Raid 0 Question (Raw Read/Write)

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Seraphic

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Now the read/write speeds I have are from three WD 640GB Blues, but I intend to use six WD 640 Blacks. So do you think the read/write speeds would be about double what they are now when adding three additional drives and using Blacks vs Blues?

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Not quite Double, but it will greatly depend on the controller you are using.

Which raid controller or onboard chipset are you using?
 
Ok then you should be fine.

Just make your RAID0, and then install the Intel Storage Manager and enable write back cache.
 
Yup raid0. In the past I downloaded the Vista/7 64bit Intel raid drivers, but during the OS install screen (where you select install location - then advanced then disk) It says no drivers found. So I just installed without anything. Does it need to be installed while in the OS? Could you please link to the Intel Storage Manager (where to download)? Thanks
 
Thanks for the links. Yes, the six WD 640 Blacks are capture drive and two WD 640 Blues will be OS drive (GIGABYTE SATA2 chip). I noticed these drivers are listed as floppy drivers, I don't have a floppy drive (also, one of them list listed as 32bit and I am using 64bit). So since I am not installing the blacks for OS do I need to use the same drivers from your first link?
 
Ok

Then for the OS (WD Blues) you will need the "floppy"(use term loosely, means windows installer drivers) driver for the SATA2 chip. What mobo do you have? Are you gonna do a Raid1 or RAID0 for the OS? I would do a RAID1 just cause i dont see why anyone would need a 1.2tb Boot partition.

Then for the 6xBlacks use the x64 installer i linked above. Set that up once you are in windows.
 
Motherboard is a GA-X48-DQ6 and plan to use raid0 for OS as well for the space and less stress on controller. Also, for the raid drivers say: "The F6 installation method is not required for Microsoft Windows Vista* or Microsoft Windows 7*". Who the hell has a floppy drive these days? When you said "windows installer drivers" will they work with a USB Flash drive or can they be installed when in Windows?
 
Yea just put the drivers on a flash drive, and when you get to the Drives page there is option to load drivers.

RAID0 and RAID1 put the same amount of stress on the controller...None:) But if you think you need the space RAID0 is fine.
 
Alright, now have those six WD 640 Blacks on the Intel ICH9R as Raid0 128k chunk.
Also, installed Intel Matrix Storage Manager (didn't not see any options in the program and did not increase speeds much).
So below are the results. But why is it not double what it was before? Suggestions on how to increase write speeds?
Something seems off here because I should have at least 550mb/s write, no? :mad:

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Wasn't there a limitation of the onboard disk controler in raid like that when paired with SSD drives. You might be hitting that limit with the 6 WD Blacks too. Something along the line of being limited by the bandwidth of the ICH9R has access to.

My guess is you should use a dedicated raid controller with is own PCI-Express 8x link.
 
Well, I only really have PCI slots and PCIe 1x slots free. As the card I am looking at is PCIe 4x and my video card is PCIe 16x. This motherboard only has two high bandwidth slots, both 16x PCIe. Will hardware vs on-board raid help a lot? I really did not want to have to spend extra on a raid card (I know they cost a lot). Could you suggest a good one that supports six hard-disks and is PCIe 1x? Or is there no point with PCIe 1x?
 
I'm not sure if any good ones are PCIx1, most are x4 or x8. Look at LSI or Areca.
 
Seraphic said:
Well, I only really have PCI slots and PCIe 1x slots free. As the card I am looking at is PCIe 4x and my video card is PCIe 16x. This motherboard only has two high bandwidth slots, both 16x PCIe. Will hardware vs on-board raid help a lot? I really did not want to have to spend extra on a raid card (I know they cost a lot). Could you suggest a good one that supports six hard-disks and is PCIe 1x? Or is there no point with PCIe 1x?
Click to expand...

x1 will be slower even in 2.0 slots than what you have now.

In the Storage manager there is an option to enable write-back cache.
That is about the only thing you can do.

Also 600mb/s is about the limit on ICH9, and that is with cache.
So you are close to that limit.
Unless you have an x4 or x8 slot available that is the best you can prob do.
 
Yeah, here it is again withh write caching enabled.
Much better!!! :D Thanks for the help nitrobass24

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Awesome :D

If you need more speed than that you will need to get a dedicated controller.
You need a real expensive one that does RAID5 and 6, there are some more basic ones that just omit the IOP chip and still do 0/1/10 and have less latency because of not having the IOP.

Currently my recommendation would be the LSI 9211-8i
 
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