first RAID setup: too slow! WEIRD

[ariel]

HI!
I've just got 2 seagate 40gb BARACUDA IV disks for a RAID 0 (striping) setup.... I have a KT7-RAID motherboard, and win XP pro...
the problem is that IT SEEMS TO BE TOO SLOW!
I ran Sandra 2002, and my striped disks performed less than the ATA100 30 gb reference drive!

I have 3 partitions...15+20+40 (=75gb more or less)
is that influencing the performance?

THANKS for your help!

 

[ath0mps0]

Your problem is that you are using Barracuda IV drives. This is a known problem - something to do with timing.

I thought a thought, but the thought I thought wasn't the thought I thought I had thought.

 

[FatBurger]

He is right, Barracuda IVs do not perform well in RAID 0. They perform great as single drives, I recommend you either swap them with something else (if that's easy), or just run them outside of RAID.

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[kief]

Well if you need a third opinion, the first two are correct!

Jesus saves, but Mario scores!!!

 

[ariel]

So what disk should I get?
I hope I'll be able to return them...
slow raids suck!
should I get IBM, Maxtor, or WD for a fast RAID 0 ?

thanks again

 

[webninja]

I too just set up my first RAID with the sideraid100 and two IBM 75GXP 40Gig HDD. It's set to RAID 0 and the OS/Apps are on that drive. Odd part is that after the RAID was configured, the drive(s) showed up as one large 80Gig drive - is that normal? Also running sandra, the benchmarks were very low 18k range, while they were at the 26ish range when I was running the drives seperately. Any ideas? help?

thanks

 

[ariel]

I you're using RAID 0 IT IS NORMAL TO ADD THE CAPACITY OF YOUR 2 DRIVES...

 

[webninja]

thanks ariel. I also just ran HD Tach:

Random Access Time: 13.4ms
Read Burst Speed: 35.1mbps
Read Speed Max: 25918kps
Read Speed Min: 11017kps
Read Speed Ave: 19650.9kps

that seems rather slow. Any ideas on how to boost performace?

 

[FatBurger]

Only for people that talk normally, INSTEAD OF YELLING LIKE THEY'RE IN AN AOL CHAT ROOM :tongue:

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[ariel]

ok, I'M SORRY, I DIDN'T MEAN TO YELL!
just kiding

 

[kief]

WOW! That is REALLY slow!! What kinda controller is the sideraid100? Never heard of it b4! One thing is HDTach sucks, and gives inaccurate results sometimes, but even still....

Jesus saves, but Mario scores!!!

 

[poorboy]

Random thought: The Baracudas run slow on hardware(ish) raid, but what about running them as a software raid? Same problem or no?

 

[webninja]

I also tested the drives using sisoft sandra - they're about 50% slower than they were as individual drives. The sideraid is by IWILL - got really good reviews on anandtech. Just don't know why it's running so slow. Could XP have something to do with it?

 

[FatBurger]

The SideRaid is the an Iwill card using a HighPoint chip (same as Abit and Iwill motherboards).

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