D901C RAID 0 Low HDD Write Speed

I've bought the D901C with two Seagate 160 GB SATA2 HDD in RAID 0 with 128Kb stripe size.

I've noticed that +- 20 min after boot and with moderated HDD use, the disk Write Speed was very low.

I've run SiSoftware Sandra File System benchmark and it gives me an warning saying that Write Speed is very low.

After some investigation, I've discovered that If I use a fan directed to the HDD place, the problem doesn't occurs - The Sandra benchmark doesn't give any warning and the Write speed doubled.

It seems that this problems occurs because the HDD's are reaching high temperatures.

The Read Speed is the same with or without the problem.

I've moved one HDD from the first or second place to the third place (under battery) and, until now, the problem haven't occur.

Is this normal? Has anyone else had this problem?

Thanks

Sandra benchmark values:
Random Write (with problem) : 20 Mb/s
Random Write (without problem) : 56 Mb/s

Sequential Write (with problem) : 40 Mb/s
Sequential Write (without problem) : 96 Mb/s

Sequential Read (with problem): 106 Mb/s
Sequential Read (without problem): 105 Mb/s

 

on my 2x 80 giggers raid 0 i have a 32Kb stripe and i believe that 128 is too large of a stripe.

 

Negative. 128k stripe is fine, that is what I'm currently using. I have 3 Hitachi 7k200's in my system (In RAID5) and I have the following using HDTune 2.53.

Have you tried running at full fans? I.e. Function + 1 ? I've had the palmrests get a bit warm because I wasn't running at full fans but I've never had performance hits (that I noticed) because of it.

The problem might be more than heat, it may be a program. Start by killing all programs. Check after each one, then start killing processes, again check after each one. This will help you narrow the culprit down. Let us know what results you find.

 

This happens with a fresh windows (Vista Ultimate) install.

And the problems stopped after I move one of the HDD to the third place(under the battery) or use a fan to cool them.

My HD Tune values are similar. Have you checked the write speed values?

Thanks

 

hd tune must only perform read speeds then as raid 0 is much much faster in write speeds as raid 5.

 

Actually RAID 5 is faster than a single drive solution not sure of RAID 0. (If anyone has any 7k200's in RAID 0 please post your HDT score!)

Single Drive (from this thread)


RAID 5

 

Wu,
Could you please post the Write Speed Values (using Sandra Lite free version - File System benchmark http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/).

Thanks.