4 X Raptors in stripe + low HD Tach score, why?

I think its just the fact that onboard RAID is rubbish. I have 2 Raptors in RAID 0 and the performance wasn't quite what I expected. I believe RAID performance varies greatly between controllers, and the fact that most good motherboards are already quite expensive, they'll go for the cheapest onboard RAID solution, as RAID performance is rarely scrutinized by your average joe.
 
MilanoChris said:
Well I got myself O&O defrag and the drives are in a pretty bad state of fragmentation. Should be finished soon.

I also used lifeguard tools and no errors found. As for write cache, I'm not going to disable it as it's good for Windows, plus it shouldn't hinder my score that much.
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I dont think a defrag affects hdtach, it just reads sequencially across the entire disk regardless of data present on it. Random access might be affected but I still dont think hdtach works in that way.
 
PikKOn said:
Bit off topic here mate but you have 4 Raptors, I have one and is making some serious grinding noises what is it like with 4?
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Fine mate, my Barracuda is louder when seeking :eek:

Anyway, fresh install of XP, latest drivers and here's the result. Now with 3 drives remember.

hdtach-1.jpg


hdtune.jpg
 
The drives are on an NVidia controller, have you made sure that both NCQ and Read Caching are turned off in the controller properties page in Device Manager? For some reason NVidia controllers perform far better with both turned off.
 
Now on a GA-P35-DS4 and the same woes:

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Could it be that one of the drives is a different model number and firmware? I know they are all 8MB cache and 36GB...

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Note sure where to get that info from, but here is a lift from Everest if that's any help.

If not, just tell me where it is and i post it up.

EverestDrives.jpg


ps

The drives are a few years old now and quite full, but still zip along
 
When I set mine up, I made sure in device manager I had unticked 'Enable read caching' and 'Enable command queing' for the Primary and secondary channels and for both Nvidia nForce4 ADMA controllers, if that makes sense.

Thats some burst speed you've got there !!! What are your other settings? mine looks very low now.
 
I think that's down to the Intel controller mate. I thought that might have been a glitch, but here's a couple of screenshots showing settings and a HD tune benchmark.

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Don't ask me why my burst speed is so ridiculously high!
 
Raptors should be faster at burst speed than that tbh.

Heres my 2 samsung spinpoints (with writeback cache enabled):

burstspeed.jpg
 
Mmmm,

I wonder how acccurate HD Tach is at reading burst speed from the intel controller?

3178 MB/s seems very high. Average read speeds are interesting,

My 4 x 36Gb Raptors average out at 58MB/s pre drive (234/4),
Milano's average is around 50MB/s (150/3)
The two spinpoints are 46MB/s (93/2)
 
burst speeds pointless guys, the only reason those samsungs are better is (im guessing) its SATA 2, raptors are SATA 1, the only reason for raptors and what really matters most (espec after a 4 drive raid) is the random access speeds, raptor 8.1ms, those samsungs are at 14.6
 
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