Defragmenting a RAID 0 Array

[WolfAtWork]

As the title suggests, is this a necessary function? Because the files are written to seperate disks in 'fragments', is the OS going to try and allocate all potions of the file in a contiguous fashion on a single drive (thereby defeating the performance of simultaneous reads from each drive)?

Please note that I'm talking about a Promise FastTrak 100TX2 controller here under Windows XP Pro, which I believe is doing hardware and NOT software RAID. Please correct if I am mistaken, but does anyone have a definitive answer regarding this issue?

I'd hate to dump my excellent disk performance in the toilet just to maintain a contiguous file system.

Thanks in advance for any replies!

Wolf@Work

 

[Pederv]

Defragging is no problem, it still alternates between the drives.

 

[WolfAtWork]

Fair enough, thanks for the info!

The other problem I noticed is my Sandra file system benchmark score absolutely went to pot since I installed XP last week. Last Thursday it was just over 34000, now it's down to 17000. I remember reading that losing disk performance drastically in XP after installation has happened to several people. Is this a known is and does anyone know if there is a workaround for it?

Thanks again!

Wolf@Work

 

[Pederv]

Have you tried installing the raid performance patch, here?

 

[WolfAtWork]

Interesting, I never even KNEW about this patch.
BUT, is it for onboard-RAID solutions or does it include support for PCI based solutions like mine?
Hmmmm....

Wolf@Work

 

[SemperFi]

I didn't know that either! Thanks Pederv! My Sandra scores were suckin big time. I can't remember what they were now but it was slower than a single udma66 drive. :frown:

Wolf you should be good to go. The onboard controller is a hardwired pci device.

Semper Fi

 

[TheWart]

no prob defragging my FasttrakTX2 2x40GB here. dont use Sandra, but have you turned off all the auto crud (autoupdate, autorestore, etc.) that WinXP likes to run in the background? my disks are running smooth as silk.

 

[WolfAtWork]

I wonder how relevant these Sandra scores really are.
I'd like to know how they obtain their baseline scores.

I'll try that patch right away and see what happens, but like 3DMark, I don't know if a few numbers really constitutes an emergency.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Wolf@Work