Software RAID really slow

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win2000.advanced_server (More info?)

I just copied a 3 GB file on a (software) RAID 1 system, from one
folder to another.
I found it was excruciatingly slow. I mean ... it was virtually
unusably slow.
It was so slow in fact, that I can't imagine this is the normal
performance level for such a system.

The computer in question is a 2.0 GHz P4 with 2 Maxtor SATA drives.
I've tried the "Legacy (SATA Only) mode" in the BIOS as well as the
"Auto" mode.
If I'm not mistaken the properties sheet claims they are using DMA 5
mode.
I'm running Windows Server 2003.

The CPU completely tops out during the copy and system is unresponsive
for the entire course of the copy. To give you a rough idea, it took
somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 minutes to copy a 3 GB file.

So, my question is this: Is my intuition right, and something else is
going on ?
Or is this really within the expected performance range of a system
like this ?

Thanks
E