hard drives & raid - benchmark and compare!

[vega27]

short and sweet...

for these 2- or 3-drive RAID0 arrays, will gaming performance be hindered if you split that array into two or more partitions?

 

basically, dunno if i should create a 2- or 3-drive RAID0 boot array with a separate, single drive for data or a 4-drive boot array and divide it into two partitions?

 

thanks in advance! [/thread crashing]

[red930]

short and sweet...

for these 2- or 3-drive RAID0 arrays, will gaming performance be hindered if you split that array into two or more partitions?

 

basically, dunno if i should create a 2- or 3-drive RAID0 boot array with a separate, single drive for data or a 4-drive boot array and divide it into two partitions?

 

thanks in advance! [/thread crashing]

The size of the partition doesn't matter as much as the way the array is setup.

 

Cluster and Stripe size have the biggest impact on performance after the number of drives in the array.

 

Your best bet is to do the testing yourself so you can see the performance on your particular rig. It is not a one size fits all kinda thing.

[Smoken Joe]

It acts like one big hard drive if they are in raid so the same advice for dividing up a large HD goes. Well woth the investment. So far transfer rates are double. I will be looking for more complete benchmarking tools the first pages links are out of date.

[red930]

I will be looking for more complete benchmarking tools the first pages links are out of date.

What pages where? In this thread? Did I miss something?

[Vista]

I can't find ATTO (http://www.angrygames.com/files/eptscsi.exe) either.

[Smoken Joe]

OK the HD tach is working now or so i think but ATTO link hasn't worked in some time.

[THunDA]

Ok most of you know my drives were giving me problem.. I think its fixed now.. We'll see if one of these die on me..lol.. but I canned that fan and got the second raptor back from rma..

 

16k 16k two 36gig raptors in raid0

 

 

 

Seems to be where it should be now.. :nod:

[Vista]

Looks a lot better THunDA, but still not as good as mine or cpuz's: http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showpost.p...2&postcount=120. I'm sort of surprised by the divergence. But your HD Tach shot shows a date of 2005-03-04 at 21:54, so I'm sort of confused by that part.

[mongoled]

Ok just gone through this thread and these seem to me to be the most important points (apart from installing the drivers! more of tht in a bit).

 

1/ Smaller stripe size = Greater Performance in benchmarks (JeffP)

 

2/ 64k stripe, 16k structure (ExRoadie)

 

3/ Keep numbers equally divisable by 4, i.e 4X16, 8X32 and 16X64 (ExRoadie)

 

4/ For data: 'My data store drive uses 64K clusters since the files are 1MB at their smallest' (ExRoadie)

 

5/ To enable 3.0Gb/sec transfers u need to use the hitachi ftool (AngryGames)

 

As for the drivers, man i spent almost 2 days, 2 days trying to work out why i couldnt get a normal array to work!!!! The power of the internet is so useful, so when u dont have it (and i havnt, not at home at least) you pretty much are left to your own accord!!

 

I finally managed to get an array to work by following the slipstream instructions which ExRoadie directed me to, but even then it did not work flawlessly. At the moment the only way i can install raid0 to a bootable array is by using the slipstream cd and using the original floppy. I have to tell the install to use the floppy drivers to overide the drivers ive put onto the slipstream cd. I believe this is being caused by diff driver versions. My friend has sent me the latest nvidia drivers on a disk this morning, so when i get home i will be trying them out to see if i can resolve my issues.

 

Righty, no more thread hogging, ill post my dealing with raid in the thread ive started in this section. I hope some other peeps my take the time to help me out with the problem i will be experiencing, and i will be experiencing problems

 

 

tis the only way to learn!!!

[bob332]

you all are hitting the realworld max for the board, not the max for hdd thoroughput. to go faster you will need to get a server boad with a 64bit pci setup, the 32bit is capped at about ~133MB/s, which if you look back i think i only viewed one hdtach that was over that and that was sataII, but it was only 137MB/s.

 

and, for sheer speed, go with a server board w/ 64pci slots and newest gen 15krpm u320 scsi hdds.

[red930]

bob332 hasn't done the required reading on the nF4 chipset yet!

 

The nVidia SATA II is on the chipset running at PCIe speeds. The SIL controller is hanging off the PCI bus. Big difference!

[bob332]

bob332 hasn't done the required reading on the nF4 chipset yet!

 

The nVidia SATA II is on the chipset running at PCIe speeds. The SIL controller is hanging off the PCI bus. Big difference!

 

that is the case but your speeds are still pretty slow compared to what sataII is supposed to be, especially in a striping enviornment. with 2 sataII 7200rpm drives striped you are still ~133MB/s, but probably not sustained. you will need atlest 3 sataII drives striped to get into anything on a benchmark that actually utilizes the higher speeds.

 

your computer will feel much faster using a 15krpm new gen u320 drive on a u160 card. with transfer speeds approaching 100MB/s sustained and bursts much higher and a total seek time of about 5ms and low cpu overhead, that combo can't be beat in a real world environment. price is a factor and paying ~$220 for a 36GB hdd is quite a bit, but using it as a system with a large pata/sata storage drive makes a nice combo. plus, as you use more drives in a striped array, you keep adding more chances for hdd failure, which does happen.