lammypie 0 Posted October 29, 2001 I thought I'd warn you guys that there are SERIOUS issues with the Seagate Barracuda IV hard disks and the HPT370 RAID controller. Using a RAID 0 configuration the RAID 0 will perform almost 50% SLOWER than using a single drive!!!!!! I have tested this using HPT bios and driver combos 1.03b1, 1.11.0402, 2.0.1015, 2.0.1019. It just doesn't work. Other users have experienced the same thing over at the forums at www.storagereview.com. Also the 2.0.1019 HPT Bios will limit the cuda4s to 66Mbs (DMA Mode4) and will crash the RAID 0 array on reboot. I am still waiting for a reply from Highpoint and Seagate tech support. For more info and proofcheck out this thread at the Icrontic forums which included clear and detailed ATTO benchmarks. http://www.icronticforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=15092&goto=newpost If you use the HPT370 controller I recomend you DO NOT purchase the Barracdua IVs like I did. Especially if you intend to use the RAID 0. Share this post Link to post
BladeRunner 0 Posted October 29, 2001 Ouch! Well the computer world is full of incompatabilities (Anybody else remember back to a time when WD HD's couldn't be used in a Slave/Master configuration with anything other than another WD HD??). Of course this might be a good time to invest in a superior RAID card from Promise? Share this post Link to post
Brian Frank 0 Posted October 30, 2001 The one thing I like about the HPT370 is when it's integrated into a mobo, it's not castrated like the Promise RAID controllers are. You can use the drives independently if you don't have equal sized drives instead of being forced to use RAID 0 or 1, no choice about it:( The best are the 3Ware Escalades that are being produced anymore. Tough break with the Seagates:( Share this post Link to post
lammypie 0 Posted October 31, 2001 This is the reply I had from Seagate Tech Support. Chris, The Barracuda ATA IV has the fastest internal transfer rate of any of its competitors. This is why it is the highest performance drive in its class in certain applications when used by itself. Evidently, when the drive is used in some RAID 0 environments, it can supply data to the interface faster than the host system can request it. Under some circumstances, such as reading sequential data, this can cause the drive to incur a latency. This means when the host request comes too late -- after the data's initial immediate availability -- the drive must wait for the disc to rotate up to one revolution for the requested data to be available again. Under these circumstances, the drive appears to be slow in performance when actually it is too fast. This is not a new phenomenon. Because Seagate is the leader in new technologies and products, and the increased performance they bring, we sometimes have to wait for the rest of the industry to catch up. When Seagate introduced the Cheetah X15, over one million drives ago, there was a similar issue with a few SCSI RAID controllers. Like the SCSI RAID environment, we anticipate optimized controllers will become available. In the meanwhile, it appears some 2-drive ATA RAID 0s can't keep up with the Barracuda ATA IV. There is no alternate slower firmware available to accommodate the problem. Best Regards, Ron Stacy Seagate Product Support Share this post Link to post
