D875PBZ & RAID 0
 

I haven't quite seen this issue addressed in my Google search and hope
someone can give me some clues.

I've finally built my own computer around the Intel D875PBZ motherboard and
have two Western Digital Raptor SATA drives (36.7 GB each) in a RAID 0 (128
kB, striped) array plugged directly into the motherboard. Intel Application
Accelerator RAID edition v3.5. Intel BIOS P18.

Also have a 120 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 for data storage running as
master on the primary IDE controller. It runs UDMA Mode 5.

Don't laugh, but about the only thing I have to test drive speed is EZ CD
Creator. EZCD has this System Test tool that says it tests the read speed of
system drives. It shows the following:

Maxtor - 54 MB/sec read rate.
Raptor - 48 MB/sec read rate.

I would have thought that the RAID'ed Raptors would come in significantly
higher than the Maxtor.

Am I expecting too much from the array? Is there a better performance test
tool I could use?

Thanks for any comments.

Lance
*****

Lance wrote:
I haven't quite seen this issue addressed in my Google search and hope
someone can give me some clues.

I've finally built my own computer around the Intel D875PBZ
motherboard and have two Western Digital Raptor SATA drives (36.7 GB
each) in a RAID 0 (128 kB, striped) array plugged directly into the
motherboard. Intel Application Accelerator RAID edition v3.5. Intel
BIOS P18.

Sorry, forgot some other information:

No obvious errors in Device Manager, IAA, WinXP event log.
WinXP SP1a with all updates
2x256MB matched DDR400
2.6 GHz P4 w/ HT

Lance wrote:
I haven't quite seen this issue addressed in my Google search and hope
someone can give me some clues.

I've finally built my own computer around the Intel D875PBZ
motherboard and have two Western Digital Raptor SATA drives (WD360GD, 36.7
GB
each) in a RAID 0 (128 kB, striped) array plugged directly into the
motherboard. Intel Application Accelerator RAID edition v3.5. Intel
BIOS P18.

Also have a 120 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 (6Y120P0) for data storage
running
as master on the primary IDE controller. It runs UDMA Mode 5.

Don't laugh, but about the only thing I have to test drive speed is
EZ CD Creator. EZCD has this System Test tool that says it tests the
read speed of system drives. It shows the following:

Maxtor - 54 MB/sec read rate.
Raptor - 48 MB/sec read rate.

I would have thought that the RAID'ed Raptors would come in
significantly higher than the Maxtor.

Am I expecting too much from the array? Is there a better performance
test tool I could use?

OK, I'm going to answer my own question. The EZCD Creator System Test isn't
accurate for my purpose. I wound up using HD_Speed from
http://www.steelbytes.com/. This utility simply reads or writes various
sized blocks of data to or from the hard disk and calculates a data transfer
rate. Block size can be "Auto" or user selectable from 4kB to 16MB. There is
also an option for testing "burst rate" which I assume takes advantage of
the disk buffer.

The read data rate for the UDMA 5 drive starts out at 30MB/sec @ 4kB block
size, then increases to 57 MB/sec @ 16kB block and remains constant for
bigger block sizes. Burst rate peaks at around 89 MB/sec @ 128 kB block
size.

Similarly, the RAID 0 SATA drives start out at 34MB/sec @ 4kB block size,
then increases to 110 MB/sec @ 128kB block size and remains constant for
bigger block sizes. Burst rate peaks at around 194 MB/sec at block sizes of
256kB and 512kB.

So my RAID'ed SATA drives are indeed faster than my UDMA 5 drive, but the
difference isn't very much at block sizes less than 16kB. For blocks sizes
greater than 128kB, the RAID'ed SATA drives are about double the speed of
UDMA 5.

All in all, I'm pleased as punch. My major need for speed comes from editing
photos and video so these characteristics are perfect for my needs.

Lance
*****

"Lance" wrote in message
link.net...
Lance wrote:

So my RAID'ed SATA drives are indeed faster than my UDMA 5 drive, but the
difference isn't very much at block sizes less than 16kB. For blocks sizes
greater than 128kB, the RAID'ed SATA drives are about double the speed of
UDMA 5.

All in all, I'm pleased as punch. My major need for speed comes from
editing
photos and video so these characteristics are perfect for my needs.

I had a similar decision when I set up my system. I too capture AVI's from
a DV camera and do editing and DVD authoring.

I chose to stay with non-RAID configuration because of concerns about
backing up OS and data. Ghost does not support RAID.

The non-RAID transfers are fast enough to accommodate captures, which is
where disk throughput becomes critical (otherwise we'll get dropped frames).
For rendering and authoring, CPU becomes the rate-limiting step. With my P4
3 GHz I get 40-55 frames/s rendering, which is fine by me.
--
Aloke
----
to reply by e-mail remove 123 and change invalid to com

Aloke Prasad wrote:
"Lance" wrote in message
link.net...
Lance wrote:

So my RAID'ed SATA drives are indeed faster than my UDMA 5 drive,
but the difference isn't very much at block sizes less than 16kB.
For blocks sizes greater than 128kB, the RAID'ed SATA drives are
about double the speed of UDMA 5.

All in all, I'm pleased as punch. My major need for speed comes from
editing photos and video so these characteristics are perfect for my
needs.

I had a similar decision when I set up my system. I too capture
AVI's from a DV camera and do editing and DVD authoring.

I chose to stay with non-RAID configuration because of concerns about
backing up OS and data. Ghost does not support RAID.

The non-RAID transfers are fast enough to accommodate captures, which
is where disk throughput becomes critical (otherwise we'll get
dropped frames). For rendering and authoring, CPU becomes the
rate-limiting step. With my P4 3 GHz I get 40-55 frames/s rendering,
which is fine by me.

Sigh, a 3GHz would've blown my budget, so I got a 2.6 GHz instead. But for
my personal use, I don't think I'll ever buy a Dell/HP/etc again. Building
your own is the way to go.

Lance
*****