Setup F3 Spinpoint in raid-1

Vir · 30 Aug 2010 at 09:45

Ok so as I'm having some raid issues, I'm asking you guys for advise. Is this the correct way to set up my raid 1 on two Samsung F3 1TB's.

1. Install drives in bay
2. Connect the Sata cables to port-0 and port-1
3. Startup pc, go in bios, set storage configuration to "Raid"
4. Save and reboot
5. Configure Intel Storage Raid (ctrl+i) and make a Raid 1 configuration from the two drives
6. Reboot and boot from Win 7 dvd, install on the drive(s).
7. Once in Windows install Intel Matrix Stroge utility, enable write back caching

I've heard stories of people inserting drivers at the Windows 7 install, at the format/partitioning screen. I've never done that, is that necessary?

Also is raid 1 without a real raid controller a lot slower?

I've gone from two raptors 74gb raid 0 to two 1tb F3's in raid 1 and I have to say it's a lot slower...

rpstewart · 30 Aug 2010 at 12:51

Vir said:
I've gone from two raptors 74gb raid 0 to two 1tb F3's in raid 1 and I have to say it's a lot slower...

That's to be expected and it's nothing to do with the controller. While the 74Gb Raptor isn't the quickest drive out there any more a pair of them in RAID0 will still give you better sustained transfers than pretty much anything in RAID1. You'll also get significantly better write performance from RAID0 than RAID1.

kg648 · 30 Aug 2010 at 12:51

I'd go for using software raid ie OS based raid anyday, the onboard raid is normally pretty crap. (unless you have a real real raid card )

Raid0 is deffo going to be faster than raid1, what sort of speeds are you getting?

Temi_D · 30 Aug 2010 at 14:59

Raid 1 even has slower write speeds than a single hard drive

bhavv · 30 Aug 2010 at 15:43

Raid 1 isnt for performance, it is for backups.

It is always going to be slower than Raid 0.

I put my samsung F3s into Raid 0, and loading times ended up super fast. Its great for games + benchmarks, but I wouldnt put anything else on there as most other things work fine off my backup eco drive.

rpstewart · 30 Aug 2010 at 15:51

bhavv said:
Raid 1 isnt for performance, it is for backups.

It's not for backups it's for REDUNDANCY, there's a very distinct difference. RAID1 will protect you from a physical disk failure and nothing else.

You still need a proper backup solution as well.

Vir · 30 Aug 2010 at 19:11

rpstewart said:
It's not for backups it's for REDUNDANCY, there's a very distinct difference. RAID1 will protect you from a physical disk failure and nothing else.

You still need a proper backup solution as well.

Exactly and that is what I need.

Now, thank you all for posting. I've just ran some benchmarks for comparison, turns out all cpu/memory benchmarks are OK.

Then I though, why not try a disk benchmark, so I've got the latest CrystalDiskMark, 3.0 and ran it. I compared it to a screenshot of a single Samsung F3 1TB on some Dutch forum and I'm quite shocked... actually, without the screenshot I would have also been shocked, what do you guys think?

I turned write back caching off (in the intel matrix storge console) and it gave me 77mb on the first test...

For reference, this is my intel matrix storage console information:

Vir · 31 Aug 2010 at 08:58

Ok so I did a reinstall, didn't work out at all...

Speeds are now at 44mb/s Read I know it's Raid-1 but this is slower then Raid-1 should be, I am right in that?

Thinking really hard of ditching the motherboard, given me nothing but trouble on raid, first my two raptors started giving me errors, then these two new drives as well and very very slow, it's not even on the JMB363 ports ffs

rpstewart · 31 Aug 2010 at 10:19

Can you try running HDTune and post a screenshot of the transfer rate trace. It's difficult to tell from a single figure whether it's a problem or just other stuff accessing the disk during the benchmark.

Vir · 31 Aug 2010 at 10:21

rpstewart said:
Can you try running HDTune and post a screenshot of the transfer rate trace. It's difficult to tell from a single figure whether it's a problem or just other stuff accessing the disk during the benchmark.

Ok will do tonight, I'm at work now so can't access my desktop...
I don't think any other stuff is accessing my disk though.
Thanks for your reply.

rpstewart · 31 Aug 2010 at 14:12

If it's a new install of Win7 then there will be plenty of disk activity - initial search indexing, superfetch caching etc.

Vir · 31 Aug 2010 at 14:37

rpstewart said:
If it's a new install of Win7 then there will be plenty of disk activity - initial search indexing, superfetch caching etc.

You're absolutely right, kinda forgot!
I'll turn indexing off when I get home, and let it be for a bit, see what it comes up.... and ofcours HDTune

Vir · 31 Aug 2010 at 17:50

Ok just ran HDTune, hereby two screenshots:

File Benchmark:

Benchmark Read:

Doesn't look to good huh...

Normally on a raid 1 the write should be slower than read, correct?

rpstewart · 31 Aug 2010 at 18:07

Definitely something else running on the system, the dips in the trace are due to contention on the disk. If you imagine a trend line on the bottom chart it would run from ~110MB/S at the right to ~60MB/s at the left which is about right for one of those drives.

The write speeds in the top screenshot could be skewed by windows write caching, normally RAID1 writes are significantly slower than the reads due to the controller verifying that the write has happened on both drives.

Vir · 31 Aug 2010 at 18:33

rpstewart said:
Definitely something else running on the system, the dips in the trace are due to contention on the disk. If you imagine a trend line on the bottom chart it would run from ~110MB/S at the right to ~60MB/s at the left which is about right for one of those drives.

The write speeds in the top screenshot could be skewed by windows write caching, normally RAID1 writes are significantly slower than the reads due to the controller verifying that the write has happened on both drives.

I've turned indexing off and this a fresh install with NOTHING installed, just CrystalDiskMark 3.0 and HDTune.

I'm not sure what can cause this? I'm not running any 3rd party software right now and the speeds have been the same as before I freshly installed. I don't know about HDTune though, but the system feels more or less the same...

So now I've tried turning off write caching on the raid volume via the device manager:

I've lost it lol...

rpstewart · 1 Sep 2010 at 09:31

Now that's interesting, parts of that trace are spot on and parts are pretty naff. I wonder if one of the drives is borked or at least not playing nicely.

I know it's a pain but it might be worth breaking the RAID and reinstalling the OS on just one of the drives with the other as a second independent drive. If you run hdtune after that you should be able to see if both drives are performing in the same way or not.

Vir · 1 Sep 2010 at 09:34

rpstewart said:
Now that's interesting, parts of that trace are spot on and parts are pretty naff. I wonder if one of the drives is borked or at least not playing nicely.

I know it's a pain but it might be worth breaking the RAID and reinstalling the OS on just one of the drives with the other as a second independent drive. If you run hdtune after that you should be able to see if both drives are performing in the same way or not.

Ok I might try that, you can't break raid 1 and keep all data on a disk in normal mode right?
Personally I'm thinking it is the IO controller as I've also had the same kind of troubles with a set of raptors which are running nicely in my girlfriends rig... But I guess it's a good test, what you are suggesting.

Vir · 5 Sep 2010 at 16:50

So yeah, I got a P6X58D-E, same setup, have the hard disks connected to the SATA6G controller, getting 107 read / 113 write in crystaldiskmark...

So yes that helped A LOT. Motherboard wasn't good as I expected BUT, two questions:
1. Is it ok to just connect it to the MARVELL SATA6G controller or should I put it on the normal Intel?
2. Read is still lower then write, in Raid-1, that IS weird right?