Windows 7 Software RAID. GOBSMAKING RESULTS!

Ok, I did a backup of my raid0 array last night, took fsking ages so i didnt bench anything then. I will as such format it tonight and play around with different settings. I'll test each drive on its own, togethor in RAID0 and RAID1 on the SiL card, and then try it with the SiL card in pass through and try software RAID0/1

I doubt my results will be as good as yours, since im having to use a F1 and F3, and they ahve different platter sizes which is a PITA. I really should sell my F1 and get another F3, which, depending on the results I get tonight compared to yours, I may well do.

I know my RAID5 only gets about 35-45mb/s sustained write (from copying 600gb on to it) but it gets a little over 300mb/s read. Havent tried it with crystal disk but can do tonight if you care? Its on an nvidia controller on a 790i ultra.
 
Another little bonus of software raid... that "spare" 500gb on the 1tb drive... you should be able to use it too as another partition... something you would lose with most hardware raid controllers... :)

The thing I'm curious about... what happens when windows is re-installed... I don't know whether it would auto-detect the raid setup or if you would have to re-configure it & if the re-configuration goes wrong, then bam all your data is gone... something which wouldn't be a problem with hardware raid.
 
all this sounds nice with nice results but you must have a lot of spare time to test all this :o, and with what crinkles said, imagine if you lost everything ;o..think i'll just stick with me raptor lol
 
Chrisavz said:
all this sounds nice with nice results but you must have a lot of spare time to test all this :o, and with what crinkles said, imagine if you lost everything ;o..think i'll just stick with me raptor lol
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I have no idea... not something I've ever tried... just a slight possibility if it doesn't auto-detect the raid volume... which I thinking it should do? Just don't know :(

Can anyone confirm?

I might give this a test after my next paycheque... I wouldn't mind some extra hdd space
 
the grandmaster of everything that is known as google informed me that if its the same version then it will auto detect it, not sure if it works going from one version to another, id imagine it probably would, at least upgrading one version at a time.

In fact, it even says that in this thread, to some extent.
 
I got a new mobo and just did a quick test with hardware raid, was peaking at 170MB/s reads and 160MB/s writes
 
So the only way for me to be getting 200~ read is to do software raid?
If so that sucks cause then as you said, cant boot from it and then my OS drive will be slooooooow... and 3 drivers = noise lol :o
 
Ive been using the RAID 0 (2x500GB) for my fraps recordings and not had a single problem so far but I haven't tried RAID 1
 
Ch3m1c4L said:
the grandmaster of everything that is known as google informed me that if its the same version then it will auto detect it, not sure if it works going from one version to another, id imagine it probably would, at least upgrading one version at a time.

In fact, it even says that in this thread, to some extent.
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It was seamless when I upgraded to 7 from Vista. Windows in "just working" shocker! :eek:

:p
 
£100 for the pair no doubt, i think thats better than ssd anyday for the space, why does software raid bench better than hardware raid then?
 
I just recently bought 2 750GB F1's running them in raid 0 hardware along with a single raptor used as a sole OS boot drive.

ran the crystal mark benchmark and its showing 210mb read speed so maybe not as fast as the F3's but still great speed and slightly more storage. So looks like samsungs in general are great drives.

As I had to reformat did actually test the windows 7 boot speeds and the raptor was faster but that I think is because of the faster access time but for everything else the samsungs are faster so I think I might just use the raptor now as a boot drive now and use the samsungs for everything else.
 
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alexx said:
£100 for the pair no doubt, i think thats better than ssd anyday for the space, why does software raid bench better than hardware raid then?
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software raid is faster because its using your system processor vs hardware raid using a dedicated but slower processor, software raid most likely would be slower on an aged processor vs hardware raid.

hardware raid might be slower but it has advantages over software such as being able to use it as an OS Drive and is less likely to cause errors on the array so hardware is a better option where available but of course with the right backup measures + wanting the absolute best speed + not caring to use it as an OS Drive software would be a good choice. However even on hardware still advisible to backup important data.
 
Just used two 500gb F3's with the above software Raid O striped. Didn't know what would be the optimum settings so chose default.

Getting,

Seq; Read 289.5 Write 290.7
512K; Read 53.36 Write 86.58
4K; Read 0.643 Write 2.713
4K QD32; Read 1.406 Write 2.729

I assume this is reasonable for 1tb of storage costing a total of £66.46

I guess using this as my storage drive may be worthwhile?
 
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It still won't compare to SSD tho... my gaming machine has a multi disc RAID5 setup for performance with 7200.12 drives and partitioned similiar to short stroking... it benches well over 300MB/s minimum - and games, etc. load 3x faster off a cheapy Patriot SSD I shoved in there - which has just about the worst performance of any SSD.
 
Ooh, I never knew you could do this! I have a couple of 1Tb drives in my PC, both seperate, never thought of RAIDing them together. Now I'm deffinately considering wiping them to raid them for great speed. Nothing important on them, just Steam and other programs I can reinstall if needed.
The software RAID's going to be just as good for this, right? I could do hardware, but wouldn't know where to begin!
 
Rroff said:
It still won't compare to SSD tho... my gaming machine has a multi disc RAID5 setup for performance with 7200.12 drives and partitioned similiar to short stroking... it benches well over 300MB/s minimum - and games, etc. load 3x faster off a cheapy Patriot SSD I shoved in there - which has just about the worst performance of any SSD.
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Your as well stating SSD does not compare, as as far as I can tell 500gb and 1tb SSD would cost a lot more than £66 odd and SSD is not usually the enthusiast choice of storage drive?

I may well buy an SSD, but would prefer to wait until they stop increasing the proffit margin due to popularity.

From what I can gather an SSD paired with a 1tb Samsung F3 for storage is a reasonable set up, so I guess compairing the software raided 1tb against a non raided 1tb as storage drive is more to the point, both cost the same sort of money, £60 -£70, so what offers the better performance?
 
Rroff said:
It still won't compare to SSD tho... my gaming machine has a multi disc RAID5 setup for performance with 7200.12 drives and partitioned similiar to short stroking... it benches well over 300MB/s minimum - and games, etc. load 3x faster off a cheapy Patriot SSD I shoved in there - which has just about the worst performance of any SSD.
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The only reason the SSD loads faster is because of the small files making random read/write speeds matter. I use my hdds for files that are 2GB+ so it is pure sequential read/write speed that matters hence it is just as good or even better than getting an SSD (for massive files).
 
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