A slice of my brain

Part of my Vista adventure included a swift kick in the rear to get a real RAID controller. I’ve finally settled on what is turning out to be a very good purchase decision, but the road along the way did have a few bumps. First off, I’d like to point out that investing in a RAID controller is just that, investing. To get a good one, you can fully expect to hand over a fist full of cash. Some of you might even be crying for oxygen before the day is over.

To make an informed decision about RAID, you need to understand some of the fundamentals of what RAID is, how it works, the various RAID levels and what you can expect out of them. You then prioritize your desires, as this will become the map that points you in the direction of the RAID level best suited to your needs.

When it comes to understanding RAID and the various levels, AC&NC probably has the best RAID level explanation on the planet. It’s certainly the best one I’ve run across, and should clarify subtle things like the difference between RAID 10 and RAID 0+1.

One of the biggest decisions you can make about RAID controllers is hardware vs software, and determining how you can tell the two apart. Here’s a hint, if you boot up an old linux distro (or find any situation at all) where it sees the drives independently, despite the “RAID controller”, then you have a software RAID. Sorry chuck, NV-RAID isn’t a RAID controller, it’s a fancy interface for configuring a software RAID. After you get past that, there’s still different performance levels for hardware RAID controllers, which is mostly dependent on little things like built in adaptive read-ahead, write back caching, independent I/O channels, onboard processor speed, etc.

In the end, there’s only so much you can do on the card, and poor RAID level selection will ultimately destroy your performance on even the fastest controller, so this is where your priority list comes in to help you select the best RAID level for your needs.

My list looked something like this:

• Bootable
• Linux Support
• Redundancy/Reliability
• Read faster
• Write faster
• Usable disk space

I decided on RAID 5 across 3 disks, as 500GB drives are pretty cheap, and there’s really not much of a reason for me to have more than 1TB of data on my desktop. I had selected this long before I started using the NV-RAID, and after I found out that NV-RAID was software, making Acronis TrueImage restores unavailable on anything more than RAID 1, I started looking around for hardware controllers. (The onboard Silicon Image controller only supports RAID 0 or RAID 1, and Linux support is pretty much non-existent for the chip I have.) I begrudgingly settled on RAID 1 and no Linux as a temporary compromise, but Vista’s epic fail got me messing with my desktop hardware again, so I decided to throw some concentrated money at the problem and see where I ended up.

At first, I tried the Promise TX4650. It was a short trial, as my system wouldn’t boot after the bios extension loaded. If I skipped the bios extension it worked, but let it load and it would hang. RMA’ed the same day I got it. Sorry Promise, work on your motherboard compatibility. I’ll take my $136 elsewhere.

At this point I was at a bit of a loss. We use Dell almost exclusively at work, and the PowerEdge RAID Controllers (PERC) “just work”, even with every flavor of Linux we throw at it (and we’ve tried a lot of them at all sorts of version numbers). But, since I don’t run a Dell at home, I didn’t want to risk getting a PERC only to potentially find that it wouldn’t work because it wasn’t a Dell. A little bit of research and I found out that PERCs are really just LSI MegaRAID controllers with a custom bios flash mostly for branding. So I called up the LSI tech support line and asked about their hardware compatibility list, since I couldn’t find one. The response I got was basically: “We don’t make an HCL for our MegaRAID line because it works with damn near everything. If it doesn’t work with your motherboard, then your motherboard/bios is doing some really strange things, but we cover our products with a 30day return policy for things like that.” I ordered one of their cards the same day (MegaRAID SAS 8704ELP), to the tune of $350. It showed up today and magically enough, it “just works”, and performs quite like the PERCs at work (which are pretty damn fast) at no surprise simply because it has the exact same feature set. Obeying standards is a good thing, maybe Promise should re-examine their use of them.

So there you have it. You too can have a fully functioning RAID 5 array for $350 + drives. Oxygen is over on the left if you need it. Personally, I consider it money well spent. And yes, I’m back to running Windows XP. Maybe Vista will suck less after service pack 5, which should only be 4 more years away…

So last week I was wandering about the software section of a local computer/electronics shop when I saw that Vista had undergone a fairly significant price cut. It’s been out for a while, SP1 supposedly fixed a ton of issues, and it would be generally nice to move to a 64bit OS, so I bought a copy.

First off, the install was less than intuitive, as it claimed that I couldn’t just boot off the disc and install it, but instead must initiate the install from within my running copy of XP. That’d be great, except that I didn’t want Vista 32bit, I wanted Vista 64bit, which meant that I needed to boot off the DVD. Ignoring it’s whining, something about “I’ll never activate”, I booted off the 64bit DVD and installed it quite easily. It even understood my NV-Raid mirror set. When the install completed, it even activated quite readily. The video quality sucked as per usual with new Windows installs, but a driver download and installation fixed that. I even went as far as installing the official nForce drivers for my motherboard. Things were looking surprisingly up. Perhaps Vista wasn’t quite as broken as I had originally came to believe.

I then proceeded to hit Windows Update to download/install everything necessary to bring my system up to compliance. This is where the fun begins. Since I’m a little bored, I’m going to provide the following experience as a sort of narrative artsy thing. Bear with me.

Download successful, reboot now?

Yes

Updating Windows: Step 1…
Updating Windows: Step 2…
blue screen fail kernel handle invalid what the fuck dumping memory

Well that isn’t supposed to happen. Time to reboot and cross our fingers.

VOLUME 1: DEGRADED
VOLUME 2: DEGRADED

Well that’s odd considering that there’s only supposed to be one volume, and it wasn’t degraded until you touched it. You don’t like my onboard raid? Fine then, I’ll pull the 2nd degraded drive and reboot. Maybe I can salvage this sucker yet.

Windows failed to start, please boot off the installation media and select “recover” from the menu.

Eh… Maybe I’ll get lucky and it will fix itself and I can restore my mirror set afterward.

Repairing Windows…rebooting…blue screen fuck fuck

Great… Well, let’s recreate the mirror set and start over. I’ll skip the driver installations until I get the updates installed first. Might have been some sort of weird conflict. Booting off the DVD we go… /yawn

[Repeat install process, ready to perform updates.]

Download successful, reboot now?

Yes

Updating Windows: Step 1…
Updating Windows: Step 2…
blue screen fail kernel handle invalid what the fuck dumping memory

You have got to be…

VOLUME 1: DEGRADED
VOLUME 2: DEGRADED

Okay FINE! I’ll just kill off my mirror set entirely and run a single disk with the raid functionality turned off in the bios. I’ll begin my quest for a real hardware raid controller later. Here I go reinstalling Vista yet again. Third time had best be the charm, my patience is wearing thin.

Welcome to Windows Vista!
Updates successfully installed.
Enjoy your nForce drivers.
Enjoy your GeForce drivers.
Have a swell day.

Okay, you hate NV-raid with a passion. I’ll accept that. Software raids are bullshit anyhow.

Would you like to activate now?

Yes

Activation failed.

The hell? Why?

This key is already in use. This error can also occur when you make large hardware changes.

Are you fucking kidding me? There’s nothing different in the hardware! Try harder.

This key is only valid for upgrades, and cannot be used in clean installations.

First off, you found a different error this time. That’s disturbing. Secondly, I only had to perform a clean install because you fucked yourself during an update! Fine, whatever, I’ll deal with this later. I’ve got 30 days to get you a key before you become an expensive space heater. We’ll see if you even last that long. To be honest, your record is pretty poor at this point.

Thank you for choosing Microsoft Vista!

At this point I decided to install a ton of software to test for compatibility. Might as well kick the tires a bit since I’m already here, waist deep in this shit-hole. Needless to say, I have found countless cases of failing software. It’s actually so abundant it’s sickening. Hell, I can’t even get Mass Effect to run, and that just came out and is supposed to support Vista 64! To be fair, some things do work, but the amount of pain this thing has caused is staggering. The best part is, after 20 more days this thing will turn itself into a web kiosk because my key is already in use by me because it is only valid for upgrades, or some such nonsense.

So, here I am with a $200 drink coaster. Sorry, my mistake, there’s 2 drink coasters. One for 32bit, and one for 64bit. If this is the future of Windows, my next computer is going to be a Mac. I’m just glad I’m a nutcase for system backups. Acronis TrueImage is a life saver. I should be happily running Windows XP again, right where I left off before this nightmare, before the end of tonight.

Yep, bought one yesterday.
So far I don’t have much for games, just Wii Sports, WiiPlay, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
I also don’t know anyone else with a Wii, so if you’re a blog troller and you have one too, add me.
Wii ID: 1728319683804913

I’m open to suggestions for fun games. I’m primarily looking for games that are fun with friends. I’m not much of a console guy when it comes to single player.

Setup was pretty simple, and I like that it comes with built in 802.11g. That made getting it on the network very easy, and I was even able to keep my existing (draconian) wireless security settings.

Small update:
In case you’re wondering what “draconion” wireless security means to me.

• WPA-TKIP (most compatible WPA, still better than WEP)
• Strong passphrase, upper and lower case letters, with digits
• Set access point to not broadcast SSID
• MAC address filtering, deny all but known list

Well, I went in for my upper GI scope this morning and obviously I survived.

Also made another appointment with my shiny-new family doctor to go over the results. Last time I had an outpatient procedure I tried waiting for them to call me. After two weeks of no contact I ended up calling his office to schedule the appointment. I’m a little more anxious for results than that, so this time around I called to set up the appointment right after I felt concious enough to talk and walk without assistance. The general anesthetic is kicking my ass pretty good. Feels like I just woke up even though it’s noon and I’ve been up since 7am. So apparently today I’m running on zombie mode.

There is a little bit of good news wrapped in all of this though. They gave me some local anesthetic to numb my throat for the procedure. Currently, no heartburn or pain sensations at all. So my current guess is that my issue is definitely throat related. So at least now it appears that we’re working in the right area.

For now I need a nap, and I don’t think I have much choice in the matter. Will know more details later this week.