# RAID Controller Question



## Nickos (Apr 27, 2006)

Hi Chaps,

I've got 4 x 1TB Hitachi drives that i want to RAID either RAID5 or RAID10 in a ML115 server.

I'm using an Adaptec 2610sa card and it keeps failing at 12% ish. Apparently there is a 2TB limit, but even trying to create a single array using 2 of the 1TB drives fails!!!! :wall:

Advice or a descent card recommendation required. I plan to use the server as a VM box running ESXi. 

Ta,

N


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## Avanti (Jan 17, 2006)

I don't know the answer but can I ask what is RAID? I had that on my previous PC motherboard disc but was never sure what it was and if I should install it or not


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## hutchingsp (Apr 15, 2006)

I'm not familiar with that controller but do you get any sort of error code when it fails?

What happens if you try different RAID levels with just a couple of drives i.e. RAID0 and RAID1 do you get the same thing?

Avanti - it's where you aggregate several hard drives for greater performance or redundancy i.e. RAID5 means you take three or more hard drives and write parity information across them all so that you can lose any one drive and still access your data, the penalty being write performance in some situations, and disk capacity as your usable capacity is always n-1 (n being the number of physical disks).

Whether you should install it nor not depends, if you don't have several identical hard drives it's not really an option.


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## visor (Sep 8, 2007)

all the drives are identical?

the ML115 has an onboard raid (Integrated 4 port SATA controller with embedded RAID (0,1,5)*) i believe its nvidia. you need to enable it in the bios if not already. have you tried it? if so, same issue?

the raid controller looks like http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&objectID=c00892231 if so i dont think it supports 1TB drives.


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## Nickos (Apr 27, 2006)

All drives are Hitachi 1TB SATA disks. 

Same error every time, IMPACTED both for RAID1, RAID5 & RAID10.

Think i'll have to return it and cough up for a 3ware 9650se, balls!


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## PaulGTI (Oct 21, 2006)

Avanti said:


> I don't know the answer but can I ask what is RAID?


Ruduntant Array of Inexpensive (or Indepadant) Disks.

Originally they were used for data security when Hard disks wernt so reliable, The same information would be written (Mirrored) on both (or all) disks in the array. So there was always a copy of the information should 1 disk fail.

Then as hard disks became more reliable thay decided that to speed up disk read and write times they would split the data into 2 chanels simultaniously, so for example instead of one channel getting all the information, it is split in 2 and the time taken halved....

*One Channel*

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 into the input channel

*Raid with 2 channels*

0 2 4 6 8 into channel 1
1 3 5 7 9 into channel 2

This is a very simplistic explanation, using theroetical ideals. In real world usage you wont get the max quoted speeds


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## Mike_182 (Mar 22, 2007)

Nickos said:


> All drives are Hitachi 1TB SATA disks.
> 
> Same error every time, IMPACTED both for RAID1, RAID5 & RAID10.
> 
> Think i'll have to return it and cough up for a 3ware 9650se, balls!


I've got one spare if you want...


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