P5W DH Deluxe-Lets make it certain;best way of Raid0?

[Rairun]

Hi all
I bought Asus P5W DH Deluxe and two Seagte SATA2 HDs.I heard there are different ways to to connect the HDs to this motherboard.And so many people don't know which one is the best.So anybody knows certainly the right way?
Thanks

 

[vMax]

2 x WD Sata II 250 hd's. The Raid setup was automatic, just changed the pin setting from raid 1 to raid 0 on the mobo and the asus ezraid (orange Sata plugs at bottom of mobo) did the rest - no drivers required The WD 150hd is on the black Intel sata port, no. 3 I think. Everything has been working fine and i had no problems during the xp instalation.

Easiest Raid 0 setup i've ever come across.

Core 2 Duo E6700 stable 3.3GHz
Asus P5W DH Deluxe Motherboard
OCZ Platinum PC2-6400 EL XTC 2048MB Kit, DDR2, 240 Pin, 800Mhz
Hyper R 580w PSU
Creative X-Fi Platinum
2 x Western Digital Sata2 250GB Hard Drives setup up in Raid 0
1 x Maxtor Sata Hard drive
Geforce 7900 GTX
Zalman CNPS9500
Windows XP SP2
Benq 20.1 tft widescreen

 

[nacho_man]

ez raid is fine if you wanna get a quick set up but for performance you got to use the intel one.. as for drivers .. boot from the asus cd to get the correct install drivers for the intel raid.. dont create it from windows or you get the wrong ones.

 

[Rairun]

Thanks mate

 

[hatsurfer]

Let me add that chosing the smaller stripe size has made significant improvements to my speed.

I had my (4) raptor 150's with the Intel Raid0 with 64k stripe. My highest speed on HDtach was 170 MB's. I was very dissapointed. I was told a ~$300 controller card would get me closer to my goal(300 MB/s). Blah.

I recently reinstalled XP and this time went with 16K stripe. WOW. I'm hitting 310 MB/s now with a burstrate of 450+. Big time change! The difference is profound too in ever aspect of PC'ing that I do.

Bigger is not always better

 

[Kenyada]

Let me add that chosing the smaller stripe size has made significant improvements to my speed.

I had my (4) raptor 150's with the Intel Raid0 with 64k stripe. My highest speed on HDtach was 170 MB's. I was very dissapointed. I was told a ~$300 controller card would get me closer to my goal(300 MB/s). Blah.

I recently reinstalled XP and this time went with 16K stripe. WOW. I'm hitting 310 MB/s now with a burstrate of 450+. Big time change! The difference is profound too in ever aspect of PC'ing that I do.

Bigger is not always better

Let me get this straight... is the general consensus that with an Asus P5W DH motherboard that the E-Z backup RAID 0/1 ports will not perform as well as the BIOS installation, with a smaller stripe?

So, in other words, all RAID 0 installs are not created equal(ly)?? I wish I could find a review that compares the two RAID 0 in speed performance. I went with the E-Z Backup RAID 0 (orange ports) on P5W DH, and right about now I'm feeling that I've wasted my two Raptors on a cheap trick.

Dad always said nuthin' comes E-Z (but then, he never knew Gloria in my Psych 201 class) 8)

 

[nacho_man]

yeah i know how you feel when i first had mine i was running on the ez raid ...
and was ok but not stunning ... then i tried the intel raid and had quite a jump .... if i remember the figures....

burst speed .....
ez raid - 191 mb/s
intel raid 330 mb/s

just to note... im not running raptors 2x hitachi 250 drives.

 

[Kenyada]

yeah i know how you feel when i first had mine i was running on the ez raid ...
and was ok but not stunning ... then i tried the intel raid and had quite a jump .... if i remember the figures....

burst speed .....
ez raid - 191 mb/s
intel raid 330 mb/s

just to note... im not running raptors 2x hitachi 250 drives.

Thanks for the performance comparison. I've got some changes to make.

 

[jr2408]

Hi all, I am just waiting for my P5W board to arrive and finding this an interesting thread. I am planning on installing initially a singel drive without Raid. I have a question - does adding a raid array require a system reinstall from scratch? For example, if I want to add a second Raptor in Raid 0, can I make a disk image (with Acronis TrueImage), wipe the system and install as a Raid 0 array and then restore from my previous image?

 

[Kenyada]

Hi all, I am just waiting for my P5W board to arrive and finding this an interesting thread. I am planning on installing initially a singel drive without Raid. I have a question - does adding a raid array require a system reinstall from scratch? For example, if I want to add a second Raptor in Raid 0, can I make a disk image (with Acronis TrueImage), wipe the system and install as a Raid 0 array and then restore from my previous image?

The P5W manual says on page 5-29 that "Use of two new identical hard disk drives is required for this setup (RAID 0)" But fear not, if you've been reading this thread, you know I don't know what I'm talking about. The question is whether a wiped HDD will be seen by the RAID software as the equivalent of a new HDD.

 

[pgarnold]

JR2408 & Kenyada,

I don't think that will work. The reason is that while you can setup the disks as a RAID in the bios and then use the Ctrl "I" command to select the proper drives for the install, you still need to have something format the pair before you can do the install and you need the RAID drivers to even be able to see and talk to the RAID set. I don't know anything about Acronis TrueImage software so possibly it can load the drivers and format the RAID set. Check the software to see if this is possible. Windows does require the complete wiping of any designated disks for a RAID array (0 or 1) and reformatting. You have to load RAID drivers using F6 on the Windows re-install.

If one wants the RAID pair to be a data set (e.g., a separate disk set for data), then one also needs to load the Intel Matrix Storage Manager from within Windows as well, once the OpSys is loaded. See details at: http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-022648.htm#4

You will want to have the Intel Matrix Storage Manager loaded no matter what since it has important RAID monitoring functions that can detect potential problems including pending disk failure, data integrity errors (due to a system crash, etc.) and will automatically repair them. If no other reason than this you probably want to reload everything from scratch just to make sure this is working properly.

Don't use the drivers on the supplied ASUS CD since they are all old. Get the latest ones from the Intel website. Use the link above.

As mentioned in other posts use the Intel south bridge (ICH7R) connectors. They are the fastest. The EZ_RAID connectors are also attached to the south bridge but BOTH connectors SHARE one port, e.g., the missing SATA2 connector. The directly connected ports are labeled SATA1, SATA3, and SATA4.

There is a lot of good info on all of this on the ASUS website. Look at all threads with "RAID" in the title. Pain to use because of the slowness of the ASUS forums, but the info is very good. Start with the following link to pass some of the setup hassle.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&model=P5W%20DH%20Deluxe&SLanguage=en-us

Paul

 

[hatsurfer]

Here's is a screenshot of my results.

 

[Kenyada]

Thanks, Paul, I'll do the research and then proceed with caution.

 

[Kenyada]

Here's is a screenshot of my results.

That's great, hatsurfer! Thanks.

 

[poolprousa]

JR2408 & Kenyada,

I don't think that will work. The reason is that while you can setup the disks as a RAID in the bios and then use the Ctrl "I" command to select the proper drives for the install, you still need to have something format the pair before you can do the install and you need the RAID drivers to even be able to see and talk to the RAID set. I don't know anything about Acronis TrueImage software so possibly it can load the drivers and format the RAID set. Check the software to see if this is possible. Windows does require the complete wiping of any designated disks for a RAID array (0 or 1) and reformatting. You have to load RAID drivers using F6 on the Windows re-install.

If one wants the RAID pair to be a data set (e.g., a separate disk set for data), then one also needs to load the Intel Matrix Storage Manager from within Windows as well, once the OpSys is loaded. See details at: http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-022648.htm#4

You will want to have the Intel Matrix Storage Manager loaded no matter what since it has important RAID monitoring functions that can detect potential problems including pending disk failure, data integrity errors (due to a system crash, etc.) and will automatically repair them. If no other reason than this you probably want to reload everything from scratch just to make sure this is working properly.

Don't use the drivers on the supplied ASUS CD since they are all old. Get the latest ones from the Intel website. Use the link above.

As mentioned in other posts use the Intel south bridge (ICH7R) connectors. They are the fastest. The EZ_RAID connectors are also attached to the south bridge but BOTH connectors SHARE one port, e.g., the missing SATA2 connector. The directly connected ports are labeled SATA1, SATA3, and SATA4.

There is a lot of good info on all of this on the ASUS website. Look at all threads with "RAID" in the title. Pain to use because of the slowness of the ASUS forums, but the info is very good. Start with the following link to pass some of the setup hassle.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&model=P5W%20DH%20Deluxe&SLanguage=en-us

Paul

I clicked the Intel link...did I read it right?...I can take two identical hard drives, set them up in RAID1 to load my OS on, then go back to the unallocated space on those same two drives, and make that space RAID0?...prolly a dumb question, but hey sorry, I don't know ...thx in advance for the answer

 

[pgarnold]

poolprousa,

That is my understanding as well, that you can use the same two disk drives as RAID0 and RAID1 as long as you have separate disk space allocated to each RAID set. I have not tried this so I can't verify that this works from actual use. If you do get this to work, please post an update so we all know you were successful.

Good Luck,

Paul

 

[jamesgoddard]

Does anyone have any performance info to compare when using RAID1? I think the EZ-RAID should nudge ahead then