and that alone proves to me that my next system is going to include an IDE RAID configuration - It’s a cheap alternative to high-end SCSI based solutions and it’s perfect for a someone who wants more performance or fault tolerance than their standard drive system can provide.

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