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Data Storage

Submission + - Design directives for big home RAID?

Submitted by The Last Gunslinger
The Last Gunslinger writes: I'll preface my question by saying that I have a lot of data that I'd like to keep online...in the storage sense of the word, not the interweb sense. By a lot, I mean terabytes.

My current RAID setup is hardware based, and is on its second iteration. The controller is an old MegaRAID PCI32 4xATA/100 device from LSI. The first build used 4x250GB ATA drives, configured as a single logical RAID5 volume. The current build uses 4x500GB ATA drives, setup as two logical volumes: one 16GB RAID0 for the OS (Ubuntu Intrepid), and one 1.5TB RAID5.

I'm down to the last 50GB of that volume, and that's even after I've been shuffling data to various offline drives lying around my office...probably close to another TB or so.

As I prepare to rebuild my storage array, I'm looking to change several aspects. First off, the write performance on the RAID5 volume is bollocks...fast writes for the first 64MB, but sustained writes show the rate drops to ~4MB/sec. Most files I handle are CD ISO sized or larger, so this is a big issue. As I'm intending to use SATA-II drives this next go-round, I'm ditching the LSI controller and going to software RAID.

My questions to the community are around building and partitioning an array of this size. Assuming I use 5 or 6 drives of 1TB capacity...
  • Should I look for a mobo that supports RAID in the BIOS, or stick with the more portable OS-based approach?
  • How should I slice up the total array into logical volumes?
  • Is there any logical volume size limit I need to observe?
  • I currently use EXT3...should I be looking at another FS?

Thanks!

Comment Windows-Live-searched? (Score 1) 179

by The Last Gunslinger (#25247725) Attached to: Microsoft Updates Multiple Sysinternals Tools
In his blog about troubleshooting spinlocks in his wife's PC, Mark talks about how he "Windows-Live-searched" some term he needed to identify.

A bit later, he uses the term again and remarks parenthetically about how it "rolls off the tongue."

After forcing my gorge down, I had to ask the question: was he making an obsequious dig at the stupidity of the messaging terminology used by MS, or is he really fellating Ballmer & co.?
AMD

Submission + - THG pubishes detailed lab review of AMD Spider (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by The Last Gunslinger
The Last Gunslinger writes: Tom's Hardware Guide has published detailed results of their laboratory analyses of AMD's recently released Spider platform, including the Phenom 9500 and 9600 running on 790FX chipsets. Amongst other interesting details, the 2.4GHz Phenom 9700 has been pushed back to Q1 2008. The 2.3GHz Phenom 9600 benchmarks on average 13.5% lower than Intel's Q6600 quad-core CPU...and the MSRP for the Phenom is about 13.6% less as well. Much is made of the AMD OverDrive utility, by which the THG labs were able to OC the Spider platform by 25% (3.0GHz) using air cooling alone.
AMD

First R600 Review - The Radeon HD 2900XT 157

Posted by Zonk from the tech-drool dept.
mrneutron2004 writes "Tweaktown seems to have the first review out of the gate on AMD's flagship R600 core. 'Our focus today is solely on the HD 2900 XT 512MB GDDR-3 graphics card – it is the first GPU with a fast 512-bit memory interface but what does this mean for performance? ... After taking a look at the GPU and the card from PowerColor as well as some new Ruby DX10 screenshots, we will move onto the benchmarks and compare the red hot flaming Radeon monster against Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GTX along with the former ATI GPU king, the Radeon X1950 XTX."
Movies

WarGames Sequel Now Filming 439

Posted by kdawson from the lights-camera-domain-grab dept.
iluvcapra writes "This news is a little late, but on November 20th WarGames 2: The Dead Code began filming in Montreal. (I only became aware of the new production when I read that MGM is suing the rightful owner of WarGames.com for his domain name.) The film will be produced and distributed by MGM — distributor of the original WarGames — and directed by Stewart Gillard, director of such gems as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3. Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, the team behind the original film, are not involved. The plot revolves around a hacker breaking into a terrorism-simulation computer."
Security

Detecting Tailgaters With Lasers 1136

Posted by kdawson from the don't-stand-so-close-to-me dept.
stoolpigeon writes "Police in Arizona are using laser range finders to detect and ticket tailgaters. An officer can now measure not only the speed of passing vehicles but also how close they are to one another. The detectors described in the article are built by Laser Technology Inc., a company that provides lasers for traffic control, engineering, and even tactical/military solutions. The article mentions how tailgating is connected to many accidents and incidents of road rage; this observation fits my experience."
Encryption

TiVo File Encryption Cracked 250

Posted by kdawson from the platform-equity dept.
An anonymous reader writes "TiVo file encryption has been cracked. Details on the project can be found on the wiki. Mac and Linux users rejoice!" The project page says, "The conversion still requires the valid MAK of the TiVo which recorded the file, so it cannot be used to circumvent their protection, simply to provide the same level of access as is already available on Windows."

Weird Al Premiere Cancelled Due to Net Leak 266

Posted by Zonk from the fluent-in-javascript-as-well-as-klingon dept.
SilentChris writes "In what's probably a first, AOL cancelled the 'World Premiere' of Weird Al's newest video 'White and Nerdy' due to it being leaked on the internet. Al writes on his MySpace page: 'Apparently, the video has already leaked online, and AOL doesn't feel comfortable doing a World Premiere promotion for a video that a number of people have seen already ... Anyway, it's really a bummer... it would have been great promotion for the album... but hey, life goes on.' As for the video? Arguably Al's best work (but I'm a little biased)."

Supercomputer to Hit 1.6 Petaflops With 16,000 Cell Chips 260

Posted by kdawson from the you-do-the-math dept.
tygerstripes writes, "IBM has announced that they are gearing up to build the world's fastest supercomputer, more than four times faster than the reigning champ, IBM's BlueGene/L. Nicknamed 'Roadrunner,' the new machine will be a hybrid of off-the-shelf CPUs and Cell chips designed for the PS3. Roadrunner is to be installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, occupying 1,100 square metres of floorspace (that's a square about 110 feet on a side). According to the BBC: 'The computer will contain 16,000 standard processors working alongside 16,000 Cell processors... each Cell is capable of 256 billion calculations per second.'"

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