mimidatabase

That's what I said.

I launched the initialization just after the creation of the RAID0 and then, when it was finished, I launched the benchs.

eric512

Can I use two different single disks in a Perc 5 - without setting up RAID? Do I make two VFD's?? Can't seem to figure it out.

DJZeratul

Yes. Make 2 separate virtual disks and add the member disks you want into each separately (as a single disk in their respective RAID0 containers).

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gjelsvik

My first post in here..

Ive been lurking in this thread some time, and got my Perc 5i with BBU today.

Im running it on a Asus P5K SE, had to use the pin 5-6 hack though.
Running on Dell firmware and LSI Megaraid detected it nicely.

What im wondering is the best method to monitor temperature, i installed a Zalman SC100 link in the pci slot under the perc. In Megaraid i can only check the BBU temperature, wich says 6degrees celcius (42.8fahrenheit) The server is located inside my garage outdoors. Should this be an OK setup, or should i continue monitor the temperature?

The setup is raid5 with 4x1tb Seagate Barracuda disks.

DJZeratul

The thing I would worry about in a garage is moisture. Typically garages are opened/closed a lot more often than a front door and obviously would dip down to lower temperatures than inside a house so the dew point could easily be reached out there, causing moisture to form and potentially cause problems. Id put a cheapo wireless temp monitor/humidity gauge in whichever cabinet you have it in and put the receiver in your kitchen or living room so you can keep an eye on it. Sometimes those have a remote wire you can place on the heatsink of the PERC to monitor card temps. Make sure it isn't metal or conductive (cover with paper if it is)

There's unfortunately no way I know of (as of yet) to pull SMART temps off a PERC, either. if someone figures that out, I'd be a happy man.

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gjelsvik

Well the temperature/humidity outside can be quite harshe, about -20celcius in wintertime, and pretty moist when its raining. But as long as the server is always on, the inside of the server will always be warm and dry.

I liked the thought of a remote temp sensor like that, i googled some, and came up with a usb one, that let your pc monitor the temp.
Link

NeonFlak

Just wanted to add that I switched back to the latest dell perc 5i firmware after using LSI firmwares since I received the card (first boot I flashed the card right away). Had been plagued off and on with data corruption on my raid 5 array and random cold boot and reboot issues where the card wouldn't see the drives or wouldn't be noticed at all. Or the drivers wouldn't see the card once in windows even though it did load during the boot process.

Since switching to the latest dell firmware I have had ZERO issues. Zero cold boot and reboot problems and zero data corruption issues with my raid 5 array. Also since switching to the dell firmware booting up and rebooting the server is literally three times faster now. The array does benchmark slower but in actual use it seems more consistent now.

gjelsvik

Does anyone know the distance between the screw holes for the pci mounting bracket?

Stereodude

From my measurement this morning I'd say they're on an 85mm center.

Stereodude

I'm running XP x64 with a Perc 6/i using the most recent Dell Server 2003 x64 drivers (6/30/2009) and I noticed that the "Enable write caching on the disk" box for the DELL PERC 6/I SCSI Disk Drive in the device manager is unchecked. When I check the and box and later go back into the settings it's unchecked again. In the Event Viewer under the System section there's a warning with the following message, "The driver disabled the write cache on device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1."

Now obviously the card is very fast and has it's own cache and settings, but why does it prevent Windows from also using it's write cache?