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Re: Raid 1 w/2HD and 3rd HD not raid?

 
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Dale Corrington
Advisor

Raid 1 w/2HD and 3rd HD not raid?

Can I configure an HP xw4300 with (3) 73GB scsi U320 drives as 2HD mirrored and the 3rd drive seperate storage? I would use the 3rd drive as a daily backup device since a tape drive for this user is not practical.
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Steven Clementi
Honored Contributor

Re: Raid 1 w/2HD and 3rd HD not raid?

Dale:

I am not at all familiar with the xw line, but in the Proliant world, a Smart Array Controller would easily be able to fulfill your configuration. I would think any HP Array Controller would be able to do the same or similar, but can't say for sure as I never even seen an xw.


Steven
Steven Clementi
HP Master ASE, Storage, Servers, and Clustering
MCSE (NT 4.0, W2K, W2K3)
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Dale Corrington
Advisor

Re: Raid 1 w/2HD and 3rd HD not raid?

Maybe I shouldn't be in the array forum. It's a workstation with a "U320 single channel SCSI RAID controller" and 3 interal HD.
Steven Clementi
Honored Contributor

Re: Raid 1 w/2HD and 3rd HD not raid?

Running Windows? or Linux?


Software based RAID is doable in the manner you speak of as well.


Steven
Steven Clementi
HP Master ASE, Storage, Servers, and Clustering
MCSE (NT 4.0, W2K, W2K3)
VCP (ESX2, Vi3, vSphere4, vSphere5, vSphere 6.x)
RHCE
NPP3 (Nutanix Platform Professional)
Dale Corrington
Advisor

Re: Raid 1 w/2HD and 3rd HD not raid?

Windows XP. I don't know that I want to go with a software raid. I haven't bought this yet, so I am open to other hardware solutions.
Steven Clementi
Honored Contributor

Re: Raid 1 w/2HD and 3rd HD not raid?

You can get an Array contrller for the workstation. Doesn't have to be a Smart Array, but a Smart Array would probably work.

Not sure how much need there is for a hardware based RAID solution in a workstation, but I am sure your asking about it since you have some concerns.


Steven
Steven Clementi
HP Master ASE, Storage, Servers, and Clustering
MCSE (NT 4.0, W2K, W2K3)
VCP (ESX2, Vi3, vSphere4, vSphere5, vSphere 6.x)
RHCE
NPP3 (Nutanix Platform Professional)
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: Raid 1 w/2HD and 3rd HD not raid?

From looking at the specifications, it looks like this 'SCSI RAID controller' (LSI 20320A-R) cannot do what you want:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11954_na/11954_na.HTML

- Supports a single RAID volume RAID 0, 1, or 1E
- Number of supported devices: Up to 15 SCSI devices
- Host bus transfer rate: Up to 1MB/s
- SCSI data transfer rate Up to 320MB/s per channel

(I'd call that a joke, not a RAID controller)
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Dale Corrington
Advisor

Re: Raid 1 w/2HD and 3rd HD not raid?

Thanks for the answer. To be fair, I am asking a bit much for a normal workstation. This card only cost $40 more to add the RAID.I guess I need a different solution for the daily backup and just get 2 HD with RAID1.
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: Raid 1 w/2HD and 3rd HD not raid?

Well, a RAID controller should really have a bit more flexibility if it supports up to 15 disk drives, but I might be asking a bit too much as well ;-)

I see that the xw4300 has an embedded SATA controller. From the description it sounds like it can't present a single disk either, but you might be able to trade a single SCSI disk against a RAID-1 pair of SATA drives for backups.

Now it is getting a bit tight in the system box as you need to use slots reserved for optical devices...
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Ron Lawson_1
Trusted Contributor

Re: Raid 1 w/2HD and 3rd HD not raid?

I think that Host Bus transfer rate must be a typo -- it should be up to 1 GB/s (PCI-X 133MHz capable).