New computer, slow hard drives...

[boYce]

Just built a new machine and its all running well apart from my windows hard drive. It can be fine one moment then a moment later can take 5 seconds to open a folder or flick between photos. When it is going slow I can hear it constantly spin up, then pause for a split second, then spin again.

This is the first time I have used Raid so it could be to do with the way i've set it up.

my system is;
Intel i7 950
Gigabyte x58a-ud3a
6GB Mishkin Blackline RAM
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 460 SUPER OC 1024MB
Corsair HX Series 650W Modular

HDD;
1 x WD 500GB Caviar - for windows and progams
2 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB - In RAID 1, for storage

The 2 x Samsung SpinPoints seem fine, its the WD that is playing up.

I formatted it and gave it a clean install of windows 7 64-bit Home Premium. My motherboard manual then says to configure the Intel ICH10R SATA controller, go into the BIOS and set the controller mode to RAID(XHD). On the next boot press Ctrl + L to enter the RAID configuration utility, set the 2 SpinPoints to work in raid 0 and reboot. Sine have set this up I get a couple of lines of green text when I boot up showing me the array.
Do I need to turn the controller mode back to normal now it is set up?

In windows I have installed Intel Rapid Storage Technology, V9.6.0.1014, which tells me the raid array is working fine.

cheers,

 

[Justintime]

Could it be the power settings spinning the drive down? You have to keep the raid mode on for the raid array to work. You've mentioned RAID 1 and RAID 0, which is it? for pure storage i'd used RAID 1 tbh. Does the hdd clunk or sound like its having issues? I'd test it.

 

[roadie]

Could be. My two spinning disk drives for games and media (i.e non boot) spin down after about 30 mins under Windows 7. They then take a while to spin up when called upon.

However, my work machine with only one disk drive never seems to spin down.