Please help, my Raid0 array blows under Win2K

mikef208

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Nov 30, 2000
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I ran a Sandra drives bench on my raid array and it sucked, so someone told me to try HDtach, well i tried it and this is what i got. I'm not sure if it's good or not. The array consists of my onboard HPT370 raid controller on my KT7A, with a 30gig Diamond Max Plus 60 on the primary master, and another 30gig Diamond Max Plus 60 on the Secondary master channel. For those that don't know, those are ATA100 drives 7200RPM, my stripe size is set at 64K. Need any other info?
 

MichaelD

Lifer
Jan 16, 2001
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Your link gives a message on a Yahoo page "you have reached a restricted area." Just post your: Random access time, Average read speed and burst read speed and what OS you're running.
 

mikef208

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Nov 30, 2000
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I think I fixed it, I accidentlly put the screen shot in a private folder, but it's in a public one now, it worked for me this time, but just in case here is the info you asked for.

Random access time-14.4ms
Average read speed-30731.6kps
Burst read speed-63.3mbps
OS-Win 2K with SP2 installed
 

MichaelD

Lifer
Jan 16, 2001
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Whoa. Wait a minute! I just caught something. You're saying the drives are on the Primary and Secondary......I'm going to assume you mean that the drives are hooked to the two orange IDE connectors on the mobo, right? :confused:

I have the same mobo (essentially) I have a KT7 Raid. You have the KT133A chipset; that's the only diff b/t the two boards. Did you purchase the Pro (or whatever it's called) version of HDtach? Because the freeware version doesnt' run with NT/W2K...

Anyway, your scores are low. When I was running Win98SE, with two Maxtor DM+ 60 40GB drives, my burst was about 81mb/s, and avg transfer rate was about 43mb/s. CPU utilization was about the same. Some questions for you:

1. Did you start out with two new, empty HD's or at least format them with Maxtor's Maxblast utility?
2. Are they both jumpered to "master"?
3. Are they running NTFS as opposed to FAT32?

Your stripe size is fine. I am running the same setup as you (same drive size, same mobo (we covered that already) and the same drives, except mine are 10GB bigger.

Do you have SANDRA? Run the HD benchmark and I'll compare with you. I've never run HDTach in W2K, but W2K is light years ahead of Win98 and my Win98 scores beat the crap out of your W2K scores...something is wrong with your setup......let me know and I'll try to help.
 

Pabster

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
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Definitely low, I get about 31000 average with a single DM60+ Maxtor.

One thing is for certain - HPT370 is underperforming and hogs CPU. Best bet is a dedicated controller...
 

Sugadaddy

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May 12, 2000
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I have a single DM+60 40GB, and if I remember from the last time I ran HD Tach, your access time seems right, but the read transfer rates are low... CPU utilization is also normal for a IDE RAID array.



The average should be higher than that (I get about 30MB/s with a single drive, so you should be higher. Also, I don't know if this is normal for a RAID setup, but your transfer rate graph is going all over the place (up and down)...
 

WyteWatt

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Jun 8, 2001
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I have a Maxtor 45 gig HD and think your access time should be alittle lower because i get 12.5 to 12.9 ms access time in HDtach and Maximum is 32969.0 kps, Minimum 19725.0 kps, and Average 28029.6 kps.
My read burst speed is sorta alittle strange because i get from 36 to 53 mbps sometimes more. But the more common result of read burst speed is about 36 mbps i would say. I can never fix my read burst speed but i never worry about it sense it doesnt make really a huge difference even if it was at 80 mbps.
Also cpu usage only 13%.
 

John

Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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I am running Win 2K SP2 on an Epox 8K7A+ with dual 60GXp 40's in Raid0 w/ a 32K Stripe

Random access time - 12.7ms
Read burst speed - off the chart (80+)
Read speed max - 68045
Min - 9822
avg - 40511
cpu utilization - 7%
 

WyteWatt

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Jun 8, 2001
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John wow those tranfer speeds are pretty slow for minimum. Why is that? Access time is pretty cool but i get about the same on my one maxtor HD.
 

mikef208

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Nov 30, 2000
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<< Whoa. Wait a minute! I just caught something. You're saying the drives are on the Primary and Secondary >>


Yes, the primary and secondary Raid connections, the orange ones. That is what they are refered to as in the BIOS, Primary and Secondary.



<< Did you purchase the Pro (or whatever it's called) version of HDtach? Because the freeware version doesnt' run with NT/W2K >>


Um, yeah....



<< 1. Did you start out with two new, empty HD's or at least format them with Maxtor's Maxblast utility? >>


Drives where brand new, not sure if I formated with maxblast or windows format though



<< 2. Are they both jumpered to "master"? >>


That is a darn good question, I would think so, but i will have to check to make sure I didn't make a stupid mistake while installing them



<< 3. Are they running NTFS as opposed to FAT32? >>


Nope, FAT32. Is NTFS that much better, cause I am running a dual boot, and I would like to be able to access all partitions from both OS's
That gives me an idea, i am gonna test performance in ME.



<< Do you have SANDRA? Run the HD benchmark and I'll compare with you >>


Yes, i ran that before HDtach, but I heard HDtach was better. I don't remember my exact score, abut it was around 11,000



<< One thing is for certain - HPT370 is underperforming and hogs CPU >>


Really, thats wierd I was looking at getting the Iwill raid controller for when i change motherboard. Anand seemed to recommend it in his review, and it is based on the HPT370 as well.

Alright that looks like all the questions, I am gonna check to see that the drives are set as Master and then run sandra and HDtach under Win mE then I will report back. Any ideas what I can do to fix this problem? Also just a little extra question, when I enter the HTP370 BIOS, these drives are running in UDMA mode 5, is that what they should be at?
 

mikef208

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Nov 30, 2000
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Alright, the drives are set as master, and I ran quite a few benches from ME and again in 2K, they were added to the link, but here is what i got it if you don't feel like looking

HDtach from ME, which i ran it 3 times under ME
The first time Random Access time was at 9.2, the best time it was at was 9.1 out of the three I posted, but I actually ran it a couple more times and I think i hit a 9.0 or an 8.9 once
Average Read Speed the first time was 39281.7kps, the best time out of the three was 44008.1kps
Burst read speed the first time was 70 something, it went off the chart so i couldn;t read the second number, the best time was way off the chart, couldn't see the number at all.

My sandra scores were much better in ME as well, the bench of my ME drive from ME was 37826
The becnh of my last partition under ME was 34239, the bench of my 2K partition which is the first partition, but still under ME was crappy at around 21,000. So do those scores look okay? the are defenitaly a lot higher then my 2K scores, so what is wrong?
 

mikef208

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Nov 30, 2000
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Oh yeah, why does HDtach only do the graph thing for like 8gig under ME, but the full 60 under 2K, and why is the graph pretty straight under ME and all up and down under 2k
Also CPU utilization under 2K, was 18-21, under ME 10-12
 

John

Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Mike, enable advanced size check....9ms access time on an IDE is not going to happen. You have latency of ~4ms right off.
 

mikef208

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Nov 30, 2000
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When I enable advanced size check it freezes in both 2K and Me. It completely freezes, i can't even get into task manager to end the program, i have to reboot
 

John

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Oct 9, 1999
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Yea it freezes on me also in Win 2K on this Epox board. I never had the problem on my iwill kk266-r....odd. However it reads my 80GB raid array without advanced size checked which is strange. My graph is all over the place too, lol.
 

kly1222

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Oct 9, 1999
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<< Warning for version 2.61 - Version 2.61 has a problem with ATAPI CD-ROM autoinsert notification on some systems. This will cause a blue screen error and will require the machine to be rebooted. The autoinsert notification will cause this problem during hard drive benchmarking. To avoid this issue use HD Tach 2.52 or disable autoinsert notification before the test is run. >>



Got this straight from the hdtach page....http://www.tcdlabs.com/hdtach.htm
 

mikef208

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Nov 30, 2000
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We aren't getting BSOD, though, it's just freezing. What can i do to improve my Win 2K performance
 

John

Moderator Emeritus<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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<< One thing is for certain - HPT370 is underperforming and hogs CPU. Best bet is a dedicated controller... >>



I missed that earlier. Actually the highpoint raid controller is one of the higher performing units, and I have seen several reviews that rate it above the promise controller. I don't consider 7% cpu usage a "hog" either.

Mike, try different highpoint drivers.
 

mikef208

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Nov 30, 2000
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Where might I find updated drivers, I can only find one driver for Win2K on the abit site and when i try to download it, it says it doesn't exsist.