Success! New case and RAID up and running! Benchmarks, comments, statements...all inside!

[MichaelD]

Look out below; it's another MichaelD BLT! (Big Long Thread) I've got lots to report! So, pour a cup of coffee (or crack a cold one if you just got off work!) and come right back.

Glad you came back! Here we go!

First off, I'd like to thank everyone who helped me (put up w/me?) in the past week. All my RAID/Formatting/Norton Ghost/connection questions were answered and then some, both here and via PMs. I couldn't have done it w/o your help. You guys rock. These forums rock. Thank you all very, very much.

Last night was a busy one. Basically, I transferred my rig and two new HDs to an Antec SX1040 case, and got a RAID 0 array going. I learned A LOT of lessons last night. Here are some observations:

1. A full tower case is a veritable gymnasium with unlimited room; until you start putting stuff in it

2. A full tower case becomes a baby AT case when you start hooking up five IDE cables

3. A full tower case becomes a cracker jack box when you start running the power wires for the devices from step 2.

4. You don't need to format a RAID 0 array if you're going to ghost-copy another HD to it. I'll explain further below.

Everything works, but I'm not happy with the way the inside looks. I like a neat case. (Yes, I am O.C. about it...there, I admitted it) I tend to consider myself somewhat of an artist when it comes to the art of zip-tying IDE cables. My old Antec KS282 case had a benchmark-level cable tying job. It was a thing of beauty to behold. The new case doesn't look so pretty. This bothers me. I may look into those round IDE cables. But that's a project for a rainy day.

The IDE cables are as neatly folded, wire-tied and moved out of the way as I could get them. My temps are good, airflow is not a problem with four case fans. Can U say "Hovercraft?"

Temps are: CPU 31C idle/47C stress CASE 24C idle/27C stress. Not too shabby at all. From my last case to this one, my CPU temp went down and my case temp went up. They are good temps, so I'm not too worried about it.

Installed the two new HD's, hooked them to the HighPoint controller. Installed my old HD with my OS and everything else on it as a Slave on my Primary IDE channel, with a CDR as master on that channel. Setup a RAID 0 in the HighPoint bios. Everything seems to be going well at this point. I'm gettin' excited at this point.

Here's something really weird. In all the exitement, I forgot to format the RAID array after creating it! (Dork!) I never did go into DOS and do a Format C. I forgot! So, I rebooted with the Norton Ghost Boot Floppy in the drive. Norton Ghost rocks, BTW. My first experience with it, and it worked 100% like it should. Glad I bought it.

I go into ghost and copy my old HD to the new RAID array. 20 minutes later, I'm up and running. No format. I haven't a clue what's up w/that. Your guess is as good as mine!

Ladies and Gents, we have RAID! Yep, I got the RAID 0 going. I set it up with a 32kb stripe size. The Highpoint controller only lets you go up to 64kb and I thought that was a bit high, based on what I read, so I set it at 32kb. I may change it to see what happens. No biggie, since I have my old HD in the case. I'll just ghost it again. I love full towers! Lots of room for drives.


C'mon Mike, you bothered us with your incessant questions for a week! So spill it; does IDE RAID make a difference?

I only got to play around w/the new rig for about an hour...it was 0130 and I get up at 0530...this morning wasn't pretty, but I did get to run some benchmarks and we ALL LOVE BENCHMARKS!

I don't have the luxury of having all those Winstone Biff Davis Content Creation-type tests that the pros have, but I do have SANDRA and HDTACH!

I benchmarked with the single drive, with and without overclocking, and I benchmarked the RAID array with and without overclocking. I really wanted to see if all this money and effort was worth it. We all know that overclocking speeds up your system, so it was necessary to have a baseline. The results are very interesting. (Can I have a job now, Anand? ) I have neatly laid out the results for your viewing ease. (What a guy!)

NO RAID - Single Maxtor DM60+ 45GB 7200rpm drive

1GHz TBird @ 1GHz (10 x 100)
SANDRA 2001 HD Benchmark = 21028
HDTACH - CPU Utilization = 20.9%
Read speed = 31.6 MB/S
Random acc time = 12.3ms
Read burst spd = 76.8 MB/S

Overclocked - 1.1GHz TBird (10.5 x 105)
SANDRA 2001 HD Benchmark = 21194
HDTACH - CPU Utilization = 19.1%
Read speed = 31.6 MB/S
Random acc time = 12.2ms
Read burst spd = 81 MB/S

RAID 0 Two Maxtor DM60+ 40GB 7200rpm drives w/32kb stripe

1GHz TBird @ 1GHz (10 x 100)
SANDRA 2001 HD Benchmark = 40571
HDTACH - CPU Utilization = 20.1%
Read speed = 44.6 MB/S
Random acc time = 8.8ms
Read burst spd = 80.4 MB/S

Overclocked - 1.1GHz TBird (10.5 x 105)
SANDRA 2001 HD Benchmark = 40430
HDTACH - CPU Utilization = 14.0%
Read speed = 44.3 MB/S
Random acc time = 9.0ms
Read burst spd = 83.7 MB/S


Well, there are the results. RAID 0 nets a 12.7 MB/S increase in read speed. A considerable amount! Pretty cool, huh? I now have approximately 125 Gigs of total HD storage space...I'm gonna do a full load of every single game I have, even the ones I never play! Woo-hoo!

I hope to be able to fine-tune the RAID. I'm sure that 32kb isn't the ideal stripe size, but I haven't a clue what is. I guess it depends on what you do.

That's it guys, end of my BLT! Thanks again for all your help and have a great day!

 

[batgeek]

rounded cables rock...an investment i don't regret =)

 

[Burn]

Wow! That was quite a post. Congradulations on getting the raid up and running. Speed looks good. Trouble is now I am getting the urge. Nooooooo, now look what you have done...lol

 

[NelsonMuntz]

Hey, great job and glad to hear all went well. Especially after the ranting about the way the case was shipped. Looks like the PS worked okay. I thought it was interesting that the benchmarks all went up from non-OC to OC without the RAID, but after the RAID was added, some of the benchmarks actually went down after overclock. I thought the Anandtech article was very informative about the stripe size for RAID (a part of RAID I had not really delved into either) and it seemed like the bigger the better almost. In fact the RAID controllers that limited you to a smaller stripe did their best at their largest possible stripe size, so I say go for the 64 kb stripe.

 

[bacillus]

all I have to say is thank the lord that you've sorted it!
enjoy

 

[SeTeS]

My question is - can you alter the stripe size after installing your os? I wouldn't think so. You'll probably have to re-ghost your old hd image again.

 

[MichaelD]

You are correct. You can't change the stripe size without re-creating the array. I.E. you lose it all. No biggie. I haven't changed or downloaded anything.

Interestingly, after creating the array and Ghosting the image (technically, it's not an image, it's a direct copy) I ran Norton Diagnostics on the array. It showed that the drive was 0% fragmented. I ran defrag anyway. The little "Tetris-looking" screen that comes up was waaaay fragmented! I don't get it. Anyway, that's all i've done. I may recreate the array tonight with a 64kb stripe.

 

[SeTeS]

I'd be interested to know how your performance goes after the change to 64k. I've been running an 8k stripe on 2 45g 75GXPs and it's so-so.

Oddly enough, on another box I built (0+1 w/ 4 45g 75GXPs), the boot time seems MUCH faster. Plus, the 0+1 box is running W2K Server. I'd think that server would take -longer- to boot... ??

 

[MichaelD]

Hi there. Seeing my post bumped up to the top caught my eye. Thanks for the inquiry. Well, I'm running a 64kb stripe now and can't really tell a difference. Benchmarks (SANDRA/HDTach) are almost identical. They are a little higher w/the 64 (and I mean, A LITTLE). Absolutely not even worth quoting the numbers!

I dunno either. I thought that my performance would go up. I'm basing that comment on that really cool RAID article that AT put out two weeks ago. The article showed that even with el cheapo on-mobo RAID, performance went up in parallel w/stripe size. I started with 16kb and then went to 32kb. I saw about a 15% increase in transfer rate. But from 32 to 64, pretty much negligible. Maybe it's a limitation of my rig...I dunno.

BUT, 2-drive IDE RAID beats the crap out of a single IDE drive. More than double the transfer rate. Seek times are about 2ms slower (negligible) That's about it. See ya.

 

[CZroe]

The reason you didn't have to format it is because Ghost copies EVERYTHING including the formatting data into the Drive/Partition image (Well, there are some things it can't do that other utilities can. Like backup the Killer Instinct arcade's hard drive!). You'll notice that many partitioning programs consider the partition type & format the same thing. Like "Create FAT16, FAT32, or Linux Partition" when those are all formatting types. This means that it creates a partition that's allready formatted in the format you selected. Remember that Ghost can back-up an entire disk, not just a partition, which means it backs up everything: Partition tables, FAT data, and all. So that of course means that it copies whatever data is written while formatting...
Heh, that's all... (My 1st post)

 

[MichaelD]

Hello CyberZer0 and welcome to the AT forums. Nice post. Lots of good info. You are obviously experienced with Ghost...keep that quiet, else your box will be full of PM's! Enjoy your time here.