intel matrix storage

lihouboy · 7 Nov 2006 at 19:29

I am building a PC primarily for video editing but also for some gaming.

4 250Mb hard disks are on order and I was intending to use one for the os and programmes and have the other 3 set up as a raid5 array for my videos.

I am using an ASUS P5B deluxe WiFi board with intel 965 and ICH8R chipset.

Looking at the intel website it seems as if I could arrange the 4 discs as a matrix with, perhaps 100Mb of each of the 4 disks as a raid 0+1 for OS / programs and 150Mb of each of the disks as a raid5.

Have I read the intel information correctly and has anyone tried this? I'd probably prefer stability to performance.

Thanks.

capt nemo · 8 Nov 2006 at 11:10

You should be able to. If you put the three drives for raid5 on the intel sata and use the jmicron sata conector for the single drive. I am using this jmicron for a single hard drive and set it to ahci.I am using same mobo and using the jmicron sata as boot.

stoofa · 8 Nov 2006 at 12:31

What is your thinking behind using a RAID 5 array?
Write performance will be bad. Read performance should be quite good, but RAID 5 is really there for redundancy rather than any kind of performance gain - you list yourself as a gamer & video editing, I just don't think you are going to gain anything really taking the RAID 5 route.

smids · 8 Nov 2006 at 12:44

I don't think you can run different RAID's on the same physical disks. You can partition an array of disks but cannot make a completely different array type on the same disks where there is one already present.

If you are thinking of video editing etc, either get a hardware RAID5 card (looking at about £250) for proper RAID5 which will pretty much wipe the floor with everything (4 drive RAID5 should do 190-200MB/s read and write) which will be plenty for video editing and the like, or stick with a simple RAID0+1. This will be fast (100MB/s-ish read, 60MB/s-ish write). Both are pretty good for redundancy.

Onboard RAID5, whilst excellent reads (190-200MB/s), your writes will be about 15-20MB/s.

Contrast all of the above with a standard longitudinal (i.e. not perpendicular like the Seagate 7200.10 which is a fair bit faster) read and write speed of about 55MB/s.

Dist · 9 Nov 2006 at 14:59

you can infact have 2 different arrays on the same set of disks with intels 'matrix raid', which allows you to raid 0 the windows/application part of the disks while raid 1 the important data part of the disks you want backed up.

smids · 9 Nov 2006 at 15:28

Dist said:
you can infact have 2 different arrays on the same set of disks with intels 'matrix raid', which allows you to raid 0 the windows/application part of the disks while raid 1 the important data part of the disks you want backed up.

Hmm, news to me - seems a good idea on paper, though I'm not sure on the overheads of running this type of array and security of it would seem an issue if the MBR corrupts but that, I suppose, is another matter.

lihouboy · 10 Nov 2006 at 19:08

OK. I feel an experiment coming on. Does anyone know of any disk speed testing tools that don't need windows installed? Perhaps running linux from a CD or DOS.

Cacker · 18 Nov 2006 at 00:09

I was intrigued by this combining of different RAIDs on the same set of disks. My motherboard has the 975 chipset which has matrix storage.

Here's the info

james32 · 18 Nov 2006 at 12:14

smids said:
Hmm, news to me - seems a good idea on paper, though I'm not sure on the overheads of running this type of array and security of it would seem an issue if the MBR corrupts but that, I suppose, is another matter.

thats why its called the matrix

on the intel matrix you can make virtual raids partitions

so say you had 2 x raptor's 150gb set up in raid 0 with intel utility
you could setup and create a partion say 30gb of the 300gb raided 0 drives,
then you save go back into intel matrix then you create the remaining space to either raid 0 or 1.

lihouboy · 19 Nov 2006 at 21:17

Results

Intel Matrix array built - easy, just followed the manual.

Here are the results.

MB Asus P5B deluxe/wi fi
3 Samsung SP2504C 250 Mb HD
1 Maxtor 300 Mb HD (Sata2)
E6400
2 Gb GeiL PC6400C4

Nothing oc'd yet.

Set up a 180Gb capacity Raid10 across all 4 disks
Set up remainder (428Gb) raid 5 across remaining disks (lost 50 Gb of Maxtor)

Ran Sandra lite 2007.SP1

Results

test ________________ raid10 ... raid5
Random access time .... 6 ms ..... 9 ms
Buffered read ...........576 Mb/s .. 436 Mb/s
Sequent. read ..........117 Mb/s .. 170 Mb/s
Random read .............71 Mb/s .... 67 Mb/s
Buffered write ..........194 Mb/s ...108 Mb/s
Sequen. write ..........116 Mb/s .... 30 Mb/s
Random write ............78 Mb/s .... 17 Mb/s

This pretty much confirms Smids' post.

Thanks.