WD Raptors in RAID 0 barely reaching 10mb/s write MAX??? What should i do?

[OverVolt]

Title says most of it!

I have the most recent drivers for my ownboard Promise378 RAID controller, howver they are not signed by microsoft. the read speed is OK, even thought it's a little slow, 99.9mb/s.

They show up as a SCSI array in my device manager... is that normal for SATA drives?

I could use some help! thanks in advance.

 

[Tavoc]

Go read the www.storagereview.com forums. The question you have asked is probably already answered there.

Also, I would use Winbench 99 to properly benchmark RAID arrays.

 

[OverVolt]

Can anyone also answer my questions above?

And thanks, i'll check out storagereview.

 

[Wolfsraider]

Originally posted by: OverVolt
Title says most of it!

I have the most recent drivers for my ownboard Promise378 RAID controller, howver they are not signed by microsoft. the read speed is OK, even thought it's a little slow, 99.9mb/s.

They show up as a SCSI array in my device manager... is that normal for SATA drives?

I could use some help! thanks in advance.

most raid devices show up as scsi,though i am not sure about sata drives.

what stripe size?also have you tried dynamic disks?

another program to try would be atto or sisoft sandra

mike

 

[OverVolt]

1. Dynamic disks is turned on
2. Stripe size is 32kb
3. i used ATTO to benchmark it, Sandra was taking about 20minsuted so i closed it. using winbench99 as soon as i finish downloading it.

I was wondering if i should just RMA the drives or motherboard? The controller is the onboard Promise on my Asus P4C800.

I'm really stumped! this is frustrating, i spend lots o money on these things!

 

[GnomeCop]

hey guys, where do you turn on dynamic disks (or check to see if it is on) in win xp pro?

 

[mechBgon]

In Disk Management, right-click the place where it says "Drive 0" or whatever. 1000 words Here, it says "Basic disk" for both drives, which means they are not Dynamic.

 

[KennyH]

How can I get to "Disk Management" never seen it before either.

 

[KennyH]

Should "Dynamic Disks" be enabled on all RAID arrays?

 

[DaFinn]

Originally posted by: KennyH
How can I get to "Disk Management" never seen it before either.

Right click "My Computer" select "Manage" select "Disk Management" ...

 

[sharkeeper]

Try this program. <-- Right click and save to desktop.


Run this program making sure the correct drive is highlighted and hit the play button. The default value of 50MB should suffice. It will take a few minutes to run. After it completes, you will have something that looks like this.

Usually, these results parallel ATTO although there can be differences. Make sure nothing is running in the background! I did the example above with other programs running which skews the results as seen!

-DAK-

 

[OverVolt]

My benchmarks followed that of ATTO.

Start was 10mb/s READ .3Mb/s WRITE
End was 130.1mb/s READ 10mb/s WRITE

Bleh, whats wrong? i don't notice any slow performance, only in writes sooo weird.

Heard of something like this before?

 

[sharkeeper]

Try copying a file to that drive. It's best to have another disk on an IDE channel, for example to do this.

If you have a way to gauge R/W performance in Linux, you may want to try that as well.

Those writes shouldn't be that low. I don't use dynamic disks and you should not have to either!

-DAK-

 

[DannyBoy]

Originally posted by: OverVolt
My benchmarks followed that of ATTO.

Start was 10mb/s READ .3Mb/s WRITE
End was 130.1mb/s READ 10mb/s WRITE

Bleh, whats wrong? i don't notice any slow performance, only in writes sooo weird.

Heard of something like this before?

Could be a buggy mobo?

After all they are new..

 

[Viper96720]

Maybe the raid controller isn't working right. Someone else posted a problem with low write speeds. Can you try putting the array on the ICH5R instead of the promise one.

 

[Insidious]

I don't if it applies to you, but I am on a Highpoint raid (0) and it seemed to me that my array was slooooow too.

when I ran Sandra (YUK) it suggested that I turn off write checking..... I looked EVERYWHERE to do just that.... never did
find how to do it.

Frankly, my array doesn't seem any faster than a single drive.... but it is bigger and didn't make me buy a new HD... so that's something

-Sid

 

[Viper96720]

I think something is either wrong when you use the extra raid controller. Like one from highpoint or promise etc...
Something could be wrong with the atto benchmark also. Try testing with winbench99 can get it here
http://www.etestinglabs.com/benchmarks/winbench/winbench.asp

 

[mechBgon]

It would be interesting to hear if you are getting 10MB/sec maximum write speed in actual usage, OverVolt. Did you try the suggested test (transfer a large contiguous file from another hard drive onto your array)?

 

[OverVolt]

Winbench only does Write speeds, unless you pay and i'm cheap!

Well, my RAID array is via an onboard Promise controller, if ya know what i mean. SATA
It's not an add in card. Maybe a BIOS udate will help. It's a pain in the ole rear.

Anywho Insidious, is that software or hardware RAID?

Starting to suspect a bug i can't fix! Like buggy hardware/firmware.

EDIT something odd... my 80Gb JB WD drive gets 54Mb/s READ and 57Mb/s WRITE I thought write values were slower? This is so strange.

 

[mechBgon]

Ok, transfer a large file from your 80Gb drive to your RAID0 and time how long it takes. See if it really does 10Mb/sec or if it's closer to 40-50Mb/sec in real life.

 

[Insidious]

Insidious, is that software or hardware RAID?

I assume it is hardware raid... I set up the array in BIOS and the drive is recognized when I boot to a diskette which has no RAID drivers on it.

actually, I have always wondered just exactly what software RAID is.

my MoBo is a KD7-Raid from ABit with onboard HighPoint controller (which the system 'thinks' is a PCI scsi card)

If you can help me understand hardware vs. software RAID, I'd be so appreciative..... I'd give you a :beer:

-Sid

 

[mechBgon]

One flavor of software RAID is to simply tell the operating system (WinNT/2000/XP or Linux) "hey! You in there! See these two drives (or volumes)...? Well, I want them to be a RAID1 (or a RAID0)! Make it so! "

This can be done in Windows Disk Management. Throw a couple of spare drives in, make them Dynamic, then click one volume, hold Ctrl key and click the other, and right-click them for your options. Or that's how I think it goes... don't get much practice with that skill myself

 

[Insidious]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
One flavor of software RAID is to simply tell the operating system (WinNT/2000/XP or Linux) "hey! You in there! See these two drives (or volumes)...? Well, I want them to be a RAID1 (or a RAID0)! Make it so! "

This can be done in Windows Disk Management. Throw a couple of spare drives in, make them Dynamic, then click one volume, hold Ctrl key and click the other, and right-click them for your options. Or that's how I think it goes... don't get much practice with that skill myself

(tee hee)

that was my understanding as well.

(ie: hardware raid here)

Thanks mech!


edit: OH CRAPPERZ....... I almost forgot your :beer: :gift: <---- (gratuity)

 

[Viper96720]

You can use disk bench to time the transfer rate instead of doing it with a stopwatch.
Disk Bench

 

[oustedone]

It's my understanding that dynamic disks are just a spanning of multiple drives and doesn't really give a performance boost. I could be wrong but that's how I percieved it. It's almost impossible to retrieve/recover data from a dynamic disk as well if one of the drives failed. It might be a mute point if your running raid 0 as well cause there is no data redundancy with it either.http://www.windows-help.net/WindowsXP/howto-20.html:beer: