Questions on Marvell vs. intel Raid setup for new build

I’m getting ready to do my first build this weekend, and had some questions on the Asus p9x79pro motherboard’s raid controllers. They are:
What is the difference between the Marvell controller and the intel software controller?
Why would I use one over the other?
Do the Marvell raid controllers need to be pre-installed using the F6 method, same as the intel raid controllers?
Here is my planned drive arrangement, feedback appreciated.
(1) Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - OS (win7 64 bit), pagefile, & programs, 6gb sata on SSD caching port
(2) Western Digital WD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - RAID 0 Media and projects, 6b sata port
(1) Western Digital WD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - media cache & renders
(1) WB Black 32mb cache 3.0 Sata - Exports and non video file storage
Asus BD burner on 3gb port
Thanks

What is the difference between the Marvell controller and the intel software controller?
I haven't tested it, but rumors are that Intel is marginally faster than Marvell.
Why would I use one over the other?
It depends on the number of ports in your system. That can be motherboard dependent.
Do the Marvell raid controllers need to be pre-installed using the F6 method, same as the intel raid controllers?
No. You can define a raid after you installed your OS by simply going into the BIOS.
On my motherboard, I have 2 Intel SATA 6 G ports and 2 Marvell SATA 6 G ports. The rest are SATA 3 G.
If that is the same in your case, I would do the following:
Crucial M4 on Intel SATA 6G
WD Black on Intel SATA 6G
2 x WD Black/64 on Marvell SATA 6G in raid0
WD Black/32 on Intel SATA 3G
DVD/BDR on Intel SATA 3G
one SATA 3G for eSATA connection.

Similar Messages

Creating the best RAID setup for my MacPro using FCP

I have a MacPro, 2 x 3GHz Dual Core, 16GB ram, 4 x 500GB drives and I work in FCP 5.1.4 and with my Hardware setup I feel it should be faster and I've been wanting to set up a RAID but not sure how to do it, or the best way way to do it.
Out of the 4 drives I have, Drive one is my main drive (boot drive, apps etc.) Drives (2 & 3) which is a TB combined, I'd like to turn those into a RAID) to speed up rendering, editing etc. In FCP and Motion. Drive 4 is where I keep all my working files.
My files are backed up regularly onto external harddrives and kept offsite.
Can I leave everything I have on my entire system the way it is and just turn Drives 2 & 3 into a RAID that's best for this application? People who work in VIDEO I know do this all the time to speed things up but I can't find the steps for the best way to do this. Bits and pieces all over the place but I can't put this puzzle together.
Can you point me in the direction in how to do this?
As I'm doing this is there anything I should be careful about?
Please help me understand this process.
Just in case you need to know what kind of drives I have here's the info:
Capacity: 465.76 GB
Model: ST3500641AS P
Revision: 3.BTA
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk1
Bay Name: "Bay 1"
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Startup Drive:
Capacity: 465.44 GB
Available: 367.86 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s2
Mount Point: /

My advice would be 'yes' to what you are saying... with the exception of the Softraid stuff - not that I think its wrong, but I've never used it, so I can't comment if you need it or whether the Mac OSX raid is sufficient - but others here say they prefer it so fair enough. You can see some comparisons here http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/softraid/351/
amug always have indepth benchmarks of stuff.
I wouldnt call myself an FCP guru, but I think that your suggestion of putting the FCP scratch disk and client, video files on the raid are the best idea. The scratch folder is essentially where the temp-rendered clips go, so its audio and video - you want that folder to be on a really fast volume. You also want your source video files to be on a really fast volume, so they can be streamed fast enough to play in realtime too when playing unrendered areas, or building a preview.
Some might say in FCP you get bast performance when your scratch disks and video files are on seperate disks. Thats totally true, so it can read from one disk and write to the other at the same time. But in your case you have a 3disk stripe, which is roughly 3x faster than either of your disks! So it would still be faster to have them all on the same stripe.
You can leave your FCP app on the sys drive, keeps things cleaner (drive1 for sys and appsm raid for data). You can keep your project files where ever you want, they're not very big and are kept in memory so dont affect performance at all. Though to stay clean I would keep it on the raid, so again the raid is for data, and you can back it up accordingly. The system drive is only for apps and system so you can back that up accordingly too (less frequently probably).
P.S. Technically your 'point 8' is inaccurate. After creating the raid you will not see drives 2,3 or 4. You will see only one 'volume' for all 3 drives. Overall your mac will have 2 'volumes': the system drive, and the stripe of 2,3,4. Physical drives and 'volumes' that mount in your OS are completely seperate. You can create multiple partitions in a single drive, or you can combine multiple drives into a single volume (e.g. using raid). But basically yes, you copy your client files back to the raid.
And remember, if any ONE of the disks in the stripe dies, you lose ALL of the data on the entire 1.5TB volume. So it is pretty important to backup regularly!!!!
(I dont wanna confuse you any more, but raid5 is a good option if you want more security and don't mind paying extra :P, you'll need more hardware for that, and more drives to make it worthwhile - but I would say skip that for now, as you can build your raid0 for free or almost free and use that until you think you need more)

Xserve RAID setup for mixed platform office

In our office we have several Macs and Windows machines that regularly read the same files during various tests we run. Unfortunately these files are spread out across various drives on various systems and many of the files are duplicated in many places.
To make us more efficient as well as provide reliable backup for our critical test files I'm considering an Xserve RAID setup.
I understand a computer is needed as a controller and an Xserve is typically used for this. Could a Dual 2GHz G5 serve this purpose? It needs OS X Server installed? Does the G5 get a Fibre Channel card in order to connect to the G5 to the RAID and then the rest of the office can connect to the G5 to access the RAID via GigE.
We are not editing video, I don't see that all the clients need Fibre.
How about Windows clients, are they able to seemlessly access the RAID just like Macs?

> I understand a computer is needed as a controller and an Xserve is typically used for this
Yes, you need a controller, but it doesn't need to be an XServe. Any host will do.
> Could a Dual 2GHz G5 serve this purpose
Yes, quite easily. You just need an appropriate fiber channel card in the host that you're attaching the XServe RAID to.
> It needs OS X Server installed?
No. You don't even need Mac OS X installed - the XServe RAID is platform agnostic and can be used with Windows, Linux, and other Unix systems.
> Does the G5 get a Fibre Channel card in order to connect to the G5 to the RAID and then the rest of the office can connect to the G5 to access the RAID via GigE.
Correct. You'd use some kind of file sharing on the G5 to share the XServe RAID to the network clients. The only caveat is that Mac OS X Client only supports 10 active client connections. If you need more than that you may need Mac OS X Server.
As for the Windows clients, they can access the RAID volume through the G5, too - you'll just need to enable SMB file sharing on the G5.

Optimal Setup for New Time Capsule with Wireless AC

I'm curious to see what the hypotehtical optimal setup for my Time Capsule. I understand that wireless speeds depend on a ton of factors and that part of getting the best connection is just trying different options. I have a new Time Capsule that's connected to the following devices: iPhone 5S; new MacBook Air with wireless AC; old iMac from 2007; old AirPort Express that only supports b/g and a newish Apple TV that supports wireless N, I believe. I was connecting to the network (which was not designated with the 5ghz) and I recently chose the option to label the 5ghz. I'm using that now to stream music with the new iPhone and the Apple TV with no problems, but I have no longer have the option of using the old Airport express because it's an old one. I'm thinking of just getting a new Airport Express and leaving it at that, but wanted to know if anyone has some thoughts on this. I'm sure there's a more concise and direct way to ask this question, but my knowledge is pretty limited here. Thanks in advance.

The Time Capsule is already set up for optimal performance when you open up the box.
You can assign a separate name to the 5 GHz network and point devices that are capable to that network. This works well if the device is located close to the Time Capsule.
But, 5 GHz signals are much weaker than 2.4 GHz signals, so once you move a room or two away, or the signal has to pass through several walls, the 2.4 GHz will be stronger.....and probably faster as well.
But...your device will try to stay locked on the 5 GHz network since you set it up that way.
This type of setup may or may not work best for you. For most users, it is simpler and more effective to use the default settings on the Time Capsule to have both bands use the same network name.
Then, your wireless devices will automatically connect to the signal with the best quality. Best quality may not be the fastest signal since there are lot of factors involved with signal quality. But, if you think about it a bit more, don't you want to have your wireless device connect to the signal with the best quality?
Some users swear by assigning a separate name to the 5 GHz band. I'm not one of them, but If it works well for them and they are happy, then there is no reason to change.
An older AirPort on your network is going to drag down the speeds. You need the new AirPort Express, or better yet an AirPort Extreme if you want to be able to extend the new 802.11ac signal.

Why no RAID options for new disks?

Hi support group,
"My name is Shaun, and I am a mac-aholic"
I inserted 4 new 3TB disks into the bays of my Mac Pro (2012), and there is no RAID option for them.
How I got here:
Inserted the WD Red drives, and they were not initiated.
I "erased" the drives, gave them names, and they appear in Disk Utility in grey drives.
Went to set up the RAID, and move the drives into the RAID, but got an error that they could not be used.
It appears to me that disk utility is not allowing me to fully use those drives. I Have created RAID drives before with no issue in RAID1 with 3TB drives before on this machine. Am perplexed, I thought this to be the easy and simple part of my upgrade odyssey! Did I screw up the initialization? On all FOUR drives?
Now, if I click on the drives, the RAID option does not present itself.
FWIW, I am using OS X 10.9.5, on Mac Pro 5,1. I boot from PCIe card. My end goal is to create a 4-disk RAID 10 using the four SATA connections on the MP.

It was really pretty simple based on your feedback, I powered down, removed the drives from the SATA backplane, moved each drive separately to the USB enclosure, then re-"erased" in OSX-Etended. I ejected each drive when finished, and moved to the next one until all four were re-"erased". Then I restarted the Mac with all four in the SATA connections, and all four were visible and had the RAID option tab. I created the three RAID schemes (two stripe and one mirror), and dragged the drives into the RAID option. Then I hit "create" or some other command to finish the RAID.
Note that I did get an error on the RAID creation. From memory, this was "cannot create RAID without an unmounted disk" or something like that. I cleared the error, and then opened back up Disk Utility. All the RAIDs were listed, and were operational with the green "On" signal. I could read/write/transfer from the RAID. Once I transfer the data to this RAID, I will work on a way to test it, but if any risk to the data, I might just leave well enough alone.
For now, it seems I have a fully functional RAID 1+0 using the four HDD on the SATA connections in my Mac Pro 5,1.

Setups for new operating units not loading to target

If there is a new operating unit in the source, setups for that operating unit do not seem to load into the target if that new operating unit does not exist in the target.
Is there a script to address this issue?
Any additional advice will be appreciated.
Edited by: user11071661 on Apr 16, 2009 1:34 PM

Hi,
There are lot of dependencies between setup data that you are trying to load. Operating Unit depends on Accounting Setup which in turn depends on setups like Calendar, Currencies and Chart of Accounts. So, you have to make sure that you have loaded all prerequisite data before loading operating unit.
Thanks
Mugunthan.

Have mac os x 10.4.11 I go threw setup for new acct brings me right back

Need help, put info in for new acct, brings me back again to welcome pick my country done it now three times mac os x 10.4.11

Hello,
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair Disk, (not Repair Permissions). Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
Let us know the outcome please.
If DU found & fixed any errors, you may need to reinstall again.

BT Infinity for new build

Hi,
I've tried searching the forum but can't seem to find posts that are related to my situation.
Basically I'm moving into a new build. There isn't a phone line yet. The postcode checker doesn't think BT Infinity is available, so I can't order.
However, as advised by the FAQ at http://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity/BT-Infinity-Availability-FAQs/td-p/181603, I checked on the wholesale checker www.btwholesale.com/adslchecker and it says it's all available. Any advice please?
Available ProductsDownstream Line Rate(Mbps)Upstream Line Rate(Mbps)Downstream Range(Mbps)Availability Date
Featured Products
WBC ADSL 2+
Up to 17
10 to 19.5
Available
ADSL Max
Up to 7.5
6.5 to 8
Available
WBC Fixed Rate
2
Available
Fixed Rate
2
Available
For all ADSL and WBC Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) services, the stable line rate will be determined during the first 10 days of service usage. Throughput/download speeds will be less than line rates and can be affected by a number of factors within and external to BT's network, Communication Providers' networks and within customer premises.
The Stop Sale date for Datastream is from 30-Jun-2012; the Formal Retirement date for Datastream is from 31-Jan-2014. The Stop Sale date for IPstream is from 31-Jan-2013; the Formal Retirement date for IPstream is from 31-Jan-2014.

this is the correct email address for the forum mods the other address stopped several years ago
http://bt.custhelp.com/app/contact_email/c/4951
If you want to say thanks for a helpful answer,please click on the Ratings star on the left-hand side If the reply answers your question then please mark as ’Mark as Accepted Solution’

Coaxial cable for new build installation

Hi folks, We are waiting on the completion of a new build and as part of our list of requests of the developer they have agreed to fit Sky TV cables for us while they are doing the rest of the first fix. We were invited round yesterday to view the work so far and it looks like they are fitting two runs of their standard coaxial cable rather than the "shotgun" type satellite cables that we're used to Sky installers fitting. Will this standard coax be suitable for HD and be future proof against UHD broadcasts? Many thanks!

It really depends on what type of coax it is. For best results it should be WF100 coax cable or its equivalent (foam dielectric, with both copper braiding and copper foil screening). Sky use 'shotgun' WF65, I believe.

Best RAID setup for me?

Hi
Harm has advised me - and everybody else - to go RAID! So I am about to investigate a bit before I take the big step...
My MOBI supports (according to website) RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. I think - after reading a lot about it - that I could be tempted to chioose RAID 10 - I have 2 1,5 TB disks allready - so I thought about buying another two with same size and set it up as RAID 10 - because as Wikipedia says:
RAID 10
RAID 1+0 (or 10) is a mirrored data set (RAID 1) which is then striped (RAID 0), hence the "1+0" name. A RAID 1+0 array requires a minimum of four drives – two mirrored drives to hold half of the striped data, plus another two mirrored for the other half of the data. In Linux, MD RAID 10 is a non-nested RAID type like RAID 1 that only requires a minimum of two drives and may give read performance on the level of RAID 0.
What about that? Good or bad? I don´t know if my MOBO supports 1+0 or is 1+0 and 10 the same thing?
This is my MOBO: http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard& ProductID=2988&ProductName=GA-EX58-UD4
Morten

Bryan and Morten,
Can you please provide me with a link how to do the softmod on GTS250? I'm not into posiiton to purchase GTX285 at the moment so, I'll give the 'soft mod' option a shot before I decide which to upgrade first - the GPU or the 6 gigs of RAM i have in my system.
My misfortunes with Adobe/AVCHD are the exact same ones experienced by Morten - even a sinle layer of avchd content in the timeline stutters in both the source monitor and the outcome monito in CS4 and is pain to edit for that reason. Try to add a single video effect (like colour correction) or even a signle transition and ... oh, boy! the editing becomes hell and I start feeling sorry that I did not go for Canon HV40 camcroder that shoots HDV on those good old casettes.
Back to your question Bryan regarding the allocation of hdd - this is the advice I got from Harm on the topic. Also included here is advice on which drives to set in Raid 0 in priority order. Hope this helps:
System with 3HDD
C: OS & programs
D: page file, media cache and renders/previews plus miscellaneous
E: media and exports
System with 4HDD
C: OS & programs
D: Windows page file and renders/previews plus miscellaneous
E: original media
F: media cache and exports
Alternative suggestion:
C: OS & Apps
D: pagefile, temp files (Windows), miscellaneous and exports.
E: media
F: projects and rendered/scratch files
Which to put first on Raid 0?
1. Media cache and renders/previews is useful to put first if you do a lot of scrubbing and previewing.
2. That leaves media in the middle.
3. Exports would be last on my list to put on the raid. Export is a one-way street and time is not really critical.

Question on the fly..Raid setup

A single array is way easier to manage too. Blow everything away, make your OBR6 or OBR10 and you are done. Partition as needed.

So you have two choices, both dramatically better than where you have wound up. You've manage to violate nearly every rule of RAID storage there is at this point :) Here are the things that happened that never should, or almost never should: Split arrays, RAID 5, any RAID on just three disks, hot spares with RAID 5, higher performance for OS than data. Five standard rules, all broken :)With RAID 10 you get 50% usable capacity (3 drives) and by far the best speed and reliability. This will blow what you have today out of the water in every way, including usable capacity because it is the same capacity that you have now but in a single pool which is faster and more effective. So 100% win over your design and dramatically so.With RAID 6 you get 67% usable capacity here (4 drives.) and better speed and reliability than you have but not as...

RAID setup for a Mac Pro

I'm trying to figure out what would be the best configuration for my Mac Pro tower as far as storage and backup is concerned. I want a RAID drive with hot swappable slots but I'm not sure what the best solution is. Apple's SAN and xServe seem far too sophisticated for my needs (not to mention pricey). I bought a Norco DS-500B eSATA RAID storage array but the RAID controller card is a PCI-X and incompatible with my machine (although the documentation says it's totally compatible...weird). And so in my investigation as to what card to get to replace the one provided, I couldn't find any reviews on this product, save one which said that the array is very bad and will destroy all your hard drives. Sooo...I'm returning the array in search of a new one, but again my investigation has turned up very little. Am I the only one? Or am I out of touch with the real solution?

What's missing in your post is two of the most important elements.
How much storage do you need?
There is a myriad of options if you want 2-5TB of space. Not so many if you want 2-5 petabytes of space
How much are you prepared to spend?
You have many, many options at $100,000, but no so many at $100
The other thing to consider is that by and large, price reflects quality - either in reliability or performance (or both).
If your budget is, say, $2000 you have to decide whether you're better off buying a budget 5TB system or a pro 2TB system - the latter system clearly has less capacity but may offer higher performance and/or reliability. Any RAID system is only as good as all the parts, and the physical drives are only a small element there. The controller, internal electronics, cabling and even interface can have just as much impact on a reliable RAID system (almost any RAID system can recover from a failed disk, but a burned-out controller is harder to recover from).

Best RAID setup for Home Directories

Hi there,
I'm looking to upgrade our existing infrastructure which is 5 or 6 years old. We have an old Xserve RAID which has 4x 250Gb disks in a RAID 5 configuration which gives about 640Gb of storage for home directories. However the peak number of users has shot up to something like 85.
I want to be able to increase the storage space for home users but also to provide a RAID storage solution that has optimised performance for the number of users we now have.
Is there any kind of ratio or guideline to the kind of configuration/system I should be looking at? Can anyone offer any advice?
It's a gigabit ethernet network, so obviously I realise that performance is limited by that also.
Any help much appreciated.

OK, that helps a lot.
The CPU load on the server seems a little higher than I'd expect. What's the activity level of the RAID? Are the disks continually active? Are the fiber channel activity lights (the vertical columns of LEDs in the middle) all active?
That will help track the issue to the host system or the RAID.
If the disk activity lights are always busy then it may be an issue with the number of drives for the number of users, and more physical drives would help.
This could also be indicative of a too-full volume (RAID 5 volumes will degrade in performance over about 85% full. At 95% full performance may be excruciatingly slow).
If the fiber channel activity levels are high then the problem is the amount of disk access and your best bet would be to expand to the other half of the array (this will double the available fiber channel bandwidth between the host and the RAID).
If the RAID activity levels aren't high then it could be a network bottleneck on the server, in which case link aggregation could help - it isn't just for redundancy, it will load balance client traffic over the links, effectively increasing performance for clients.
You are right that if you try to expand the current volume with drives, the drives will be sized to 250GB, regardless of their physical capacity. For this reason you would need to build a new array on the other side of the RAID and copy the data over.
The ideal situation would be 14 new drives which you could build into two 7-disk arrays which are then striped on the host system.

Best RAID setup for MSI Z77A-G43

I currently have my desktop set up with an SSD as C: and 2 x 1TB HDD as D: in a RAID 1 configuration.
I'd like to add a second SSD to increase capacity of my C: drive. Ideally I'd like to set both SSDs at RAID 0. Would this be possible without having to rebuild the OS? Alternatively, could I configure them as JBOD without affecting the current installation?
Any help would be appreciated.
David.

Quote
I'd like to add a second SSD to increase capacity of my C: drive. Ideally I'd like to set both SSDs at RAID 0. Would this be possible without having to rebuild the OS?
don't think so, you have to combine them both and format after that before use it

Help with project/folder setup for new flex project??

Hello all,
I need help deciding how to set up my projects for a new flex application we're developing.
We have an in-house custom java/jsp "framework". This framework has JSP pages for administering applications that are built using this framework. One part of the framework generates all java base and model objects from our database tables to be used in the new application.
The new application will have a back-office part (Adobe AIR) and a web facing part (Adobe Flex). Both the AIR and Flex parts of the application need to access the java model objects via AS3 classes (I believe I'll do this using remoteobject).
My questions are as follows:
After I create the base and model AS3 classes that remoteobject with the java classes can I put these in a common library project so both my AIR and Flex app can access common AS3 code. I feel I should do this to keep from duplicating code by copying the AS3 classes in both my AIR and Flex projects. Can you give my any examples or links to information on how to do this??
I plan to also create a common java project for all base and model objects generated from my db tables so that the common library project with AS3 classes could remoteobject interface with the java classes in the java project. I would like to keep all of my business logic in the java model classes. Does this seem appropriate for the projects/setup listed above?
Here are the projects I think I need in Flex Builder.
FlexWebApp
AIRBackOfficeApp
JavaApp - Common
AS3FlexLibraryApp - Common
The FlexWebApp and AIRBackOfficeApp will reference the AS3FlexLibraryApp and the AS3FlexLibraryApp will remoteobject to the java classes in JavaApp.
Any help or direction with this is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Whitney

Hi,
Please post only once (do not post same thread across multiple forums).
help with Financials setup from very basics...
Re: help with Financials setup from very basics...
Regards,
Hussein

Questions on Marvell vs. intel Raid setup for new build

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