Update--Results of Western Digital 1200JB Raid 0

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Unfortunately the Maxtor has only 1 partition (very probably NTFS)and you cannot install the OS on that disk.
So you need to free the maxtor, make at least two partitions (i.e. 5 GB FAT32 and 75 GB NTFS), install the OS on the MAXTOR and then copy the ~40 GB of the old data again.
Consequently you need someone gives you a hdd with at least 40 GB free just to make the data transfer. The "temporary" HDD can be installed in the secondary IDE channel instead of the CD-ROM or, better, the CD-burner.
After the operation you will have the maxtor with the new OS and all data (40 GB + GXP?) and probably you will need one disk more because the MAXTOR will be quite full. So probably you may want to buy a new HDD. Go to MAXTOR. They are not the fastest but probably have the best and more reliable magnetic surface.
 
I am happy, I am not stupid.
Oldbear, I completely agree with you. On A7V333 there is something that limits the RAID performances. I tested yesterday the two IBM 120GXP 120GB on the RAID 0, using both the onboard controller as well as a PCI Promise FASTTRACK 100 TX2. Using the ZD Winbench 99 I observed the performances of the Disk Inspection Test. The transfer rate has a lot of peaks but it seems to be limited at about 75 MB/s instead of a foreseeable ~90÷95 MB/s. But probably the VIA chipset is the guilty, because the same controller and the same disk got me almost 90 MB/s on a A7V.
I also tried two Maxtor D740 60 GB which gave me even worse results (50 MB/s), while connected to the standard IDE channel gave me almost the same numbers, resulting in the absolutely not convenience to make a RAID 0 array with two Maxtor an the A7V333 mother board.
I also tried to disabilitate the Firewire bus, and all devices not used. I wasn't able to change the story. But we are not alone. Go to the VIA Arena forum and you will find several guy crying on the RAID perfomances of the VIA latest chipset.
I am now trying on older controller from Promise, the fasttrack 100, but I believe that nothing will change.
The test I performed with HD Tach gave me even more convincing results. IDE and RAID 0 give the same results !
May be it's time to go to INTEL ?
 
maybe we can set up some parameters of the raid card more efficiently but i don't know which they coulb be?



<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by paulmartin on 06/11/02 12:51 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 
Have you tried the PCI Latency Patch for the Via chipset? <A HREF="http://forums.viahardware.com/messageview.cfm?catid=19&threadid=15478" target="_new">Look at this thread </A> and see if this will help boost your numbers.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/myanandtech.html?member=87962" target="_new">My Rigs </A>
 
I tried it. Very minimal gain < 1%. Please keep the thoughts coming.


<font color=green><b>Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened! 😱
 
Intel is also a great product. I will entertain buying a different chipset than VIA next time.


<font color=green><b>Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened! 😱
 
There aren't parameters to set up but the size of the smallest block. After you have installed the array you cannot change this number which is suggested to be 64 Kb by default (when you set up the array you can choice 16, 32, 64, 128,...kb).
Moreover the Promise controller with the default parameters works very fine with previous VIA chipset as well as INTEL chipset.
 
I don't think you'll be immune with the Intel Chipset. If I recall, the Intel 8xx series chipsets also have a PCI latency problem that affects RAID performance.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/myanandtech.html?member=87962" target="_new">My Rigs </A>
 
just for the record, I thought i would post my results using a single TRUSTY (not!) 40GIG IBM 60GXP hard drive on a Jetway mainboard with KT266A chipset with WIN XP Pro. see what you think!

Random access time = 13ms
read Burst speed = 80 kps (off scale)
read maximum = 41663 kps
minimum read = 9489 kps
average read = 31993.2 kps results using HDTACH
not bad I guess for an unreliable drive!
 
Hi, Oldbear.
I believe I found where the problem is, at least for 80%.
I posted a treat yesterday but nobody answered me. I found USB 2.0 device is able to take about 30% away from the PCI bus. Infact a clean W2K install on my A7V333 plus 4in1 4.37 plus raid patch gave me a score of about 53000 with Sandra 2002. After installing the USB 2.0 drivers I get a score of 39000. Disabling again the USB device I get 52000.
Do you have any idea about ?
Note that I haven't yet installed the SP1 or SP2 and the USB 2.0 drivers are the ver. 2.00.
Today I will test what happens installing SP2 and USB 2.02, but I believe that I will have the same results as I already tried to install such patch in the past without any results. In conlcusion, the USB driver is very probably to way to understand where the problem is. Always considering that the Sandra benchmark shows correct results and that I prefer not to test all benchmarks today available since it is costly as for time as for life of components (all regularly payed).

ASUS A7V333
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
FSB 142 MHz
DDR RAM Corsair XMS3200 512 MB
RAID 0 on Promise Fasttrack 100 TX2 on PCI slot 3
Two IBM 120GXP 120 GB on RAID 0
Primary IDE Master Maxtor D740 60GB
Primary IDE Slave Maxtor D740 60GB
Secondary IDE Master DVD Pioneer 105
Secondary IDE slave Plextor 24x10x40
Sound Blaster Live Player 1024 on PCI slot 2
ISDN modem ASUSCom on PCI slot 5
 
I had seen this results of the USB 2.0 problem in other forums. Now that I have seen your
results I believe it. Perhaps an upgraded future BIOS from Asus could fix it. What do you think?


<b><font color=blue>The shortest distance between two points is under construction. :lol:
 
I hope it is only a driver problem and not a device's architecture that is badly designed. I only know that the first motherboards with USB 2.0 had some problems. I posted the question into VIA tec forum and I will ask to ASUS.
I will take you informed.
 
I saw your post at VIA forum.
I disabled the usb on my Asus A7V266-E with no change. I installed a Promise Fastrak 100 TX4 card with no change in speed but
I do have 4 channels now. Looking at more soulutions. I also sent an E-mail to VIA. Won't hold my breath till they answer.

<b><font color=blue>The shortest distance between two points is under construction. :lol:
 
I believe the problem arises only with the KT333 chipset and with USB 2.0 device. I think that the A7V266-E has only USB 1.1 which does not influences the RAID card performances. As you saw in the VIA forum other guy have disabled the USB 2.0 on the KT333 with good results.
Moreover I also installed a Promise controller on a Gigabyte 7VTXE which has the same chipset of the A7V266-E (KT266A) and without changing anything in the default setting of the mobo I get very good performances from the RAID controller (Sandra scores 45000 with three IBM 75GXP 30GB-IDE1-Master+slave, IDE2-Master)
 
Just try to disable all devices that are not usefull to boot the system (like USB 1.1 and 2.0, Firewire, etc..) and then try to enable again one by one. Test the system with any benchmark utility (I prefer SiSoft Sandra because it is very fast and consequently does not load to much the hdd with consequent heat generation) any time you add one more device and see what device, if any, slow down the computer
 
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