Raid0 Slower than it should be

[Jensenfc]

I just got two 500gb Seagate 7200.12 to put into Raid 0. I am running a Gigabyte ga-965P-s3 motherboard. Looking online other people have gotten around 250MB max, 200MB average, and 124MB min transfer speeds with two of these drives. Here is a screenshot of what I am getting Link. I am getting what looks like a ceiling of 173MB that it cannot go above and then at around 70% it gets below that level and starts tapering off like it should. HD tune does not show any drive health information for the raid array. I have reinstalled Windows 7 twice with different drivers but does the same thing. I have reset my bios settings to optimized defaults and tried changing the sata settings but nothing helps. One weird thing that might hold the clue to the problem is that I have another 750GB drive in the system. HD tune says this drive is running in UDMA Mode 5 (Ultra ATA/100) while UDMA Mode 6 (Ultra ATA/133) is supported. Is my raid array stuck in Mode 5 too which is causing my max transfer to stop at 173MB? Any ideas?

 

[bigsnyder]

Most of setups are only using a fraction of their drive space. I see you that you have your RAID to utilize all 1000GB of drive space. To get the numbers you see others getting, you need to set the RAID to utilize about half the capacity of a single platter, in other words about only 250GB for your setup. That is about all I can tell you. I am sure someone else will chime in with more info.

 

[Jensenfc]

Originally posted by: bigsnyder
Most of setups are only using a fraction of their drive space. I see you that you have your RAID to utilize all 1000GB of drive space. To get the numbers you see others getting, you need to set the RAID to utilize about half the capacity of a single platter, in other words about only 250GB for your setup. That is about all I can tell you. I am sure someone else will chime in with more info.

This guy for example used the entire 1TB array to get those speeds. I know I may not get up to those speeds because I am using crappy onboard Raid, but I would think I would be able to get closer than what I am getting.

 

[bigsnyder]

That is impressive. Would like to know how he did it too.

 

[Jensenfc]

Ya, those speed are around what everyone is getting with two of these drives together. If you notice how that guys curve slowly curves down but my curve is fairly flat at 173MB for 70% of the drive then starts declining like it should. I think a setting isn't set up correctly or I need another driver for something because the drive is getting bottlenecked by something.

 

[Andrew1990]

Are you using motherboard RAID or a Raid Card? You may be hitting a wall if using the motherboard or a cheap RAID Card.

 

[Jensenfc]

Originally posted by: Andrew1990
Are you using motherboard RAID or a Raid Card? You may be hitting a wall if using the motherboard or a cheap RAID Card.

The motherboard Raid. My motherboard uses the JMicron chip which from what I have read online isn't the greatest but isn't that bad.

 

[krose]

Unfortunately your motherboard has the Intel ICH8 southbridge which doesn't do RAID. ICH8R is a better solution than jmicron. But you can try different stripe sizes to optimize your array. What is your current stripe size?

 

[Idontcare]

Difference in stripe size for the array?

 

[Jensenfc]

I know, if I had ICH8R I would use that instead of the JMicron crap. I have tried 128K & 64K stripe sizes. With the 128K stripe size I maxed out at around 160MB and with the 64K I am now at 170MB. I have tried the latest RAID drivers from gigabyte and the lastest drivers from JMicrons website. I just find it werid how my speeds are stuck in a flat line at 170MB until the speed of the drives actaually are below that amount. The drives in Raid0 should start at around 250MB then go down to around 130MB.

 

[Tweakin]

Originally posted by: Jensenfc

Originally posted by: Andrew1990
Are you using motherboard RAID or a Raid Card? You may be hitting a wall if using the motherboard or a cheap RAID Card.

The motherboard Raid. My motherboard uses the JMicron chip which from what I have read online isn't the greatest but isn't that bad.

That's probably the biggest reason right there.

 

[Jensenfc]

Originally posted by: Tweakin

Originally posted by: Jensenfc

Originally posted by: Andrew1990
Are you using motherboard RAID or a Raid Card? You may be hitting a wall if using the motherboard or a cheap RAID Card.

The motherboard Raid. My motherboard uses the JMicron chip which from what I have read online isn't the greatest but isn't that bad.

That's probably the biggest reason right there.

Even if the JMicron raid isn't the fastest but should it be 100MB slower at the beginning of the drive and cause a speed wall at 170mb? Do you think this cheap silicon image based card would be better?

 

[bigsnyder]

At that price I can't see how you could go wrong.