Single HD Image copied to new RAID

NachT · 14 Jul 2006 at 19:11

Hi, I upgraded to RAID 0 recently.

I took an image of my single drive, formated it and built the RAID with my new drive, then put the image back on across the 2 striped drives.

Should i have freshly installed windows onto the striped pair, or would the way i did it make no differance in performance?

I can't see any differance in performance using applications and games that were originally on my single HD, that i copied over in an image, but i do see improvements on freshly installed apps that i installed after i got my RAID setup, also drive speed programs say there is an improvement.

Is it just me that thinks my OS and originally installed games arnt running as fast, or would what i did effect the performance, rather than freshly installing the OS ?

/NachT

NachT · 15 Jul 2006 at 23:57

Any one have an idea?

newbiejim · 16 Jul 2006 at 17:43

i would have guessed like you that the way you did it *should* be fine......why not try a fresh install

NachT · 16 Jul 2006 at 18:04

There seems to be no performance improvement in the way i did it. I'd like to be 100% sure that what i have done would effect it, and in what ways before i do a fresh install. I'd hate to have to re-configure my OS and install / re-configure all my apps to find out later that the way i did it in the first place was ok hehe.

Could any one els back this up

Thanks guys,

/NachT

leezer3 · 16 Jul 2006 at 19:00

Defrag it I would think.

-Leezer-

Behemoth · 16 Jul 2006 at 22:58

To be honest with you mate I don't think you will see any difference at all. I've got a raid 0 array going over 2 x 160 sata 2 drives, and to be honest the app loading speed is nothing to write home about, neither is game load times for that matter.

Where I do notice the difference though is moving files around, if for example I need to move a 500 meg file from my usb 2 storage to the raided drives then heck yeah it's pretty quick.

The best way to do it I guess though is to do a new fresh install and run HD Tach, save the results, and then go back in with your image, run HD Tach again and see what scores you get then. Thats probably the best way of doing it.

unfortunatley I don't have a bench of a single drive on it's own, but I can show you my HD Tach score with the pair in Raid 0 (Drives are a pair of Maxtor Dm10 Sata 2 160 gig)

Almost catching up a SCSI setup there too with that

NachT · 17 Jul 2006 at 06:47

Your test shows way better results than mine heh. What stripe size do you have?

Heres my results, 2x 150 Raptors on SATA 2 ( They don't work on the SATA ports, so i guess they're SATA 2 )

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/9274/untitledva2.jpg

noxidjkram@hotm · 17 Jul 2006 at 07:27

This is more what your Raptor 150s should be like.

Thats mine on an nVidia NF3 controller.

http://img288.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hdtachsr9.jpg

M

Behemoth · 17 Jul 2006 at 07:44

NachT said:
Your test shows way better results than mine heh. What stripe size do you have?

Heres my results, 2x 150 Raptors on SATA 2 ( They don't work on the SATA ports, so i guess they're SATA 2 )

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/9274/untitledva2.jpg

I can't remember to be honest, I think it's 16 k or it could be 32 k stipe size lol Been so long since I set the array up. Thats on an NF4 controller btw. Am surprized to see your raptors running that slow.

NachT · 17 Jul 2006 at 07:53

Thanks for the speedy replays guys. Yeah my raptors are extreamly slow, I think it's because of how i've put the image back onto them as i said above. It might be best for me to do a fresh install the right way onto them.

My controller is the Sil 3132, my storage 7,200 disk gets a better result than the 2 raptors heh >.<

Dutch Guy · 17 Jul 2006 at 08:45

NachT said:
Your test shows way better results than mine heh. What stripe size do you have?

Heres my results, 2x 150 Raptors on SATA 2 ( They don't work on the SATA ports, so i guess they're SATA 2 )

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/9274/untitledva2.jpg

There is something wrong, my Hitachi Deskstar 250Gb drives get ~110Mb/sec average in HDTach and I did the same as you.

I cloned my single IDE drive to my RAID0 using Acronis TrueImage and it should not matter at all :confused:

NachT · 17 Jul 2006 at 15:13

Dutch Guy said:
There is something wrong, my Hitachi Deskstar 250Gb drives get ~110Mb/sec average in HDTach and I did the same as you.

I cloned my single IDE drive to my RAID0 using Acronis TrueImage and it should not matter at all

I used Acronis TrueImage too, but mine didn't work by the looks of things lol.

I guess i'll just do a fresh install when i have time, i'll have to put the drivers for my RAID controller onto the XP disc because my floppy drive broke *sigh* ^_^

It's just one of those days...

james.miller · 17 Jul 2006 at 15:15

isn't it more likely that its something to do with your raid drivers rather than the image?

NachT · 17 Jul 2006 at 19:02

james.miller said:
isn't it more likely that its something to do with your raid drivers rather than the image?

Maybe, because instead of saying Sil 3132 blah.. what it usually says, it just says "Disk Drive"

Last time i tryed to update the drivers it wouldn't let me though.

NachT · 17 Jul 2006 at 22:03

Yep, it wont let me update the driver, i'll just format. Should be able to use my enhanced north bridge on this fresh install, if i remember right you can use enhanced north bridges on a RAID right? :rolleyes:

NachT · 19 Jul 2006 at 14:50

Took me a lot of hours, but i know what the problem is now.

My SATA 2 Controller is crap. It's the Sil 3132.

With 2x 150 GB Raptors on RAID0 on the Sil 3132 Controller I get a MAX read of 80 MB/s

1x Raptor on the Sil3132 Controller gets me a max read of 69 MB/s

So i broke the RAID and stuck one of the raptors on the SATA controller (Sil 3112 I think ) and the single raptor alone got a max read of 114 MB/s without any enhancing in the bios.

When i get this all fixed i'll post some results.