Help with a RAID0 set-up

O

Old Hippie

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 31, 2005
Messages
6,013
I have installed 2 Crucial 256GB C300 drives on an LSI 9240-4i SATA6 Gb/s expansion card and the results are rather disappointing.

Here's the card with a single drive....
asssdbenchatac300ctfdda.png


And this is the card with two drives in RAID0....


I'm a novice with this card but as you can see the 4K and 4K-64Thrd have been crippled. :(

The card would only let me do a 64k stripe and I wanted to do 128k but I doubt that's the problem.

I'm pretty much totally lost. I'm not even sure if I set this card up correctly but I finally did get an Acronis image installed.

When I enter this MegaRaid storage manager I hafta log in? Is that normal?

I think I need to enable some kinda write caching but w7's device manager won't do it and I can't get the card to do it either.

I have all kinda processor errors in the device manager for my i7 CPU. What's that all about?



Looks like I need this CacheCade caching?

Can I enable the advanced firmware on this card? I thought I looked before and I couldn't.

Any help would be appreciated.

I'm pretty much lost
 
Why are you disappointed? The sequential read/write speeds are almost double what the originals are. Are you needing the additional speed for HD video content creation or something?

As for the CPU errors, it looks like you may need to update the BIOS on your mobo if it doesn't fully support the CPU, just a possibility.
Did you update the firmware on the RAID card?
 
Red Falcon said:
Why are you disappointed? The sequential read/write speeds are almost double what the originals are.
Click to expand...

Yes, but everything else is worse. I don't have a lot to suggest other than that the 64k stripe is not likely the issue. I am runing 32k on mine and it runs very similar to what 128k did. I am running onboard Intel RAID though. Do you have the latest RAID drivers? Write caching might help but wouldn't account for the reduction in read speeds.
 
Definitely something strange going on there. I've found that max sequential speed to be the least useful numbers. 4k/4k-64Thrd are quite important.
 
Strange how AS SSD shows the capacity as 237GB in your RAID 0 setup. AS SSD shows the combined capacity of both drives with my RAID 0 setup
 
Why are you disappointed? The sequential read/write speeds are almost double what the originals are.
Click to expand...
All speeds should be increased especially the important 4K & 4K64Thrd.

I removed the card and installed them on my ICH10.

This is more like what it's supposed to be but it's only SATA3 Gb/s and caps sequential speeds.




Strange how AS SSD shows the capacity as 237GB in your RAID 0 setup. AS SSD shows the combined capacity of both drives with my RAID 0 setup
Click to expand...

I agree. I'm pretty sure I have the card set-up correctly.

I've removed the card for now pending further investigation and will be contacting LSI.
 
IOps is limited on RAID SoCs; only the latest and best controllers can keep up with the very high IOps SSDs are capable of. A single Intel SSD is capable of capping an Areca 500MHz IOP (IOP333) in terms of IOps (not throughput).

So hardware RAID is often limited in the IOps they can squeeze out. While your host is capable of many times the performance that of a hardware RAID card. FakeRAID on SSDs for this reason often overtakes Hardware RAID in random IOps performance; lower latency too.
 
only the latest and best controllers can keep up with the very high IOps SSDs are capable of.
Click to expand...

I understand but I think it's pretty sad when a 250.00 RAID card is bettered by an integrated chipset.

I think I had the LSI 9240-4i MegaRaid card figured correctly but I had never used one before and it took me a coupla hours to figure out the separate WebBIOS stuff, adding discs to the array to make a virtual drive, and saving the virtual drive.

The set-up screen wouldn't allow me to use many options because I think they're advanced options that cost extra money even though I don't believe my card can be "upgraded".

Maybe I buggered the install but I'm thinking if this card had let me use some of the advanced options it would perform much better.
 
Wait a minute.

While I was going thru all the LSI stuff I have (Driver & Firmware Updates, Adobe install/operating manuals) I came across something called an "LSI Tool" that looks like it maybe able to unlock some of the optional RAID settings on this card.

I've seen some of these cards cost 150.00 to "unlock" the optional BIOS settings.

Are any of you guys familiar with LSI cards and this "unlocking robbery"?

Any place I can read about it?
 
You said you installed an image, this makes sense given the 238/237gb size reported. What if the partition on LSI is stretched out to the full capacity of the drives? Meaning is the way it is writing the image only including half the chips on the SSD's? This seems odd that an image would be applied this way but could explain the gimped scores.

How about a clean install?
 
[LYL]Homer;1037070597 said:
You said you installed an image, this makes sense given the 238/237gb size reported. What if the partition on LSI is stretched out to the full capacity of the drives? Meaning is the way it is writing the image only including half the chips on the SSD's? This seems odd that an image would be applied this way but could explain the gimped scores.

How about a clean install?
Click to expand...

I see what you're saying but doubt that's the case.

The sequential read and write stats reflect a normal speed for two 266GB drives on a SATA6Gb/s connection.

I have a feeling what's gimping these 4K speeds are the different features I can't get enabled on the card.

I did run across something in my LSI downloads called an "LSI Tool" that looks to be something I can use to enable those features.

The fresh install had crossed my mind just to see if the scores improved any but I'm tired of messing with it for now.

I had to remove the card to re-enable my Intel RAID set-up and I'm looking thru the LSI operating manuals.

Sometimes I just get a little too involved and I have to step back and take a break to clear my head. :)

I appreciate all the feedback!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top