loopdemack

Lo to @, mates, I have some questions regarding RAID 5 level, I am planning to move on hardware based RAID 5 level with 4 sata or 4 pata drives. I currently own 4 pata ide drives, one Maxtor Dimondmax 120GB/2mb, one Maxtor Dimondmax 120GB/8mb cache and two identical 120gb WD drives with 8mb. On Sata Controller I got two Identical 160gb Maxtor Diamond 9 Sata drives with 8mb of cache. I am planning to buy 2 more Sata 160GB drives by WesternDigital with 8mb which I plan to combine with two Maxtor's. First question is what do you think about combining different types of drives, like same capacity and different manufactures, one kind with 2mb and one with 8mb of cache but all on 7200 rpms. Second question is, what is the best hardware based raid5 PCI controller card, for the smallest amount of money (cheapest like 40-90$), if its possible, based on XOR processor or Intel risc processor and which is better. Third question is, I am planning to partition that raid volume, to two partitions, one with 5gb or 6gb for operating system (WinXP or Win2003) and rest in one big partition of 474 gb (4x1600GB). First (smaller) partition, means to be Ghosted by some Imager, like Ghost 8 or 9 or Acronis True Image (Enterprise or Corporate) or Symantec "Goback" or you give me some Idea, I need imager which is capable to ghost Raid 5 partition, which I can ghost back from bootable DVD. Thank you, full respect.

Thank you for your fast response, seems that 3ware superb controller is out of my price range (400$) and Adaptec is over 200$. How about some new motherboards with integrated Raid 5 controller or how about some software version of Raid 5, what is real CPU usage, all tests and reviews on net are against software Raid 5. If there is someone with practice on software and hardware Raid 5, please tell us your findings.

Hello I need some advice, I have some small home LAN network(Win2000pro) with two comp. with 3com 3c095-tx cards with cross-over- IBM shielded cable 1,5m. In standard operations I have about 5-6 mb/s and in copy with Total Commander I have 7-8 Mb/s. In one machine I have Intel 815e mb with 933e coppermine, second machine is Asus p4p800/ p4 2.4c(integrated 3com GB card disabled).both comps in ata 100, udma, both with HDD's 7200/8mb. In my firm I have similar computers with LAN of two in cross over but I have speed about 10-11mb/s I tried 3com drivers for 3c905 4.31 and 4.41. I get same speed with both. I tried several crossover cables from different manufactures and its same. Do you have some suggestions what to do, maybe some of setting in network advance could boost speed, ( just to mentioned I am in 100mbit/full dup. on both computers), maybe some of these which are defaults could change speed: DoubleNego-disable Down poll rate-8 Enh Lan Power Mgmt -off Flow Control-Enable ( I really need this option on Enable, when its disabled and when I play DVD's from network I could get choke's and some times skippings) InitDelayCount-0 LnkChk-disable PhyCompat-enable RWU ARP-disable RWU Magic PKT-Enable RWU Ping-disable Rx Checksum Offload-Enable Software Cable detect-Off Stdby Rwu Magic Pkt-Enable Stdby Rwu Pattern-Enable Tx Checksum Offload-Enable If you have some idea please c'mon share it with me, if you know some good LAN booster software or some other LAN speed optimizer please share it with me. do you think that I need to put some switch or router(some advance with 24 or 32mb) to boost speed, I really need 10-11mb/s if its possible Thank you.

Oh you mean "names of files", of course I forget about that, my bad m8y, I could put pic without real file names, because picture present this boost in the right manners.

b]Originally posted by ds3circuit:[/b] Quote: The 3c905 series came in three flavors IIRC. If they are revision A, then they are only 10 meg cards. Revisions B n C encorporated WOL as well as a Bel chipset. I got 8 or 9 3Com "3c905c", every card has wake on LAN and boot rom, 4 are made in USA, 2 in Ireland and rest in Singapore. Model is 3C905C-tx-m.

Ok Thanks on reply, I tried some things but most of them didn't do any significant speed improvements, I just tried 8-9 things. Most important thing is EnablePMTUDiscovery, why, lets just say if you use several internet connections like, modem, ISDN, Wifi and Network this is crucial part in MTU size because this rout will set correct MTU size for your connection type. If you don't change this option to disable, you can change MTU size but Windows will ignore change. Second I changed "Down Poll rate" to 64, in 3com advance settings and I boosted speed to 8,6-9,2mb/s(not mbit/s). No my Nic doesn't share any IRQ, I even selected pci slot which is free to two levels in pirq channels (just to mention, I tried all PCI slots) nothing shared in A or B channel. Ping is great Average =0ms. I don't need any Internet tweaks because I have maximum performance on all internet connections like on my Wifi 512kbit/s I got 63-66kb/s, on my ISDN on one ch. 64kbit/s I've got 7,9-8.4kb/s without compression. Most of tweaks that I did found are for Internet broadband and none for home LAN without Server. ds3circuit could you explain me, what did you meant exactly for flow control. Alec§taar could you throw me your most important tweaks but for home LAN connection, if you consider that I got tree types of internet connections and I don't use my LAN for Internet. Here is picture with speed improvement "Down poll rate 64" [Edited by dosfreak on 2004-09-21 12:55:03]