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Improving Raid Performance

N

NeelyMSU

Member
I just setup a 2 disk RAID using 2 60GB 60GXPs and a KR7A-Raid mb. I tested using HD Tach and Sandra 2001.5.8.11 on a fresh Win XP Pro install.
My scores were as follows:

HD Tach: burst 61~62mbps
Sandra: 21640
Running HD Tach on a single 60GXP results in a burst of 85mbps.

I have the latest drivers. I originally had each drive in the array connected to each channel as master, then switched to both on a single channel as master and slave. The performance did not change very much. (Went down slightly.)

This is very not the performance that I expected nor paid for. How do I increase the performance?

Thanks for any tips.
 
What's your stripe size? I have a 16K stripe on my Promise FastTrack 100 TX2 using twin 60GXP 40's and my scores are similar to yours. My Randon Access Time is right around 12.5~12.9ms.

SANDRA sux for the HDD bench.
 
John:

My stripe size is 64K. My access times are in the 12ms range too.

Old fart:

That could be my problem, but I am not operating in UDMA 6 (ATA-133). I am running at ATA-100. But still, it could be why. Is there a fix for this? There had better be. I did not pay $1500, for a new computer to get performance like this.

Thanks for the help.

 
Download Winbench 99 and run the disk inspection test. This will show a graph of your STR (like HD Tach but more accurate). ATTO is another benchmark that you can use to measure STR at various block sizes. Sandra is junk, don't put any faith into what it gives you! With a pair of 60 GXP drives, your access times should be in the mid to high 12's and the STR maximum should be close to 80 MB/S and the minimum is usually close to 48 MB/S with an average of 65 MB/S. Stripe size of 16 KB with a 32 KB cluster (FAT32) will give these results. 32 or 64 KB stripe size usually gives the best results with NTFS with 4 KB clusters.

Cheers!
 
That sounds really odd, oh and as a side note ATA133 doesn't really give you a 'performance' boost, it's mostly just eye candy since most drives and cables can't get you the extra throughput, even ATA100 usually only does sustained around 40-60MB/s, ATA133 doesn't do that much more. The problem sounds like your RAID drivers and VIA southbridge are in conflict, ABIT has worked out a supposed BIOS fix, check it out here, if that doesn't work try looking around on ABIT's boards for additional info about the RAID driver. I personally have a TH7-II RAID running dual WD800BB 80 GIG drives in Array 0 w/stripe 64k and I benched the total 160GB drive around 42000 in the latest release of Sandra which is somewhere around where yours should be (actually you should be a bit higher).
 
If you look on amdmb.com in the forums, there is a 18+ page post on this. People aren't getting very good performance with the RAID on the KR7A-RAID.
 
ok i have a 30gig quantom and i have raid on my mb should i use it? what difference will it give me?

I never bought the mb cause of the raid i got it for the other features tell me what i am missing.
 
I applied the patch and my results increased a little.
HD Tach: burst 83mbps
max: 64871kps
min: 15991kps
ave: 39166.7kps

sharkeeper: Ok, I will try winbench and atto. I will post my results.

I have my stripe set to 64K and the cluster size of my NTFS partition is 4K. Should I change the stripe size to 32K? I thought 64K was the best middle of the road choice.

Thanks.
 


<< I have my stripe set to 64K and the cluster size of my NTFS partition is 4K. Should I change the stripe size to 32K? I thought 64K was the best middle of the road choice. >>



That is fine for NTFS. HD Tach likes 16 KB better than 64 KB because of the block size it's using for testing. You can specify the block size in WB99, but the default seems to be better for various testing. If you have a ghost image of your OS, you should try all block sizes available (4K to 64K for Highpoint, and 1K to 1024K for Promise) to see what suits your needs. IME, I've found that 16 KB works best for FAT 32 with 32KB clusters and 64 KB works best for NTFS. I finally got tired of messing with IDE RAID and went SCSI. 🙂

For the $$$, IDE is ok but I think I have too much grey hair from messing with those stripes! 😛

Cheers!
 
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