just setup raid and HDTune..

[Gaiden133]

Wow

I'm worried.. just ran HD Tune on my 150GB Raptors in RAID-0.

I made sure the proper RAID Drivers are installed and verified in Device Manager.

Pics:

VS

Canislup's pic

What am I doing wrong ?

BTW: Installing Vista x64 updates now.. though didn't think they would affect my HD Tune results ?

 

[Syntax Error]

One big difference in hardware would be that the second picture is using an Areca hardware RAID controller while you're using onboard FakeRAID based off of Intel ICH9R software-based RAID.

Though for RAID0 there shouldn't that much of a discrepancy, but I am letting it be known that hardware RAID will almost always beat software RAID, especially in RAID5.

Check to see if you have the most up-to-date drivers for the Intel RAID drivers, and if your BIOS has any updates regarding RAID functions.

Also, if this RAID0 array is functioning as a boot drive, then it's good practice to set RAID, enable AHCI if possible and reinstall Windows that way for best performance, at least in my experience.

 

[Gaiden133]

One big difference in hardware would be that the second picture is using an Areca hardware RAID controller while you're using onboard FakeRAID based off of Intel ICH9R software-based RAID.

Though for RAID0 there shouldn't that much of a discrepancy, but I am letting it be known that hardware RAID will almost always beat software RAID, especially in RAID5.

Check to see if you have the most up-to-date drivers for the Intel RAID drivers, and if your BIOS has any updates regarding RAID functions.

Also, if this RAID0 array is functioning as a boot drive, then it's good practice to set RAID, enable AHCI if possible and reinstall Windows that way for best performance, at least in my experience.

Gotcha, I figured his was hardware RAID from the look of things.

Is there supposed to be this much of a discrepancy though? from access times, burst rate, and transfer rates?

How do I check for AHCI enabled? BIOS ?

Also, I did a fresh install of vista x64. Installed the ICH8R/ICH9R SATA RAID Controller driver (as said in my Device Manager under Storage Controllers).

 

[Gorankar]

quite honestly, with a swing like that it looks as though something else is accessing the disk at the same time you are running your benchmarks.

The only times I have had HD tune show me something like what you had was when I left a torrent going or when I ran it on a fresh boot and superfetch was not yet done caching stuff to ram from the hd. The fresh install of Vista may also have something to do with it. Vista is prolly not done optimizing your disk so there is prolly still a lot of disk access going on in that regard.

The on board raid of your P35 will not look as good as Canislup's run but they should not be that far off from it. Not in a 2 disk raid 0 array anyway.

 

[Gaiden133]

quite honestly, with a swing like that it looks as though something else is accessing the disk at the same time you are running your benchmarks.

The only times I have had HD tune show me something like what you had was when I left a torrent going or when I ran it on a fresh boot and superfetch was not yet done caching stuff to ram from the hd. The fresh install of Vista may also have something to do with it. Vista is prolly not done optimizing your disk so there is prolly still a lot of disk access going on in that regard.

The on board raid of your P35 will not look as good as Canislup's run but they should not be that far off from it. Not in a 2 disk raid 0 array anyway.

Thanks for the comments, I installed all the updates, let my computer rest for a bit, then logged in, let it chill. Then ran HD Tune.

Overall.. much better. Everything seems more in line and where it should be.

It's about 10-20% less than the one in Canislup's run, but that's expected from hardware vs software raid. I did want to know though, is the burst rate normal? does hardware raid really give near 5x the burst rate? and for that matter, is burst rate even important ?

 

[nitrobass24]

That higher burst rate can be due to write caching....dedicated raid cards have a lot of memory onboard comparitive to HDD's usually 128-512mb.

 

[[LYL]Homer]

BTW: Installing Vista x64 updates now.. though didn't think they would affect my HD Tune results ?

I think everyone missed this from the OP - installing Windows Updates while running HDTune will definitely effect your scores!