Crawlerz246 Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 The Intel RAID drivers and their management utility allow you to enable a write-back cache for any RAID arrays set up through the Intel ICH. You can lose recently written data upon power loss or a crash - that's the extent of the danger. It can massively speed up writing to the array in certain circumstances with it enabled. would you mind pointing me to it? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 it may have gotten worse vs what I had before (music 'n such on non-OS drive). Well you're taking what you used to do on two completely separate drives and doing it all on one - it's expected that it'll be slower for that. I would suggest keeping your other two drives (in RAID 1) or figuring out how to set up Matrix RAID on your current drives. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 would you mind pointing me to it? http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3137&DwnldID=11320&keyword=matrix+raid&lang=eng That's the utility - I'm not sure if it comes with the driver or not (I'm pretty sure it does). It's the ~20 MB download in the middle. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
El_Capitan Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 If I only had two HDD's for a system, I personally wouldn't put them in RAID 0. I'd use one for installing the OS and apps, and the other for storage, music, and games. If I only had three HDD's for a system, I'd use 1 for the OS and apps, and the other in RAID 0 or RAID 1 for storage, music, and games. If i only had four HDD's for a system, I'd use them all for RAID 10 (better multi-tasking). I personally use an SSD for my OS and apps, and four HDD's in RAID 10 for everything else. I back-up a ghost image of my SSD every once in a while, and store it on the RAID 10 array (and elsewhere). It would also take 2 disk failures for me to lose my data on the RAID 10 array. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
xPETEZx Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 I would ditch the RAID asap. The performance "boost" is completely useless unless you are moving large files about. (given that you only have 1 RAID array, I dont see where you are moving it to?) Just stick with 2 1TB disks, or run RAID 1. EL_Capitan ... if you ONLY had 4 HDDs? How does RAID 10 give you better multi-tasking btw? Over say a RAID 1 or RAID 0 setup. Or even just a single disk? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
El_Capitan Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 EL_Capitan ... if you ONLY had 4 HDDs? How does RAID 10 give you better multi-tasking btw? Over say a RAID 1 or RAID 0 setup. Or even just a single disk? The reason why SSD's are much better with multi-tasking is because they have quicker access times (like .01ms compared to .18ms of higher in a typical HDD), and higher I/O's. Throughput isn't as important for multi-tasking. Basically, RAID 10 provides better throughput and latency than all other RAID levels except RAID 0 (which wins in throughput). It's best used with I/O-intensive applications such as databases, email servers, and web servers... or if you wanted to listen to music while installing a game and surfing the web. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wevsspot Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 Crawler - For simplicity sake I'll try and keep it simple. If you ARE going to use RAID0 on your twin 1Tb disk drives, short stroking them will be better than partitioning. You will give away a lot of space, but your OS and APP files will remain on the outer edge of both disks (the fastest area of the disk). Short stroking is easy; 1. Determine how much of your usable drive space you're willing to waste 2. Determine how much of your usable drive space you want for your OS and APPS The first two steps above are critical because the smaller your short stroke the better your performance will be. Say I have two 1Tb drives and want to RAID0 and short stroke the drives. In the RAID BIOS I set the usable capacity say to 320, 500 or 640Gb, and then set the strip size to 64k or 128k The remainder of your drive space becomes "invisible" i.e. that physical part of the drives towards the middle and the center of the platter. Now I want to emphasize something here. Short stroking isn't magically going to turn your RAID0 array into an SSD drive, but it will slightly improve your access times, as well as your read and write speeds. Whether you will notice the difference in real world usage is up for debate, but the improvements will definitely be seen when you benchmark your array. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 Basically, RAID 10 provides better throughput and latency than all other RAID levels except RAID 0 (which wins in throughput). RAID 0, 1, and 10 have the ability to perform equally as fast as each other as long as the RAID controller load balances properly (for reads anyway). I know the Intel RAID controller splits reads when reading from a RAID 1 array at the very least. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
El_Capitan Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 RAID 0, 1, and 10 have the ability to perform equally as fast as each other as long as the RAID controller load balances properly (for reads anyway). I know the Intel RAID controller splits reads when reading from a RAID 1 array at the very least. All RAID 10 is, is two pairs of disks in RAID 1 that are in RAID 0. RAID 0 doesn't get the mirroring, and RAID 1 doesn't get the striping, but in RAID 10, you get a striping of mirrors. You'll never get better overall performance in RAID 0 or RAID 1 than in RAID 10 using the same amount of disks. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 (edited) All RAID 10 is, is two pairs of disks in RAID 1 that are in RAID 0. RAID 0 doesn't get the mirroring, and RAID 1 doesn't get the striping, but in RAID 10, you get a striping of mirrors. You'll never get better overall performance in RAID 0 or RAID 1 than in RAID 10 using the same amount of disks. I know what RAID 10 is (and IIRC generally it's a RAID 0 array that is mirrored, not the other way around, though the naming conventions make it very confusing (0+1, 1+0, 10, etc)). What I was saying is that for reads - it doesn't matter which RAID level you choose between 0, 1, and 10 if the controller distributes the reads intelligently. The Intel controller does do this so your read performance is essentially governed by the number of disks you have. Edited March 17, 2011 by Waco Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
El_Capitan Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 But the issue isn't about reads, it's multi-tasking. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 But the issue isn't about reads, it's multi-tasking. No RAID array is going to fix that though - you can only do so much when you're hitting the disk with multiple reads/writes from various programs. Faster reads and/or writes can help a little though. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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