Got RAID 0 running, any tips to boost performance?

almighty15 · 29 Jun 2009 at 23:56

Right i got my other cheap and cheerful Hitachi Deskstar 320Gb HDD this morning and have it running striped mode.

I made sure i got the EXACT same drive to RAID with and i have, both the exact same models

Now with one drive i was getting :

Min : 33mb
Max : 81mb
Avg : 58mb
Burst : 126mb
Access Time : 18.6ms

And now with 2 of them i get :

Min : 87mb
Max : 160mb
Avg : 135mb
Burst : 134mb
Access Time : 18.2ms

Now the burst rate is annoying me, shouldn't it be a lot higher?

I haven't tweaked anything so is there any tricks for Vista x64 OR for my 780i chipset that could get me that tiny bit more speed?

Craig321 · 29 Jun 2009 at 23:59

Enable volume write-back cache in the Intel Matrix Storage Manager.

Right click the RAID0, the option will be there.

[Edit]
Not sure if the Intel Matrix Storage Manager works with the controller on your motherboard. If it's just the usual ICH controller then it'll work fine.

almighty15 · 30 Jun 2009 at 00:02

Craig321 said:
Enable volume write-back cache in the Intel Matrix Storage Manager.

Right click the RAID0, the option will be there.

[Edit]
Not sure if the Intel Matrix Storage Manager works with the controller on your motherboard. If it's just the usual ICH controller then it'll work fine.

i use an Nvidia chipset mate

rpstewart · 30 Jun 2009 at 09:13

If they're older Hitachis they may be running in SATA150 mode by default. Unfortunately you need to use the Hitachi Feature Tool to enable SATA300 and now that the drives are in an array it won't recognise them.

However, burst speed is next to meaningless in real world operations. I'd leave things as they are.

miniyazz · 30 Jun 2009 at 16:51

almighty15 said:
Got RAID 0 running, any tips to boost performance?

Sell them and buy an SSD

*flees*

Good luck with making them faster

Rroff · 30 Jun 2009 at 18:07

I don't think theres any way to increase the burst speed much on nVidia controllers - even with 3x RAID0 using very fast drives my HD Tach burst speed is only around 130MB/s.

Also seems I've hit the controller max - throughput is pretty much hard limiting to 240MB/s - which I can get with 2 drives.