Expected performance gain going Raid 0 and ??

I know its not that safe but what would be the performance gain on (2) 500 gig drives. I have another one coming in a couple of days. (same drive as I have already) I think I'm reading at about 90 MB/s using HDtune right now.

What stripe size should I use?

I am planning on using a windows system image to restore the drives. This should work correct?

Thanks
AwHw

 

I've heard around 10%. Big gains come from SSDs. And your chances of data loss double, of course. A couple of 256GB SSDs in RAID0 would just tickle me pink. That's a lot of cash though.

That whole image thing seems to work for some and not others.

 

I did the same thing when I got my second drive last week, I went from about 80-90 mb/s burst to 140 mb/s burst. My random times went up by about the same ratio. The only thing I would STRONGLY recommend is to buy an external 1+ TB hdd to do exact image backups on especially if you're running the Dell Seagate 500 gb hdd's. For some reason I've had 2 seagates go bad on me recently that came from them, the Toshiba's seem to be more solid.

 

10%?


it's more like 40-100% from a read/write perspective. heck, even just updating my RAID drivers and using write caching gave me 400% performance increase in small writes and a big jump in reads . my RAID 0 of 7200.4's is about 50-60% faster than the 7200RPM 1TB 32mb cache 3.5" drive in my desktop.

you should be backing stuff up on RAID 0 array's regardless. That being said I've had 6 of the 7200.4's they've used and none have failed, so far.

 

Every one I had before the last month was solid as well, I don't know if it might just be a bad batch or if I've just gotten bad luck. I'm just giving a heads up that there may be a problem, even though I don't know what that problem may be at this point. And I agree 100% that backups are always necessary no matter what, at this point I'd recommend backups even in a standard non-raid setup.

 

There's another discussion going on about RAID0 here somewhere, and someone said 10%. You're right though. Doesn't make sense it would be that low.

 

Thanks

I do system image back ups all the time ill just add the regular backup along with it to be safe.

 

you can tell whoever said that I said they're out of their minds.


RAID 0 with Intel RST 9.6 drivers and Write cache ON. It's just a sloppy bench real quick, normally I get ~ 150-160 with 9.6 drivers. with 8.9's I can peak to 180mb/s but the 9.6's have write cache support and *much* better .5-16K performance, which matters more than large sector transfers.

 

Just benched my external SATA drive with HDtune heres what I got.

Read
min 66.5
max 109.6
Avg 98.1
all Mb/s

So as for my internal 500 gig what driver should I be using? The one from Dell? I see ver 8.9 installed found the RST 9.6, but thats just for raid right?

What Is write caching? I do see the setting.

 

you only need the RST drivers if you're running a RAID array, otherwise there's nothing to update. Write caching is using the HDD's internal cache to store temporary data when writing to the Hard drive, which speeds things up considerably. The only downside is if you loose power during a write session, you'll lose whatever data was in the cache.

Write caching can be enabled on any computer
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/259716

 

One more question. When I set up the raid array do I need a driver when I restore my windows disk image or will windows recognize the array?

 

you don't *need* it, no, you can update the RST drivers later on.

 

ok thanks. I'll be doing it friday when the drive shows up.

Thanks
AwHw

 

I installed the drive set up the raid and restored now when the computer starts it will start to load windows then BSOD real fast and reboots. Same thing in safe mode. I even tried restoring it again withe the rst drivers installed on the restore screen. Any clue on how to fix this or diagnose the issue? I can do a clean install but would rather use my windows Backup.

Thanks
AwHw

 

there are drivers windows installs when doing a fresh install on a raid array that are probally not present in your backup..either that or the restore failed.

 

thats what I figured. thats why I installed them on the restore screen thinking it would insert them into the restoration

 

You're trying to install them on an Image that already has drivers installed for a single HDD configuration, I'm not sure that's going to work.

 

Thanks I decided to do a clean install

 

Well here is the performance increase 59% is what I have with the RST 9.6 drivers.

This number is using average speed in HD Tune
I now AVG.138.2 MB/s

Not too bad of an increase