Raid is pants...Look inside and help

easyrider · 8 Jan 2011 at 00:04

Why is my single Samsung F1 this

Raid0 128kb stripe

easyrider · 8 Jan 2011 at 00:27

CaptainCrash said:
I'd guess the controller (Silicon Image?) is the bottleneck, the transfer speed doesn't drop from one end of the array to the other.

Are your BIOS and drivers all up to date?

Yep

Itsa PCI-E raid controller and I'm disappointed...I may as well just run desperate disks...

easyrider · 8 Jan 2011 at 00:36

I wanted a fast Steam games drive

easyrider · 8 Jan 2011 at 00:45

Having said that Steam is loading a lot quicker...

easyrider · 8 Jan 2011 at 11:01

Ch3m1c4L said:
try setting it up in complete pass through mode and using windows software raid, since thats basically what itll be doing anyway, but this way the cheapo card might not bottleneck it as much.

My cheapo card (bought purely for more sata ports at first) runs my raid 0 array and my read speeds are a tiny bit over a single drive, but the write speeds are much higher. Thats with a SiL 3132 card, not in pass through, but I should probably try that actually....

And not using the card at all?

easyrider · 8 Jan 2011 at 16:00

This is what I get in Atto 2 x Samsung F1 in Raid0 128kb stripe

Looks a lot better here

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 16:18

Does everything look in order?

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 18:59

nightmare99 said:
Not being funny that is a £10 host raid card which has rubbish performance, do you not have raid on your mainboard? I would bet Intel ICH9, ICH10 or AMD 750/850 raid would be quicker than the Sil card.

Well I have ACHI enabled for my SSD

If I cannot the drives to the mobo I can't have raid and ACHI enabled at the same time can I?

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 19:13

Well I have the option of ACHI or raid not both

If I swap to RAID from ACHI will the SSD still boot and will it be ok loading windows?

Then I can just add the two samsungs to the raid stripe...

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 19:19

Ch3m1c4L said:
Turn raid on, then you selct which ports to run in RAID mode, maybe.
But from another thread on here the other day, with ports in raid mode apperently you can still boot from the ssd, and trim etc still all work as since its not in an array it just uses the port in pass through mode. But I have not got personal experience with this so i cant confirm how it works/if it will work on your board etc.

Can I swap though and will the ssd still boot windows?

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 19:57

I changed to raid and the SSD was not seen in the bios to boot from.

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 20:17

nightmare99 said:
It should be is it an Intel chipset or something else?

X58

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 20:17

CaptainCrash said:
Did you press Ctrl+I to configure the RAID setup?

Do I have to?

I thought it would just boot first?

Then I go and setup the raid....

When I choose Raid in bios then choose boot device the SSD is not there....

Choose ACHI mode and the SSD can be seen

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 20:19

I guess if I changed to Raid I will have to reinstall the OS ? which I CBA to do.

Its a shame I can't assign two of the six sata ports to be raid.

But once you choose Raid all 6 sata ports are effected.

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 20:27

Ch3m1c4L said:
thats annoying, my nvidia controller I get to turn raid on/off on each port seperatly, but I dont have ahci
It is possible that you turn RAID on, then if you go into the RAID config bios that there you can configure which ports are for RAID and which are just pass through etc. Give it a go, will only take a few minutes. If its not that easy though I wouldnt bother unless you really care about getting every bit of performance out of your drives.

Ahh thats a good point I will try that

I guess this is not to shoddy ...Faster than any single 1TB drive available. And that was my other option for the steam install.

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 22:05

Right,

I attached the 2 X F1's to sata port 5 and 6 enabled Raid in the bios. Went into the Raid BIOS and created a Raid0 stripe leaving the SSD out

I rebooted...Windows splash screen came on and then I got a BSOD and the PC restarted.

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 22:31

I have created a software Raid0 stripe in windows in disk manager to test speeds just out of interest.

Although the new software stripe doesn't like atto

Any ideas what else I can test the speed with? HD Tune only sees the single disks not the software raid volume

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 22:41

Just as fast as the crappy controller. This is software raid in win7 disk managment

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 22:41

Zarf said:
CrystalDiskMark will do the job.

what size shall I test?

easyrider · 9 Jan 2011 at 22:55

Zarf said:
Ok, When this happens it's because it doesn't have the right driver selected. Go back to AHCI mode and install the Intel RST drivers, then try again.

If that doesn't work things get a little more complicated, need to extract the driver files manually from the matrix storage manager installer and copy them into windows\System32/SYSWOW64\Drivers, then make a registry edit so that the appropriate service starts, but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.

Installed this

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/con.../19607/a08/iata_cd.exe&lang=eng&Dwnldid=19607

enabled raid, Built the array and got BSOD again.