Caldigit FASTA-4E and SATAMAX PM on windows xp?
by Jerome Thelia
on
Jul 15, 2008 at 3:48:53 pm
Does anyone know of any RAID software that will manage the combination of Caldigit FASTA-4E and Promax SATAMAX PM on windows xp? Caldigit tech support says there should be something 'out there' but I haven't been able to find anything to give me hardware RAID. I have the same combination under OS X and it works fine. On Windows XP I've got software RAID for the time being and haven't really tested performance yet, but fear the worst. Thanks-
Re: Caldigit FASTA-4E and SATAMAX PM on windows xp? by Jerome Thelia on Jul 15, 2008 at 4:09:27 pm
Thanks for the reply. So Caldigit FASTA 4E card is always a software RAID? I was told by Caldigit tech support that I'd get 'much better performance' using RAID software that can talk to my Satamax. And that if I use Windows disk management it would be a 'software RAID' which would tax my CPU and reduce performance. I'm just looking for the fastest possible performance under XP with this combination of hardware. RAID 0 is fine.
Re: Caldigit FASTA-4E and SATAMAX PM on windows xp? by Jared Picune on Jul 15, 2008 at 4:18:22 pm
Hardware RAID and software RAID can get confusing. True 100% hardware RAID requires a dedicated CPU and dedicated cache. For example the CalDigit RAID Card, is 100% hardware RAID. Just because their is hardware used in the RAID configuration does not mean that hardware is handling the RAID.
Never the less, using the combination that you have you can easily create a fast RAID 0. You do have premium eSATA card so that helps. I don't know what software will get you the best results for this, but I imagine that you will have decent perforce with almost any since since you want RAID 0.
Re: Caldigit FASTA-4E and SATAMAX PM on windows xp? by Jake Hawkes on Aug 14, 2008 at 12:00:00 am
Did you ever figure this out.
I am setting up a RAID 0 with 5 drives using a Burly Box with Lycom eSATA PCI Express Cards in my towers, and a Lycom eSATA Express34 card.
From what I am reading above you have to create the volume with Atto ExpressStripe software and then it might work???
If it doesn't work recreate the volume with Apple Disk Utility to get it to work...seems sketchy to buy a $160.00 format utility. I sure wish I knew if this is really working with non Atto cards and if it really works at all.
I sure wish I could do this not exactly for the reasons you listed, but if you create a RAID 0 on PC you can't just unplug it and connect it to say my laptop. Where if you could create this dual OS volume then I could connect it to any PC using Mac Drive 7, already installed. I think this is because Windows creates the volume partially on the RAID volume and partially on the system drive. Mac does not in my limited understanding.
