A8N-E NForce RAID question

[Cr0nJ0b]

I need some help with this.

I'm setting up a new system with the A8N-E board using their Nforce RAID driver. I have 2 seagates and a WD 80 GB drive all set in a stripe. The drives are all ATA/100 (PATA) capable and on my old system I could get them up to about 95MB/sec just running the 2 seagates. Now however, I can't the three of them over 65MB/sec

I'm using HDTACH 3.0 as the test

WinXP new install
Latest drivers from everyone.

Any thoughts?

It just feels like the PATA drivers aren't kicking in.

 

[Aenslead]

wait... you're using 3 on a RAID setting?

No, no... you set TWO of them on RAID... that is, both Seagates, AND leave the Western Digital in another channel as a backup/files disk, not as a RAID one.

RAID settings *must* be made in pairs.

 

[garikfox]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=29&threadid=1660444&enterthread=y

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

I'm not sure what you mean about raid only in pairs. You can have as many drives as you like in a RAID 0 stripe set. They don't even need to be the same size...the system will auto format for the lowest capacity.

I have since just loaded XP on a single SATA and I'm now getting like 128MB/sec..which I will probably stick with unless someone can tell me that I should get better results with my older PATA ATA/100 drives in a stripe.

 

[garikfox]

NM yer too n00bie. :/

srry yer good noobie, lol

 

[AnandThenMan]

You're getting 128MB/sec from a single drive? No.

 

[garikfox]

Well NO HD-Tach says per (Raptor) Drive is about 70M

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

I'm not an expert with HDtach...I'm just using it to give me a swag at the speeds.

The Burst Rate is 128.

Sustained is averaging closer to 45-50. For a single Maxtor SATA 250GB drive.

I'm running 3.0.1 I think.

The question is this.

Should I go back and try to work on getting the (3) PATA drives to RAID 0, or should I just sit on the SATA, which looks like it might be as fast as the RAID0 set.

thanks

 

[Aenslead]

I've never seen 3 HDD on an array, and since you seem to have much more experience, then I am afraid nothing I can tell you will help you, except this:

No HD, no mater if SATA II, with 16Mb caché, whatever... will ever run as fast as an array of disks, no matter if these are PATA.

 

[grooge]

Originally posted by: Cr0nJ0b
I'm not an expert with HDtach...I'm just using it to give me a swag at the speeds.

The Burst Rate is 128.

Sustained is averaging closer to 45-50. For a single Maxtor SATA 250GB drive.

I'm running 3.0.1 I think.

The question is this.

Should I go back and try to work on getting the (3) PATA drives to RAID 0, or should I just sit on the SATA, which looks like it might be as fast as the RAID0 set.

thanks

RAID0 will format the array to the lowest capacity, and HDD will be as fast as the slowest in the array. And with 3 drive on the array, you are putting more stress to the controller/cpu to break the data in 3 chunk for each HDD that it kill performance.

nvidia RAID controller is not a true hardware RAID controller, like those on expensive card. The CPU still have to work to create the data chunk and it takes cpu cycle. RAID cards for server have a data processor that handle the work and free the CPU. I don't suggest more than 2 HDD to keep good performance and low cpu usage.

 

[grooge]

Oh..and I'm thinking about that... doesnt that board only have 2 IDE connector, which mean that you are running 2 HDD on the same cable?? If it is the case, yes, you will notice a slowdown too. You simply cannot send data to both HDD on the same cable at the same time. meaning that one hdd is getting use, then the other. This negate in fact, the purpose of RAID, needing to have both drive to work in perfect sync for best performance.

I'm sorry to tell you that you cannot expect great performance with that setup.

 

[ElTorrente]

Originally posted by: grooge
Oh..and I'm thinking about that... doesnt that board only have 2 IDE connector, which mean that you are running 2 HDD on the same cable?? If it is the case, yes, you will notice a slowdown too. You simply cannot send data to both HDD on the same cable at the same time. meaning that one hdd is getting use, then the other. This negate in fact, the purpose of RAID, needing to have both drive to work in perfect sync for best performance.

I'm sorry to tell you that you cannot expect great performance with that setup.

This isn't true.

RAID works just fine when two disks are on an IDE cable together - I did it before with some older IBMs and they scored pretty decent on HDtach.

Whoever said you can't have an odd number of disks in a RAID setup was also way off base.

a RAID stripe is going to go no faster than the slowest disk.. well that is sorta wrong- I should say it will go no faster than the slowest disk x 3 or however many disks you have in the array. Basically, it negates the faster drives and turns them into slow ones. Take the slowest one out of the array and use it for storage, "My Documents", Temp files.