Testing my Raptor in raid 0

twitchee2

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Dec 29, 2004
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First off, I know and understand know that it was not a good choice to buy these drives so lets leave it at that and lets not flame me for making a mistake on what I purchased. So I did some benching on my raptors, and here are the results. I noticed that the strait sequential read speed is a strait line, which to me means the controller is being maxed out. Correct? I also noticed that my CPU was working really hard with while using the controller. I tested my segate and it had a nice graual curve to it which is normal. and the CPU was ~4%. So I wanted to know if there is anything I can do becuase I know I am not getting the full potenical out of the raptors. Do I need to get a seaparate card or somthing of that nature? If so, what would you sugest?
 

m1ldslide1

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Feb 20, 2006
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I've never heard of a RAID controller significantly bogging down the CPU. Also it looks like the test is a sequential read speed test, and in my brief experience with raid0 I noticed very little or nothing in the way of programs or files loading faster. I was left with the impression that raid0 benefits the write function most of all? I might be wrong, but I think that's the general criticism with going raid0 in a gaming rig.
 

stevty2889

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Dec 13, 2003
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Your score looks normal other than the CPU usage, which is definatly very high. Better than my 36gb raptors, and you get a higher average read than my WD 160 3G drives. I get 99.7mb/s average read, 250.4mb/s burst, 13.6ms random access time, but 0% CPU usage. Make sure you have the most recent drivers for the raid controller installed.
 

Amaroque

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Jan 2, 2005
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Personally, I would put them in RAID 1, or just span them. Or you could always set them up as separate drives.

I like the sustained throughput of RAID 0, but it is a big data risk with little to no benefit most of the time.
 

twitchee2

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Dec 29, 2004
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But on a graph, isnt it suposed to start at the burst speed then slowly decline to about half of the burst? I dont really have anything to lose so im not worried about the raid.
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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The speeds weren't that bad. I'm getting 534mb burst / 95mb average on my RAID 0, and 260mb burst / 139mb average on my RAID 5 array... And this is with a PCI-X (not PCIe) 133MHz 64bit RAID card...

What kind of numbers are you looking for?
 

twitchee2

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Dec 29, 2004
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not really looking for anything specific, just thought that something wasnt right. 208 is kinda slow for a raid 0 burst isnt it?

Im also using the onboard nvidia raid controller if that has anything to do with it.
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Originally posted by: twitchee2
But on a graph, isnt it suposed to start at the burst speed then slowly decline to about half of the burst? I dont really have anything to lose so im not worried about the raid.

My RAID 0 array does droop off towards the end, but my RAID 5 array is erratic, but up nearly all the way across. It is rather strange that the graph maintains a tight line.

Are these your primary drives? Can you break the RAID 0 array, and test each drive on its own, no RAID?
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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Oh, and just FYI, most consider IOBench to be a better graph of hd performance. If the game loads quick, no worries! That's my philosophy.
 

stevty2889

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Dec 13, 2003
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Originally posted by: twitchee2
not really looking for anything specific, just thought that something wasnt right. 208 is kinda slow for a raid 0 burst isnt it?

Im also using the onboard nvidia raid controller if that has anything to do with it.

Nah, my 36gb raid-0 raptors got 189 for burst, might be a little low for the 74g raptors, but not abnormaly slow. I still think your high CPU usage is driver related.
 

twitchee2

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Dec 29, 2004
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see I was expecting my burst speed to be more up in the 275 range. Are you using the onboard raid controler?
 

SunSamurai

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Jan 16, 2005
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Originally posted by: Amaroque
Personally, I would put them in RAID 1, or just span them. Or you could always set them up as separate drives.

I like the sustained throughput of RAID 0, but it is a big data risk with little to no benefit most of the time.

This is why you get a cheap 300GB drive for "storage". This is a common practice. No one smart stores important files on a setup with double+ the % of loseing it all. You use the fast drives for games and content creation, and copy your finished or draft work to the data drive as you go make a sammich.

Time management is your friend.
 

jc9970

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Dec 2, 2005
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Originally posted by: twitchee2
see I was expecting my burst speed to be more up in the 275 range. Are you using the onboard raid controler?


Yup, I'm using the onboard controller.
 

jc9970

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Dec 2, 2005
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Originally posted by: aeternitas
Originally posted by: Amaroque
Personally, I would put them in RAID 1, or just span them. Or you could always set them up as separate drives.

I like the sustained throughput of RAID 0, but it is a big data risk with little to no benefit most of the time.

This is why you get a cheap 300GB drive for "storage". This is a common practice. No one smart stores important files on a setup with double+ the % of loseing it all. You use the fast drives for games and content creation, and copy your finished or draft work to the data drive as you go make a sammich.

Time management is your friend.


He can also just purchase an external hd, and copy his important data over, so he has the data on 2 locations, in case one goes down. And he can get an application to do this for him using a schedule.
I personally dont trust a single drive myself. Which is why I just built a fileserver with a Raid 5 away. And, I still perform daily backups to an external device which I take offsite. (Yup, I just take it to work with me every morning).
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

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May 13, 2003
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Originally posted by: jc9970
Originally posted by: aeternitas
Originally posted by: Amaroque
Personally, I would put them in RAID 1, or just span them. Or you could always set them up as separate drives.

I like the sustained throughput of RAID 0, but it is a big data risk with little to no benefit most of the time.

This is why you get a cheap 300GB drive for "storage". This is a common practice. No one smart stores important files on a setup with double+ the % of loseing it all. You use the fast drives for games and content creation, and copy your finished or draft work to the data drive as you go make a sammich.

Time management is your friend.


He can also just purchase an external hd, and copy his important data over, so he has the data on 2 locations, in case one goes down. And he can get an application to do this for him using a schedule.
I personally dont trust a single drive myself. Which is why I just built a fileserver with a Raid 5 away. And, I still perform daily backups to an external device which I take offsite. (Yup, I just take it to work with me every morning).

I agree. After losing everything in my RAID 5 array due to my PSU hiccuping, I don't drink a single setup either. I have RAID 5 for storage, and important stuff is backed up with a hot-swap IDE drive. And even then, I keep critical docs & things on several thumb driver.

Oh, and SyncBack is great for backing up files. I use FolderMatch v.3.4.6 for synching files between USB thumbdrives, the laptop, & the server. And I of course use Norton Ghost for imaging the boot drive.
 

twitchee2

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Dec 29, 2004
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Im not too worryed about losing everything, there is nothing of value on it.

Any have any more ideas why the CPU is so high?
 

trueimage

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Nov 14, 2000
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I'm interested in this as well, I have the same board and I'm getting two raptor 36g's for raid 0
 

the Chase

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Sep 22, 2005
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Is there some way (installation of the raid array) that you are using software Raid instead of the hardware controller? I know this is probably not the case, but just throwing ideas out there.
 

Minerva

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Nov 18, 1999
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High CPU results could be caused by another piece of software hogging resources like that piece o'crap norton internet security, for one example!

It is most definitely best to test on a freshly formatted system with minimum drivers loaded. Use ghost or acronis true image so you can play with stripe sizes and NEVER rely on just one benchmark! Use them all. I agree IO meter is good but often the results don't correlate with DESKTOP SYSTEM performance.