[rescue] x86 power question

[velociraptor]

On 11/13/06, John Francini <francini at mac.com> wrote:
>
> I knew exactly what you meant. I was implying that there are IDE disk
> drives out there that aren't crap. You could buy one of those
> enclosures you mentioned, put server-grade IDE drives in it, and have
> a reasonably robust storage pool.

I have a resonably robust RAID storage pool--as I said the IDE drives
via SATA->IDE bridges work *fine* on this x86 box, even though
anything attached to the motherboard IDE does not.  Booted off of a
Live CD, I can mount the RAID, move files around, etc.  That's how I
got the data shuffled from NTFS to ext3--so I even stressed it out
that set up via rsync (and that was with the video card still in the
fscking box for criminy's sake).

But the *hardware* RAID 5 subsystem is still slow, so I don't really
want to contemplate what a SW RAID 5 subsystem would feel like.  I
don't really believe there is a mechanical distinction between the
Seagate 16MB buffer disks sold in retail boxes with 3-year warranties
and the stuff you can buy from Apple or Dell's for servers.  You
might, but I don't.  Now they do have *firmware* differences, and that
can bite you in the butt in some cases (try Compaq firmware SCSI disks
in a Sun, for example).

In any case, if I was going to shell out that much cash paying the
"server" tax for disks, I'd buy a SATA-based NAS and forget about it.

=Nadine=