Just set up RAID0 does this look right?

Street · 11 Sep 2008 at 19:10

Well I had two spare 400GB WD drives lieing around so thought I'd put them to use and set up a RAID0 array in my gaming PC to install games to.

Here is a HD Tach screeny of them in action..

Does that look right?

Ta,
Andy

Craig321 · 11 Sep 2008 at 19:12

Looks right, but make sure you turn on volume write-back caching in the Intel Matrix Storage Manager to increase burst speed and get a few more MB/s out of it.

Right click RAID0OS and click "Enable Volume Write-back Cache"

Street · 11 Sep 2008 at 19:14

Ahh.. Thanks for the tip, never set up a RAID0 array before and never used the Intel chip for it either!

Street · 11 Sep 2008 at 19:24

Wow.. That did make a fair improvement to the burst speed!

Craig321 · 11 Sep 2008 at 21:05

Street said:
Ahh.. Thanks for the tip, never set up a RAID0 array before and never used the Intel chip for it either!

No problem

Major_Disaster · 11 Sep 2008 at 21:42

Screen of HD Tach with Write-back Cache one?

Ive never heard of that setting... and im pretty interested to see how much of a difference it makes.

Craig321 · 12 Sep 2008 at 00:48

I don't have a comparison between volume write-back on and off on my system, but when it was off I was getting similar benchmarks as the OP's first screenshot.

This is what I get with it on, note the slightly faster average read and hugely increased burst speed:

The above is 2x 250GB WD2500AAKS in RAID0 with 16k stripe.

Major_Disaster · 12 Sep 2008 at 01:02

Wow thats a massive improvement. Didn't realise it would make soo much difference. Dont see why that isnt on by default.

Thanks for the SS.

=VTA=MANFACE · 12 Sep 2008 at 06:41

Thats amazing...gonna set up RAID0

Banny · 12 Sep 2008 at 07:33

I have just tried this on mine, got a huge improvement, but I have one problem my random access times are very poor. 16.7ms
I also have AAKS drives but the 320gb ones.
Craigs drives are at 12.7ms.
My average read is a lot faster at 182.1mb/s and burst is 2205.3mb/s.
My board is P5E so ICH9R controller.
Is there a way to speed up random access times as I would really like this down closer to 13ms
Stripe size is the same at 16k
Drives are in port 2 and 4 is this makes any difference.

Craig321 · 12 Sep 2008 at 10:09

I'm guessing you have the single platter drives for those speeds? Maybe that's why, maybe those particular drives have a slightly higher access times, but quicker read speed.

I don't think you'd really see a difference at all going from 16ms to 13ms.

Banny · 12 Sep 2008 at 11:33

Yeah single platter drives, speed is great just access time is poor for these drives, meant to be much faster than they are.

Street · 12 Sep 2008 at 13:41

Major_Disaster said:
Screen of HD Tach with Write-back Cache one?

Ive never heard of that setting... and im pretty interested to see how much of a difference it makes.

I'll get one when I'm back home after work!

Whats the best stripe size for a games drive? I set it to 64kb at the moment..

Craig321 · 12 Sep 2008 at 17:02

Street said:
I'll get one when I'm back home after work!

Whats the best stripe size for a games drive? I set it to 64kb at the moment..

Somewhere around 32-64k (if it's purely for games).

I'd say 16k if it's a combo of program installs/OS/games like mine is.

Street · 13 Sep 2008 at 00:27

Mines on 64k so think I'll leave it at that.. Can't be arsed to change it and it seems OK!

Here is my HD Tach with write back caching enabled..