My 1st HD benchmark w/ dual Velociraptors Raid 0

huntrik

n00b
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May 8, 2008
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I just finished setting up my machine with 2 300g Velociraptors in Raid 0. I used a program call Disk Bench. It can be found here.

I'm really up on what the standard speed should be, but take a look at the results and form your own opinion. I think it's pretty fast.

Here is a cut and paste from the program:

Starting Create File Bench...

Created file: C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\DiskBench1.bin
Size: 1048576000 bytes
Time: 3361 ms
Transfer Rate: 297.530 MB/s

Create File Bench ended


That was with a block size of 2mb*500 blocks = 1gb

Huntrik

"The Rig"
Antec 900
Tagan 900w PSU
E8400 @ 3.25ghz
Abit IP35 Pro mobo
G.Skill DDR1000 x 8gb
2 WD Velociraptors - RAID 0
1 WD 640gb
MSI NX8800GTS OC 512
Vista Ultimate x64
 
:eek:

That's pretty dang fast!

You should post some HDTach & HD Tune screenshots.
 
Im guessing it just creates a 1GB file and then reads it back (and the read is the speed).

DAMN. 300MB/s sustained read, thats blazing.
 
This depresses me. I just bought 2 Raptor X 150 GB HD for Raid 0 (intel matrix software) and performance is well under what I expected...
 
pug71 said:
Use hardware RAID instead.

Any suggestions on a hardware card using my current setup? I am currently using the Intel RAID s/w that came with my Abit IP35 Pro. I would like to stay under $500.

Thanks,
Huntrik
 
You have a nice budget for a card. Take a look at the areca 1210. great card. Also check out adaptecs new offerings and 3ware.

surf over too 2cpu on the storage section of the forums and check out the threads on RAID controllers. Alot of useful info.
 
I want a Velociraptor really bad, but will have to wait a while after racking up some bills.
 
[LYL]Homer;1032554645 said:
Patiently waiting.... :eek:


I will get some up when I get home from work. I tried HDTach last night...doesn't work with Vista. I tried to put it in XP compat. mode only for it to tell me that I needed to be the administrator. I was way too tired to mess with that nonsense. I d/l'ed HDTune trial version, but didn't running it because I was in the process on formatting my 640g drive and wasn't sure if that would effect my results.


Hunt
 
You must run HD tach as "administrator" right click exe file, properties, run as administartor on the menu.
It will work then.
 
Now in all seriousness, do you get used to the speed of such an array? I have 1 'old' raptor, and 90% of the time my system's bottleneck is the hard drive, as evidenced by low RAM usage, low CPU usage, and the stupid disk access light on (as well as the chatter of the drive) whenever my system fails to respond quickly enough. I'm tired of opening three apps at once to check on something and having to bring my day to a screeching halt for 20-40 interminable seconds (which feels like 20 minutes when you just want to get something done).

It seems like whenever I step up the system speed I still end up getting ticked at waiting for things to happen as I 'adjust' to it. I'm totally up for shelling out the money for a velociraptor array IF it will make every day of my working life significantly less annoying. I'm not quite at the point where I am willing to pay SSD prices though.
 
Well, I am wondering how you can get 297.530 MB/s from *two* harddisks with a *maximum* sustained data rate of about 125MB/s each? There must have been some serious data caching involved. Why does everybody want to be a "tester" these days?
 
I can't help but wonder how 7 500GB drives in raid zero would do compared to the two raptors. Measuring things like game load times, unzipping files (large and small), copying say 5 GB worth of files (all mp3's or a 1GB vobs).

The 7 drives wouldin't be able to touch the random access times, but as far as bandwidth is concerned... I would like to see the real world results.
 
Yeah the numbers seem a bit high. Does your RAID controller use write-back cache huntrik? My single Seagate 7200.10 750 GB drive gets 145.4 MB/s using the same settings as you when I have write-back cache enabled, but only 91.8 MB/s with the cache disabled. This is on an Adaptec 5805 with 512 MiB cache.

By the way for those who were wondering, this benchmark (create file) just writes a file to the disk, so write-back cache obviously has a huge impact unless the file size is much larger than the cache size.
 
how fast is that drive on it's own w/out raid on the same controller?
 
I am hoping to have some more results today. I had a complete network break down last night (2 hours on the phone with Linksys) only to find out that my Linksys modem/router had taken a sh*t. Thanks to Bestbuy and about $400 I'm back up with an 802.11n network and haulin' arse. I'm in the process of downloading a couple of really large files, but when that is complete I will start putting some results and screenies together.


Hunt
 
Here are just a couple of quick results off the Disk Bench:

"Create a File" x 3 tests in a row.

Starting Create File Bench...

Created file: C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\DiskBench1.bin
Size: 1048576000 bytes
Time: 4727 ms
Transfer Rate: 211.551 MB/s

Create File Bench ended

Starting Create File Bench...

Created file: C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\DiskBench1.bin
Size: 1048576000 bytes
Time: 3881 ms
Transfer Rate: 257.666 MB/s

Create File Bench ended

Starting Create File Bench...

Created file: C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\DiskBench1.bin
Size: 1048576000 bytes
Time: 4177 ms
Transfer Rate: 239.406 MB/s

Create File Bench ended

"Read File" x 2 tests in a row

Read File Bench started...

Read file: C:\Users\Huntrik\Documents\Backup File\Computer\Data\jj.mpg
Size: 142090240 bytes
Time: 888 ms
Transfer Rate: 152.599 MB/s

Read File Bench ended

Read File Bench started...

Read file: C:\Users\Huntrik\Documents\Backup File\Computer\Data\jj.mpg
Size: 142090240 bytes
Time: 110 ms
Transfer Rate: 1231.889 MB/s

Read File Bench ended

"Create a Batch File" 1st test was 100mb 2nd was 200mb

Starting Batch Create File Bench...

100 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 104857600 bytes; 357 ms; 280.112 MB/s
104 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 109051904 bytes; 362 ms; 287.293 MB/s
108 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 113246208 bytes; 356 ms; 303.371 MB/s
112 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 117440512 bytes; 379 ms; 295.515 MB/s
116 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 121634816 bytes; 361 ms; 321.330 MB/s
120 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 125829120 bytes; 401 ms; 299.252 MB/s
124 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 130023424 bytes; 400 ms; 310.000 MB/s
128 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 134217728 bytes; 436 ms; 293.578 MB/s
132 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 138412032 bytes; 475 ms; 277.895 MB/s
136 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 142606336 bytes; 449 ms; 302.895 MB/s

Create Batch File Bench ended

Starting Batch Create File Bench...

200 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 209715200 bytes; 735 ms; 272.109 MB/s
204 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 213909504 bytes; 717 ms; 284.519 MB/s
208 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 218103808 bytes; 699 ms; 297.568 MB/s
212 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 222298112 bytes; 704 ms; 301.136 MB/s
216 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 226492416 bytes; 789 ms; 273.764 MB/s
220 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 230686720 bytes; 726 ms; 303.030 MB/s
224 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 234881024 bytes; 726 ms; 308.540 MB/s
228 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 239075328 bytes; 737 ms; 309.362 MB/s
232 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 243269632 bytes; 769 ms; 301.691 MB/s
236 MB; C:\Users\Huntrik\Desktop\test; 247463936 bytes; 819 ms; 288.156 MB/s

Create Batch File Bench ended

Hunt
 
297mb/s ?? i've been seeing some other reviews and most use HD Tach and they cant get over 200mb/s average running 2 of them on raid 0
 
297mb/s ?? i've been seeing some other reviews and most use HD Tach and they cant get over 200mb/s average running 2 of them on raid 0
Which is why we are all waiting for HD Tach and HD Tune screenshots.
 
297 MB/s is way inflated/inaccurate. More like 170-190MB/s on SW raid

....and thats on HDTach.
 
First, by itself: HD Tune max 119.8MB/s 6.2ms.
Second, in RAID0 Intel ICH9R, default (128KB?) stripe: HD Tune max "peak" 199.8MB/s 6.5ms.

UPDATE:
Still playing around with BIOS settings but same stripe size. Better, but still the "typical" is around 175MB/s versus around 125MB/s "typical" tapering down to about 95MB/s for a single drive.



Compared to Brahmzy (thanks!) whose getting typical 225MB/s (about what I would expect), a little disappointing. Mine is also Vista (but 32-bit) and P35 chipset (Gigabyte) but with E6750 and 800MHz CAS4 memory (a little slower). Not short-stroked, these are 2 80GB VelociRaptors. Well, at least some interesting data points.

I won't complain about the access time on these VelociRaptors, though! Also have kind of a weird, high-frequency sound which can get annoying. Can't get the full-size attachments to work, though.
 
Use someplace like Imageshack.com or Imagevenue.com and then copy and paste the links they provide you into your post. That lets you add images, and no this forum doesn't support attachments.

Based on the info in that post, I'd say there's something like seriously wrong with your setup - there's just no way 2 Velociraptors in RAID 0 are going to barely crank out that low speed. Something is just wrong...
 
Here's my 2 VR300's in RAID0 - shortstroked. Just for a comparison. I think they "RAID0" very well. The 2 are slightly faster than my old 3x WD740ADFD's in RAID0. Access times are way faster.
2vr300raid0hdtune02rt2.png
 
66 GB - RAID0 Benchmark??? Fair assessment? I think not. Your burst is whack even.

The drives are short stroked for the system volume to keep them as fast as possible: the first 33GB of each drive is used for the system volume, so that's about as fast as it'll get. Burst rates can change from test to test, sooo... that doesn't mean much anyway. Burst is from the drive's cache so it'll be fast enough, what matters is random access time and the sustained reads, and 5.2 ms average access time and roughly 225MB/s sustained reads...

There's absolutely nothing "whack" about any of it. Show me any other physical hard drives (aside from SCSI/SAS/Fiber Channel) that can do 225MB/s sustained reads in a 2x drive RAID 0 and then you'll actually have something useful to say.
 
The drives are short stroked for the system volume to keep them as fast as possible: the first 33GB of each drive is used for the system volume, so that's about as fast as it'll get. Burst rates can change from test to test, sooo... that doesn't mean much anyway. Burst is from the drive's cache so it'll be fast enough, what matters is random access time and the sustained reads, and 5.2 ms average access time and roughly 225MB/s sustained reads...

There's absolutely nothing "whack" about any of it. Show me any other physical hard drives (aside from SCSI/SAS/Fiber Channel) that can do 225MB/s sustained reads in a 2x drive RAID 0 and then you'll actually have something useful to say.

I am not knocking the drives but if you run a normal benchmark of the full drives you will get an access time of between 7.1ms and 7.6ms. I use VelociRaptors in all my systems and have my benchmarks posted on here of 4 VelociRaptors on an adaptec 5405 SAS controller.
 
Hence the whole reason of short stroking them for the best possible performance on the system partition.
 
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