On Fri, Jun 25, 1999 at 08:54:43PM -0400, Andrew Gillham wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I'm curious if any there are any NetBSD users that have experience
> with the Promise Technology iRAID5 or iRAID10 products?  These
> are SCSI<->EIDE arrays, supporting 5 (internal), or 10 (external)
> EIDE drives respectively.
> 
> The iRAID5 fits in 3 5-1/4 inch slots, and supports up to 5 drives.
> Using a 25GB EIDE, this would provide 100GB of RAID-5 for just over
> US$3000!  The external iRAID10 would provide 225GB for just over US$6000.
> 
> I would love to hear about anyone's experiences with these controllers,
> especially with NetBSD. :)

I almost bought one, but then noticed that it had only a narrow fast SCSI-2
(10 MB/sec) interface.  If it can't beat 10MB/sec with five disks on it
that can do close to 20MB/sec, I'm not interested...

I'm waiting for a reputable RAID vendor like CMD to build an equivalent
unit.  They could capture a *huge* fraction of the market by doing so -- and
CMD even makes IDE controller chips!  The equivalent of their SCSI-SCSI
RAID units, say the CRD5440, as a SCSI-IDE RAID unit like the Promise would
cut their customers disk costs by at least a factor of 2, and leave little
reason to consider anyone else's solution...

Unfortunately, I don't really trust anything Promise makes.  Wow, do I wish
a reputable RAID vendor would smarten up about this.

Thor