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hard drives & raid - benchmark and compare!


Angry_Games

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@inphared

Game/level load times are dependent upon the weakest link in the chain. If you run RAID-0 on a weak controller, chipset, CPU or less than 1GB RAM, you won't see much improvement.

 

The onboard RAID in the nF4 chipset, A64 processors and at least 1GB of RAM combine to give you significant performance gains in game/level load times.

 

first off, thanks for the reply man.

 

secondly i plan on usin x2 3800 or 4400 (watercooled and heavily oc'd) and ocz platinum eb pc4000 2x1gb (again oc'd) and a dfi expert .. so hopefully i wont have a bottleneck .. is it worth gettin a raid controller or will the onboard one be fine?

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CRC errors are serious and require your immediate attention.

 

Most times they are generated by a bad cable or connector. Verify that the cable ends are fully inserted. Swap the cable for another and test again.

 

Next I would check the controller port. Move the drive to another port and test.

 

The drive could be failing. Try the diagnostics provided by the manufacturer.

 

If you really want to know the status of your drive you will have to spend a few bucks.

 

Spinrite from www.grc.com is just about the best drive tool available. I use it on every drive that comes across my desk. It's worth every penny.

 

Well the drive works good most of the time and windows has no problems(yet). I doubt a problem with the cable would make only certain areas not work, plus it made that sound when it was in the nf2 with a different cable.

 

Whatever happened to scandisk with surface scan:(?

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Well the drive works good most of the time and windows has no problems(yet). I doubt a problem with the cable would make only certain areas not work, plus it made that sound when it was in the nf2 with a different cable.

 

Whatever happened to scandisk with surface scan:(?

Scandisk is still available in Windows XP. Right click on your drive and go to Properties. Click the Tools Tab then go to Error Checking.

 

Surface Scan was crap. That's why they unloaded it.

 

Honestly, I've never seen another program like Spinrite. I use it on all my drives right out of the packaging. You would be surprised at the number of bad spots on shrink wrapped drives.

 

Spinrite will also let you know if your cables are suspect or the controller is wonky.

 

If you value your data, Spinrite is the best and only tool for the job.

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I just setup my raid array, or so i think.

 

I have windows xp on a 36gb raptor with nothing else, and planed on putting programs and files on the raid 0 array.

 

So i setup everything in the bios as well as the nvraid bios.

 

And i installed the 6.70 drivers once i got into windows. drives are detected fine, (as one drive).

 

Question is, i heard someone say that the way i did it was only considered software raid? is this true? Do i need to reinstall windows installing the drivers using the f6 method?

 

the avg. read speed seems kinda weak :(

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Question is, i heard someone say that the way i did it was only considered software raid? is this true? Do i need to reinstall windows installing the drivers using the f6 method?

Since you weren't installing the OS on the drives there's no reason or way to use the F6 option.

 

Setting up the array to be you boot drive is the only time you need the F6 key.

 

You had already installed the RAID drivers when you installed the nVidia chipset drivers. As soon as you built the array in the RAID BIOS, the array was detected by the OS.

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-Offtopic question-

 

Sorry abt this, but i know there are alot of peeps posting here with T7K250 drives. I will be very quick. Every now and again a loudish clicking sound comes from my hard drives. It only 'clicks' once. What do I mean when I say every now and again? Well it can happen once a day, once every few days, the periods are quite far apart.

 

I did some googling but u can imagine typing clicking and hitachi together, well.......

 

Is this normal? Or should i be worried?

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Okay ... here is a comparisson of what difference enabling SATA II does on my system - both tests were ran in same environments / conditions

 

Test 1

 

Refer to this link for pictures - don't wanna double post

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showpost.p...1&postcount=842

 

 

Test 2 - SATA II Enabled

 

Atto benchmark

 

atto%20sata%20II%20enabled.JPG

 

HDTach benchmark

 

hd%20tach%20sata%20II%20enabled.JPG

 

The result is almost the same - except that burst speed has increased....

 

my opinion: running sata II does not make any difference in overall performance

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Are you running a 64 stripe and the default cluster of 4?

 

Those are really low benchamarks. (no offense)

I'd re-do them with a stripe of 16 and the default windows cluster size of 4.

 

 

Are you refering to my post !?

 

If yes, yes...i am running a 64k stripe, and cluster im not sure about - any way i can check/change that ?

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How to change cluster size

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showpost.p...6&postcount=856

 

it's far easier to set your stripe size to 16 and the default Windoze cluster is 4.

You won't have to do diddley sqaut to the cluster that way. :)

That's the 4:1 ratio ExRoadie keeps talking about. Should be good for loading the OS on as they are mostly small files.

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