Problems with setting up Raid-0 with Whitebook

Ok..so I decided to wipe my drives, and set up a RAID array. Now, I'm competent when it comes to this type of thing, as you can see my system has booted. And it has a RAID array. HOWEVER, there's one problem. When I entered the Intel Utility(ctrl + i) to creat my RAId array.. it would only allow me to make one the size of my largest HDD. I've got a 320GB WD and a 160GB WD - And the utility could see both drives, however when I went to configure the array, it maxed out at 294GB. Uhmm.. I couldn't add in any more space, my other HDD is empty, and even if not it would delete the data anyhow to create the Array. Via Device Manager, it is in RAID. I have 2 partitions, one for the OS and one for Data..that's not the problem cause regardless the MAX size the Utility would allow was still 294GB. The best I can figure, it's another hole in this BIOS. If anyone has insight, or has setup RAID successfully, let me know. Had I used RAID-1 it would have worked properly, but limited me to the 160 GB size, for redundancy. This is disappointing. I'm gonna throw some programs on Vista, and get it up and running to test the speed.

I remember something about RAID being a problem..was this the pre-existing issue?

 

curious..does I shouldn't need any jumpers set should I?

 

hummm, could of sworn you needed two hard drives at least... to create a raid 0. and in your case..it should be taking the 160 + 160 off the 320 to make your 294 which is = 320 gigs.

 

uhm.. but I have a 320GB and a 160 GB WD installed.. Matrix storage manager in Vista reports it using both drives.. but no where can I find unused diskspace. Disk Management doesn't show it.. Everything said RAID - just ran HDTune - gonna try again w/ 8MB test file. but, here's with a 2MB and Accurate testing..

 

and here's Matrix Manager..



when Matrix Manager loads at boot, it displays both hard drives.. And proper HDD sizes.. This is weird

 

so it only let you make a 50 gig partition?

 

no.. did a 50GB partition for the OS - then 244 for the rest. But..uhhh.. that's cause I could only allocate 244 to it. And, it should be closer to 390 left to allocate. I've got 480GB here!
I also tried just one single partition, and it still maxes out with only the 294 Drive.

Gonna run the 8MB HDTune Read bench now..may take a while. I may let it run and go to sleep. Doubt I'll be able to, this is bothering me.

 

im not exactly sure...but that space i don't think you can use it. even though it's really there. once the raid is made, it locks the rest of the drive.

 

dude..you dont understand. That space was never there for me to use! I could only allocate 294GB of total space, which happens to be the size of my 320GB drive. It's a problem with the Storage Manager.. It sees my 2 drives..it says its using my 2 drives.. but I could only have a 50GB part. and a 244GB part.. and if I chose not to partition, then I only had 294GB of RAID array possible.

And this HDTune looks odd, used 8MB this time:




There's no drop off of speed.. its dang near a straight line, and the burst is horribly low. It's like it made a RAID array across my single HDD - but how is that possible?

 

did you completely remove the first array, before creating a new one?

 

uhm.. I never had a first array. I started with 2 clean drives. Thought that maybe I did something wrong, so rebooted..deleted the RAID, set the drives to Non-raid, then tried again.. same outcome. Only allows me to use 294GB. I recall someone saying they had a problem with RAID on this system, but that was when it first came around. No jumpers on either drive, they don't need em. And like I said, the Matrix Setup @ boot shows both drives..and correct sizes. But still won't allocate but 294GB worth of HDD space to RAID.

 

What a bummer. At least I have a clean start with Vista now.. no excess crap on the HDDs. *sigh* gonna PM Justin and see if this is common. They offer the system in RAID, so maybe they're familiar with it.

 

im not sure what it is your trying to do though...
you cant raid more than the lowest hard drive. so if your smallest hd is 160 then you get a total of 320. it may look like the raid is on one drive, but it's not. it's using both hard drives. you can't raid 320+160 and get a total of 480 gigs of space. and the raid will only be as fast as the slowest hard drive. and the partition is x2 the smallest hard drive.

not sure if that is what your getting at

and have you tried formating the other 244 gigs yet?

 

Hmm.. I must have been confused then. I thought it would give 480GB - I thought that with RAID-5 the smaller drive mattered..but I can see where you're coming from. Eh, makes sense. And, I can't format the other space... it's non-existant. Cant see it from Vista's Disk Management. Ok.. I'm done for the night. Need sleep. And, the dam drive just clicked like they did in my FX Series, and that annoyed the crap outta me. Gonna say forget it to RAID - just gonna clean install vista.

 

aight, well i'll do some more thinking on it and see if i have some better answers for you later today..take care have a good one.

 

You gave me the best answer there. Makes sense. Since it stripes across the same sectors, etc. Then it can only double the smallest drive. Which because of my drive sizes had me all thrown off. No biggie.

 

aight, cool.

get some sleep buddy. ill be hitting the bed about he same time you did there...in like 3 hours...lol

 

Yes, johnkss is right. I think you were confused because it looked like it was only letting you create an array the size of your largest drive, but in reality it was only letting you make an array the size of twice your smallest drive (both sizes being 320). That's how Raid array's work unfortunately. Normally, files are written on and read off of a single drive. Raid 0 arrays work by splitting files up between the two drives. The speed increase comes from the fact that a file can be read faster by two HDD ports than it can be read from one port (same for writing). What this means is that if one drive is used up, files can no longer be split between the two drives and therefore can not be part of a raid 0 array. Hence, the raid array can only be the size of the smallest drive multiplied by the number of drives.

The reason the rest of the bigger drive can't be used outside of the array is because when you set a drive to be part of an array, you are telling the raid controller to control everything that goes on and off of that drive. If that extra space isn't in the raid array, the controller obviously can't control it, and so the controller will not even pass along the information that the extra space even exists.

Lastly, I'm not sure if you were wondering why you have 294 instead of 320. But in-case you were, that's actually a characteristic of all hard drives. I posted the explanation in my guide.

EDIT: here it is -
"Most operating-system tools report capacity using the same abbreviations but actually use binary prefixes. For instance, the prefix mega-, which normally means 106 (1,000,000), in the context of data storage can mean 220 (1,048,576), which is nearly 5% more. Similar usage has been applied to prefixes of greater magnitude. This results in a discrepancy between the disk manufacturer's stated capacity and the apparent capacity of the drive when examined through most operating-system tools. The difference becomes even more noticeable for a gigabyte (7%), and again for a terabyte (9%). For a petabyte there is a 11% difference between the SI (10005) and binary (10245) definitions. For example, Microsoft Windows reports disk capacity both in decimal-based units to 12 or more significant digits and with binary-based units to three significant digits. Thus a disk specified by a disk manufacturer as a 30 GB disk might have its capacity reported by Windows 2000 both as "30,065,098,568 bytes" and "28.0 GB". The disk manufacturer used the SI definition of "giga", 109 to arrive at 30 GB; however, because Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and some Linux distributions use "gigabyte" for 1,073,741,824 bytes (230 bytes), the operating system reports capacity of the disk drive as (only) 28.0 GB." (wikipedia)

So you're probably going to want to get either another 160gb hard drive, or another 320gb one if you do decide to do the array. As far as installing Vista to one array and Windows 7 to the other, you should be able to do this. Let me know why you weren't able to and I should be able to help.

 

you can not raid 0 two different size drives. if you do so you will end up only using 160gb of the 320 and the rest will be no able to be accessed. it locks up that part.

if you want to do a raid 0 and use your 320 you need 2 320gb drive pref the same manufacture and model / firmware etc drives. you should (but dont have to) always try to use matching drives for a raid 0..

 

Ok..so I took a crash course in idiocracy. Thanks for clearing it up guys. Great explanation jak. Yeah, I know a 320GB drive is an advertising campaing.. Guess I gotta get another 320 Well.. now I gotta format this thing and start over.

I'd +rep all of you...but it won't let me! +rep john for now

 

well.. RAID made a huge difference in HDD access time. It was twice as fast as this non-RAID setup. My read times, and access times doubled. Amazing.

 

I hope you mean that the read/access times halved, the speeds may have doubled...

 

Anybody know why you have to have RAID enabled in the BIOS even though you are running one drive? Otherwise I can't post. A fella has the same problem in the OCZ forum. Not a big deal as I just bought another 320 GB drive to play around with RAID , but I was just curious.

Also, anybody know when 1 TB drives will be available for laptops? The biggest drive I've seen so far is 500 GB but it's a slow 5400 rpm.

 

try going into the raid utility during boot up and seeing if the drive you have is set up as a raid drive.

it may be they partitioned the drive into 2 drives.

you should not see a single drive in the raid utility if its not set up as a raid.

lmk if you have questions

 

I'm pretty sure that`s what he was trying to say
How`s the benchmark on the array?
here`s mine for comparison:

 

I heard there was a presently an unresolved 'shuttering' issue, with the Whitebook and RAID0...... degrading RAID0 performance..... ??? I am still trying to re-locate the source of this, in light of my recent 4870 pre-order.

Anyone have any info on this?

 

i have seen no issues

 

Hey does anyone have any hdd benchmarks for this notebook(prefer raid) because i saw on the website that it is really a sata 1.5gb/s it reads at and not sata3.0. but it is compatable. Here

all hdd's can post but 320gb @7200rpm raid 0 and 320gb @5400rpm raid 0 are prefered. also make and model of the hdd are a plus

 

if i can get the guy to bring his in i can post them otherwise maybe e can do it for us. he has dual wd 7200's

 

I had originally relayed the RAID stuttering concern. This comes from Mark, I haven't tried RAID to verify. He said that was why he hadn't set it up on my computer as I'd asked. According to him, the issue is that you will get stuttering during gaming that he attributes to the RAID, said his initial thought was overheating of the video cards, but through process of elimination, it went away in non-RAIDed setups. This is all hearsay, I can't verify, and I probably won't set up RAID in the near future. Hope I didn't cause any confusion-

 

Hey Falken1,

Yeah, that's probably where I picked-up on the 'RAID-0 stuttering'..... over at the GOG forum. Also, I now recall Mark mentioning this to me on the phone, when discussing the configuration for my new Nagamaki...... since I too desire RAID-0. I later email'ed him, and told him to skip the second HDD if the issue could not be resolved.

I am now wondering if the issue is not more directly related to the known 'stuttering' issue, that occurs in all multi-GPU solutions..... ??? You may want to query Mark, and suggest this to him. Here's a link for ya...... note what is said of multi-GPU's:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Graphic-Cards.130.0.html

QUOTES:

" SLI suffers from micro stuttering with low frame rates"
-and-
" Micro stutterings can occur like with all SLI combinations"
-and-
" As all multi GPU solutions today, the HD 3870 X2 suffers from micro stuttering (at frame rates around 30 fps)".

Hope this helps! (..... also, I have replied to you at GOG.)

ENJOY!

 

I had posted about that stuttering also in my Nagamaki review, posted on both websites. I don't know if that might be what he was attributing it to, though he did say it went away when RAID was disabled, so... Can't speak for him. If I talk to him again I'll mention it. At this point in time, the newer SSD's are becoming pretty impressive, so probably the way to go if you want that extra disk transfer speed. And they're more shock resistant, a must for the military traveler!