vinum vs. DPT smartcacheIV raid

[Ean Kingston]

> I have a box with DPT PM2044 SmartCacheIV UW-SCSI PCI cards which can do
> RAID-5 in hardware, but I'd have to use the DOS volume manager to set up
> the array. I have heard reports that vinum woudl be faster than using the
> native card. Is this true?

Doubtful, though I have heard that there are some rare special
circumstances where software raid can be faster. Given your hardware, you
will probably not experience those conditions.

> Should I not bother with doing the hardware
> raid
> and just go with vinum?

Use the hardware RAID, especially if you are going to use a simple RAID
configuration (like one big RAID-5 virtual disk). Just make sure you have
some way of figuring out if one of the disks goes bad. Worst case you
could boot off a DOS floppy once in a while to make sure all the disks are
still good.

> The rest of the system is a k6-2 400mhz with 256mb ram (amount might
> change).
> I will also have moderate network i/o on the pci bus (obviously).

-- 
Ean Kingston

E-Mail: ean_AT_hedron_DOT_org
URL: http://www.hedron.org/