Jaja ... Wait a moment Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 3.0 am 27./28. April 2002 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

On Fri, 26 Apr 2002, Hans Franke wrote: How do I watch these, and when are they, please? Peace... Sridhar -- "How do you fight such a savage?" "With heart, faith, and steel. There can be only one." -MacLeod and Ramirez, "Highlander"

On Fri, 26 Apr 2002 12:05:17 +0200, Hans Franke wrote: Hallo Hans.. Thats very good for me as I have no time to come (from Duisburg) Will you be at z-fest this year ? I will do so too We will look if that's true.-) Greetings from Fritz Chwolka - Duisburg / collecting old computers just for fun at www.alterechner.de \

On Fri, 26 Apr 2002, Hans Franke wrote: Thanks, Hans! That's all I needed to know. I really appreciate it. Doc

Well, that's what I exectly started to test. As I told earlyer, when plugging in a new disk it did duplicate the existing disk onto the new one right away. The above mentioned test was if both copies are independant usable as first drive for recovery. I won't start the final test, the one where I put both disks together again, to see how it recovers teh inconsistent system, until next week, since I need the machine to woork the next 3 days. That's why I used stripeing on my game machine :) Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 3.0 am 27./28. April 2002 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

Jerome Fine replies: I must be very confused and missing something as well. Please set me straight. First, there are two methods of RAID 1 (Mirroring) implementation: (a) Using software within the operating system to perform each WRITE twice and perhaps using software again to allow the operating system to select the drive which has the head closer to a READ request. While the latter will save some time, the former is probably a time waster (in respect to a single drive system that does not support RAID 1). I understand that Windows NT (Yeck!) uses this method. (b) Use firmware within a separate controller and HIDE the second drive from the operating system. (I have this type of controller, but I found the RAID 1 firmware useless.) However, because my controller is able to support UDMA 100 I/O requests (there is a Pentium III 750 and motherboard which supports ONLY IDE speed access), the sustained throughput via the PCI controller for the EIDE hard drives is perhaps FOUR times the throughput for these same hard drives using just the motherboard. BUT, I don't believe it is fair to say that the RAID 1 function (if it did work) is faster because the RAID 1 controller supports faster throughput. Indeed, since I rejected the (totally incompetent implementation of the) RAID 1 firmware and ONLY keep this PCI controller because the additional speed is a big advantage, I tend to reject any conclusion that the RAID 1 function is faster in and of itself - it is the PCI controller that is faster and if the RAID 1 function worked well, that would be a bonus. So maybe we are each saying exactly the same thing, but from a slightly different point of view - or perhaps Jay did not expand what was said sufficiently to bring out the point that his RAID 1 controller is faster as well, but since the RAID 1 function does work, both aspects have been joined into a single improvement. As for backups, I just use the additional drives that I was going to use in the RAID 1 configuration as storage for my daily backup which takes only 10 minutes due to the speed of the PCI controller for the EIDE drives. And while it does take my personal time and attention, I also have the advantage of having a whole layer of backups which I would not have with only a RAID 1 configuration. This latter aspect is, in my opinion, probably more of and advantage than having only a single working backup at any time which is identical to my primary copy from a hardware point of view, but could contain corrupted information due to software problems. I realize that each person will have a different point of view. My observations are not meant to criticize what you said since every computer system is also different and there will obviously be a different set of priorities. All I wanted to do was to mention how I handled the RAID 1 problems and my solution along with reasons. By the way, the PCI (non-RAID 1) controller is under $ US 100. The 40 GBytes EIDE hard drives are under $ US 100 each. Economics does, in my opinion, also play an essential role when decisions are made. If anyone else has any RAID 1 observations and suggestions, I would like to read other points of view. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.