danfoley wrote:
I'm getting 3 old computers tonight. They are all about 7-10 years old i would guess. I have looked into the Sata raid controllers, and most of them seem to be PCI-X. Some like the "LSI SuperTrack EX12350" is PCI-E
First off you are going to need to be careful, some RAID cards, aren't. By this I mean that they are based on the use of the processor in the background via special drivers and do not contain any processor or off load XOR engine and cache on the card. These are only going to be RAID0 or RAID1.
danfoley wrote:
I do have the hardware guide in front of me, and like i said most seem to be PCI-X or PCI-E (is PCI-E what you find on older computers?).. And for the case of something like LSI MegaRAID SuperTrak EX12350 as above. Is is supported? The docs only say "SuperTrak".. they give no model numbers. Does that mean all models are supported?
PCI is a 32bit 33MHz interface bus, PCI-X is 64bit and comes in a number of flavors in terms of speed 33, 66, 100, and 133MHz are those speeds. Though there are exceptions, most PCI-X cards will drop back to 32 bit and 33MHz speed, BUT NOT ALL! Some PCI slots Generally yes. As a general rule you can assume that the naming of a family of controllers means support is across all devices using that name.
danfoley wrote:
I see all 7xxxx/8xxxx 3ware cards are supported, but i can't find a complete list of these and which ones use which type of expansion slot.
Go to 3Ware's site for that info. Most in not all the 7xxx cards will be PCI or PCI-X as will the vast majority of the 8xxx cards.
danfoley wrote:
I'm not sure what type of expansion slots to find on a computer 7-10 years old, but I'm guessing all i am going to find it regular old PCI slots correct?
Correct.
danfoley wrote:
If that is the case which supported SATA RAID controller can I use? I'd like to spend more more then $200 for the controller. Is PCI-X new? I bought a new dell about 3 years ago that appears to have only regular PCI slots on it.
PCIe is the newer interface, most of the newer performance RAID cards will be 8X PCIe types. Allot of the consumer motherboards will only have 1x and 16x slots.
danfoley wrote:
Thank for the help. I want to make sure I buy the correct RAID controller. I do not want to get one put it in only to find out it is not supported etc.
Your welcome,
Mike
PS. Stay away from Adaptec cards, they have really crappy support now, you can't even talk to tech support without paying first. Go for the 3Ware cards.