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My New Raptor 2

D

DruSi3r

Gawd
Joined
Nov 4, 2002
Messages
937
I love it, just installed it yesterday, replacing my wd 80gig SE. Windows xp loaded in 11.5 mins (including restarts and a few driver not signed errors((since I was unsing onboard raid controller))). My sandra benches went from 29 mb/sec to 56 mb/sec. Everything is faster. UT2003 load times, program installs, files transfers, waking up the harddrive this morning, startups, everything. Dont believe the people who dont have one, get one for your self and see. I wonder what 2 would be like???
 
I have 2 raptors in SATA raid 0 and it took 40 minutes to install Windows XP last night. I'm still installing from the CD. Do you guys get killer install speeds by copying the CD to the HD before running the install program or what?

I'm also pretty underwhelmed by my performance. I am getting 110mb/s scores in sandra and my other sandra benches are top notch, but the system just doesn't "feel" as fast as I want it to. For example, it takes a few rotations of the bar in the XP loading screen to go, rather than 1 or less than 1.

Asus P4C800E-Deluxe MB
Running in SATA RAID 0 16k stripe on the ICH5R controller
Radeon 9800SE
P4 3.0c (which wont overclock worth shit, btw, doesn't boot 235fsb! Its not my ram, I have corsair pc4400 which is good to 275fsb)
All settings nominal, Sandra benches are nice and high for processor and memory.

Is my 16k stripe too small?
 
Don't forget raid 0 increases access time significantly, instead of 8 ms you'll probably get 12-16, Not too sure, but that would have an effect on load times if you were dealing wiht loading lots of small dll's and what not on startup.
 
I would imagine everything ive read here is true but the guys at the local computer store (had to buy a 90 deg sata cable) said raid 0 is mirror and raid one is striping. Raid 0 is for data redunducy and 1 is for increased performance. Someone double check them. I though 0 was striped. Anyways, im happy with my new drive.
Yule Bryner post a screen of your sandra benchies with the details showing. I can do the same if u want. And no i loaded XP right from the cd and even had to install 3rd party raid during the install (adding some time).
 
DruSi3r said:
I would imagine everything ive read here is true but the guys at the local computer store (had to buy a 90 deg sata cable) said raid 0 is mirror and raid one is striping. Raid 0 is for data redunducy and 1 is for increased performance. Someone double check them. I though 0 was striped. Anyways, im happy with my new drive.
Yule Bryner post a screen of your sandra benchies with the details showing. I can do the same if u want. And no i loaded XP right from the cd and even had to install 3rd party raid during the install (adding some time).
Click to expand...
I'm at work now, the home computer is the one with the Raptors. I'll post some benches when I get home.
BTW the raid definition is wrong; raid 0 is stripe raid 1 is mirror; raid 0 is fast raid 1 is slow.
 
DruSi3r said:
I would imagine everything ive read here is true but the guys at the local computer store (had to buy a 90 deg sata cable) said raid 0 is mirror and raid one is striping. Raid 0 is for data redunducy and 1 is for increased performance. Someone double check them. I though 0 was striped.
Click to expand...

You're right, they are backwards.
 
you are correct, they (the "computer guys") are wrong. A good read about the plus/minus of raid 0/1. Are there any other drive benchmarks that might be of use? Links plz
 
raid 1 can acutally help with multiple access of different files, as it will still read from both drives seperately, which i read somewhere, could be wrong though. I know write performance sucks big time for raid 1.
 
Yule Bryner said:
I have 2 raptors in SATA raid 0 and it took 40 minutes to install Windows XP last night. I'm still installing from the CD. Do you guys get killer install speeds by copying the CD to the HD before running the install program or what?
Click to expand...


i installed winxp off the cd in 15 minutes on my computer... see sig... i did it twice within a week.. and it took 15 minutes both times...

now formatting my 160 gig drive is a different story...
 
I takes me a long time to install 2000 on my current non-raptor non-raided machine with molex connectors that dislike hdd power connections... :(


I heard RAID-1 can help accessing multiple files too but I think that is something dependant on the RAID controller because I can't find much on the web that supports it. My best guess to why it isn't true and why I can't find anything supporting it, is that Windows doesn't realize it can do multiple reads, since PATA and stuff aren't like SATA or SCSI with the command queing things... In theory it should at least be able to have faster access times -- but nothing I see supports that... :confused:

But I understand why access times on RAID-0 can suck so badly -- both disks have to be able to read the data to come out with the whole message, and the platters might be at different positions.

And from the sticky here, check this website out for good benchmarks, ranked worst to best -- http://www.storagereview.com/php/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Benchmarks
 
Would it matter that I was installing it from a 32x CDRW drive and that the computer was on its side during the installation?
 
I have similar install times on my 36.7 GB raptors in Raid 0.
I love them for everything except the SATA aspect of overclocking. Other than that, they are lightning fast, and plenty of storage for me (Most of my stuff is networked on a fileserver)

I also noticed mine stay pleasingly lukewarm, they are never scalding like I have read some review sites say.
 
what's the sata aspect of overclocking?
I probably won't be doing much OCing with my opterons, but I haven't heard anything about SATA and overclocking before.
 
I have noticed my SATA are much more prone to severe windows corruption (read: crippling the OS) that my PATA drives. Far far worse. Thankfully, everything if offloaded onto a fileserver.
 
nweibley do u have any information (other than personal experience) to back this up...Ive had no problems. Im not sure but would using a pci/agp lock avoid any problems?
 
[ot]
oh yeah? well I can run Linux in 0 minutes without installing!
[/ot]
windows takes about 30 minutes to install on my system :(
just one disk though.

Raid0 should not increase latencies. an intelligent controller would tell both disks to seek at the same time. this means they both get to the data at the same time, in about the same time as one drive.

Raid1 can help read speeds, this is called "raid 1.5" by my motherboard company (dfi) but it's not manufacturer specific, it's just smart thinking. linux's software raid does this iirc.
 
anyone know why (or experienced) sandra is giving me an error on the HD bench stating the test file is too fragmented, defrag fully. It was doing it when testing my 120Gig yesterday (i was able to run it on the raptor) now today its giving the error on the raptor and letting it run on the 120?? Scores are where they should be (when it runs). and yes both drives were defraged last night. SHoudl i reinstall?

Edit, could it have anything to do with the swap file? I removed the swap from the raptor and set an 786mb-786mb swap on the 120. I heard it was best to put the swap on the non-OS drive; true?
 
Raid 0 will always increase latency, weather you have an intelligent controller or not. The data on the drives will never be in the same rotation as the other drive, 1 may be 6 ms out while the other is 8, then you have the overhead of combining the data into a single stream as it heads out to the rest of the system.
 
sisoft sandra hard disk benchmarks are not very reliable. i use hdtach to benchmark my drives. i get about 115mb/s with my 2 hitachi's running in raid 0
 
Actually, HDTach isn't all that reliable with RAID 0 setups. The current released, non-beta version (2.70) of HDTach - and previous versions of that program, as well - have a bug that will report the transfer rate graph as having huge up-and-down cyclic swings in the curve - in fact, some RAID 0 setups will vary widely in the HDTach-reported transfer rate between under 20 MB/sec to more than 70 MB/sec, with a lot more than just one big valley all over the graph. Normally, the transfer rate graph should be sloping downwards in a rather gentle slope.

On the other hand, acascianelli, you've probably used the new (currently beta) version 3.00 of HDTach in order to get your results. However, that version may still have a few minor bugs to work out.

acascianelli said:
sisoft sandra hard disk benchmarks are not very reliable. i use hdtach to benchmark my drives. i get about 115mb/s with my 2 hitachi's running in raid 0
Click to expand...
 
E4g1e said:
Actually, HDTach isn't all that reliable with RAID 0 setups. The current released, non-beta version (2.70) of HDTach - and previous versions of that program, as well - have a bug that will report the transfer rate graph as having huge up-and-down cyclic swings in the curve - in fact, some RAID 0 setups will vary widely in the HDTach-reported transfer rate between under 20 MB/sec to more than 70 MB/sec, with a lot more than just one big valley all over the graph. Normally, the transfer rate graph should be sloping downwards in a rather gentle slope.

On the other hand, acascianelli, you've probably used the new (currently beta) version 3.00 of HDTach in order to get your results. However, that version may still have a few minor bugs to work out.
Click to expand...

nope im think i must be using v2.7 cause my graphs has huge valleys and doesnt look ANYTHING like anybody elses hdtach screens :(
 
Yes, those up-and-down cyclic swings occur when the read heads hit the RAID stripes. And the current 2.70 version of HDTach cannot read those stripes correctly. Hence, the multiple valleys in the cyclic graph.

acascianelli said:
nope im think i must be using v2.7 cause my graphs has huge valleys and doesnt look ANYTHING like anybody elses hdtach screens :(
Click to expand...
 
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