Raid1 on P8P67 Pro feels slow!

[brottman]

On my new Sandy Bridge setup, I currently am running Windows 7 off of what will be my permanent raid1 data store until my SSD arrives. I have 2 Samsung F4 drives plugged into the Intel Sata 3g ports (ports 3 & 4) in a raid1 configuration. In Windows 7, the raid array feels really slow and pauses sometimes to catch up. Here is what I have loaded so far:

P8P67 Pro Bios 1253
Intel INF Update 1021
Intel Management Engine Interface Driver Update 1184
Intel RST 10.1.0.1008

I did not do the F6 driver install during Windows Setup, could that be the problem? I thought installing the Intel RST would give it all the drivers it needed for Windows but what should be a screaming new computer feels horribly slow!

Brian

 

[IGemini]

I think RAID1 is pretty miserable if used for the OS install, it works better as a backup array.

 

[Zap]

Which F4 drives do you have? The 2TB models are 5400RPM and basically make for lousy OS drives.

 

[brottman]

I have the 2TB models. Would they be so bad as to cause occasional pauses lasting up to 20 seconds? I've had it where the OS would sort of freeze for about 20 or 30 seconds while it was doing something and couldn't even browse the web.

Brian

 

[Diogenes2]

Like IGemini says, RAID 1 for OS could have lots of issues . Page File hits come to mind..

How much RAM do you have ?

 

[IGemini]

Yes, not only is the page file the slowest supplement for RAM on any mechanical HDD, that means whenever it changes it needs to wait for the array to mirror it.

 

[Nothinman]

I think RAID1 is pretty miserable if used for the OS install, it works better as a backup array.

It shouldn't be. Writes may be a little bit slower, but the difference shouldn't be significant since they can be issues to all drives concurrently and reads should be faster since they can be spread across all drives. But that all depends on how smart the RAID1 driver in use is.

 

[brottman]

I have 8gb ram and only about 1-1.5GB in use typically.