My Raid-0 Performance Concern

noel25belfast · 8 May 2009 at 17:22

My Specifications

Coolermaster ATCS 840 Classic Case
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz
Asus M4A79R Deluxe AMD 790FX
Patriot Viper 4Gb DDR3 2000Mhz
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 "Rampage GLH" 2048MB GDDR5 (Due Tuesday)
2X Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB SATA-II 32MB Cache (RAID-0)

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I have two issues that I need advice with when it comes to my RAID-0.
The first is that, It doesnt appear possible to put these drives in RAID-0
if setting the capacity to 3Tb, the OS will only boot up if I dump the capacity to 2GB.

I have tested on Win XP Home, Win XP Pro and Win 7 (RC) 64bit.

Is this is a limitation of the integrated RAID contoller on my motherboard?

The second issue is with performance. During testing using HD Tune. My maximum data transfer rate is 230MB/s and this is largely what I was
hoping for, but the minimum is 17.3 MB/s and that to me is a big no no. Transferring bulk data from one partition to another produces speeds
as low as 40MB/s

I have tested with 64 and 128 stripe with no difference to performance.

If I purchase one of these:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CC-000-3W

Is it likely to cure my problems with RAID-0?

Zarf · 8 May 2009 at 17:28

2TB is a limitation of the MFT. You need to use GPT to see the full 3TB, but you can't boot from a GPT volume on your selection of OS's.
Best solution is (if your raid manager allows it) to set up your two drives in raid 0, with two volumes - make one 100GB or so just for your OS's, and have the rest as a 2.9TB volume. you should be able to convert the 2.9TB volume to GPT in windows and store your apps on that.

If the minimums are just brief dips, don't worry about it, i'ts probably just that another app set a request to your drive at the time.

miniyazz · 8 May 2009 at 17:31

2TB is a limitation with the MFT. You can create an array larger than that (i.e. 3TB) but it has to be formatted with GPT instead of MFT, but you can't boot off it. If your RAID controller supports RAIDing partitions (highly unlikely with onboard RAID) you could put your OS in RAID 0 on the fastest part of the two drives on a relatively small partition, and do whatever with the rest of them.

Edit: lol you got there first, strange how our first sentence was identical..

Edit: looking deeper, we gave exactly the same advice lol.. great minds think alike

noel25belfast · 8 May 2009 at 17:42

Thanks guys, when two people say the same thing at the same time,
it puts confidence in me

I dont think my integrated controller is going to let me set partitions.
I normally have to do that from the windows installation.

Lets say im running these drives on a capacity of 2TB.

I have four partitions

1: Windows
2: Games
3: Programs
4: Storage.

I want to transfer 500 GB of data from Storage to Programs
I get a data transfer speed of 40MB/S

Is this likely to be my hardrives maximum performance? Or could
it be faster? Bearing in mind that im using an integrated controller?

In honesty, I could use a higher data transfer rate.

What actions should I best take? Buy a RAID controller? or dump
the drives and get those fancy lookin VelociRaptor drives thats
all the buzz?

miniyazz · 8 May 2009 at 18:12

The problem you have is you're copying data from one part of the HDD to another part. That's always going to be slow - far slower than from one HDD to another. (Not to mention that using RAID 0 for storage is never a good idea

)
What you should be thinking really is looking at getting an SSD for things like OS/programs/games and keeping the Seagates for storage and backup, possibly in RAID 1, if you have the money. That'll give you a bigger boost than RAIDing two velociraptors.

1kiwi · 8 May 2009 at 18:15

miniyazz said:
The problem you have is you're copying data from one part of the HDD to another part. That's always going to be slow - far slower than from one HDD to another. (Not to mention that using RAID 0 for storage is never a good idea )
What you should be thinking really is looking at getting an SSD for things like OS/programs/games and keeping the Seagates for storage and backup, possibly in RAID 1, if you have the money. That'll give you a bigger boost than RAIDing two velociraptors.

Yep, velociraptors are sooooo 2008

noel25belfast · 8 May 2009 at 18:24

Oh wait, I should have read that more carefully...

One solid state drive for the OS / Programs and Games
Then keep the 1.5Tb drives for storage in RAID-1

Right, got ya

The SSD's are very expensive, I might struggle justifying it
at this present time, but certainly something that I'll look
too as soon as I have my new video card.

Good info

Thanks

noel25belfast · 9 May 2009 at 19:17

When I raised this topic, I was very sceptical
about my hardrives performance, but I have
since realised some amazing facts about RAID.

I had no idea how well RAID-0 could assist in multi-tasking.
I believe ive been expecting the wrong set of benefits
from RAID in general.

Yesterday, I extracted 12 rar files totalling about 20 GB
in size simultaniously and my drives didnt just cope with
the stress, but completed the task in 15mins flat. I didnt
hear the traditional crunching noises from the hardrives
at all!!

In my previous setup, a single 500GB drive, I was unable
to extract 2 large RAR files simultaniously without the
system feeling like it was being strangled.

Totally amazed TBH, RAID-0 for the win!

Zarf · 9 May 2009 at 21:16

Raid 0 will certainly be helping with that, but a large part will be down to a) you using NCQ (which is enabled when you use RAID mode or AHCI), and b) the individual drives themselves being faster than your old 500GB drive.

noel25belfast · 10 May 2009 at 03:24

Zarf said:
Raid 0 will certainly be helping with that,
but a large part will be down to a) you using NCQ (which is enabled
when you use RAID mode or AHCI), and b) the individual drives
themselves being faster than your old 500GB drive.

I could be mistaken here... but doesnt NCQ apply to Nvidia Chipsets?

Certainly, I see your point in that my 1.5Tb drives are about
2 years younger than my older 500Gb drive. Despite this fact,
I find it hard to believe that a single 1.5tb drive of my specification
could possibly handle the extraction of 12 Rar files at the same time
with a total size of 20Gb aprox in under 15 Mins

without the system grinding to a halt.

Thats all fine and dandy, but im beginning to realise the real-life benifits.

If for example, you were designing a website in photoshop and
dreamweaver, rendering a movie in 3D Studio Max and Video editing
in Premiere, all at the same time (as some jobs demand, trust me on it)
I can see how the RAID setup would be such a relief when working on
such a stressfull task, not only for the computer, but for the individual
as well. I wish I examined the technology when Multimedia was my
main income

miniyazz · 10 May 2009 at 08:31

Extracting just over 20GB of stuff (23,277 files) from one winRAR archive took just over 13 minutes on my 1TB F1 (currently my system drive). Definitely a slowdown when loading programs etc, but it certainly didn't grind to a halt (maybe four times slower?)