Raptor X, am i doing something wrong?

[sutahz]

I purchased a Raptor X from newegg.com, ran it thru some tests to see how fast it was compared to my Maxtor 6L250S0 RAID0 setup. In the end it was only marginally faster, if not even. So I RMA'd it, then I got thinking that if 1 raptorX is as good as 2 good hdd's in RAID0 then 2 raptors will be... unbelievable. So I order 2 raptor X's, they arrive. I set them up in RAID0 AND................. nothing, same results... so im a bit bummed so i read up about RAID0 everywhere I can on the web. I read RAID0 has very little if any affect but splitting up DISK I/O's to seperate drives would help, so I split up my raptors (and kept my Maxtors in RAID0). OS on one hdd, Games on the other, 1GB Pae File on a 1.5GB partition on the MaxtorRaid0 (very first partition, so on very outter edge), still same game performance and windows reboot time. So OS 1 raptor, PF other raptor, games on MaxtorRaid0, still no difference, performance is still the same across the board. Yes I chaged stripe/cluster sizes (OS had 16k/4k, 64k/4k, 8k/4k. Games ran 16k/4k, 8k/4k, 16k/16k, 64k/64k, 64k/4k), still no changes. I used DiskBench to test read/write speeds too (real world results), thats where I did see the RaptorRaid0 pull ahead SOME, but I dont spend my days xfering files. So am I doing something wrong or are these results pretty typical?

I have a LANPARTY UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert, X2 4400+, 2GB OCZ Titanium ed. running 2-3-2-5-1T and a eVGA 7600 GT. Games ran at Very high quality, 1600x1200, max settings (though i did a test w/ lowest quality, level load time was still just about the same.

Thanks in advance, for whatever/however you will reply to this

 

[choirbass]

well, first off, raid 0 for everyday desktop use is infact overrated... with that taken into account, you shouldnt expect astonishing results for raid 0, in most situations

the only places you will see a noticable improvement for raid 0, is in benchmark scores, which indicate potential/theoretical performance for than anything, but isnt all that useful otherwise, faster windows boot times, and when transferring large sized files, such photos, video, audio (which is when you would want to set the stripe size to the largest you can)

outside of those uses, there will be only marginal improvement at best, which includes game loading times, for most current games even, as there is usually a lot of cpu decompressing and processing involved too, application start up times, transferring and searching through lots of small files, and for anything else that doesnt really involve the hdd much at all

as far as windows boot times are concerned, you can only boot so fast, before youre waiting on something else to finish up, in this case, its more than likely youre waiting for windows to finish initializing hardware drivers and such, before you can actually get to where the system is usable, and the OS hdds are stuck waiting on that, which would explain why your boot times arent any faster, even with having faster hdds in use

 

[sutahz]

I wanted to find the site that I saw that made me want to get 2 raptors in RAID0. But during that search also found these 2 web pages:
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2690
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1

and the page i saw that inspired me to buy 2 raptors is:
http://www.overclockers.com/articles1297/
and more specifically
http://www.overclockers.com/articles1297/index03.asp

I benchmarked (timed) w/ those exact same games, got the same numbers as him. When running the game the very first time and loading the save, you get the higest load time, after that it loads faster (so either he botched his tests, or i botched mine). I got the same numbers as his 1x raptor and 2x raptors w/ my 1x raptor (and 2x raptors), but like I said performance was the same w/ no raptors, 1 raptor or 2x (RAID or split) for me. Now I know that RAID0 is useless for performance (everyday computing/gaming) but has its place for video encoding and the such.

Not arguing so much as questioning, but windows load time no doubt is dependant on drivers and initializing, but hdd speed has to play a factor, saw a video of windows rebooting off of a iRAM drive, speedy as can be of course. I guess right now I'm just sad that something I looked forward to (twice) to take my system performance up to the next level failed...

 

[choirbass]

as far as windows boot times, it inherantly benefits from being on raid 0 because of the way its designed, and files are organized, etc, dont really know specifics other than that though

but, like you found out (and as i did after purchasing 4*36GB raptors for raid 0 awhile back), it really doesnt benefit everyday use as much as people would like to think, it has its uses though, as you said

purchasing a 74GB ADFD raptor like i did a few days ago to host windows on (after reading the hdd charts, and the review THG did on it)... really put my 36GB raptors to shame, further debunking the benefit of raid 0 for everyday use

as far as being able to have faster performance with 2 drives, even if they arent in raid 0. what i usually do, is host the pagefile and my temporary internet files on a seperate drive, and that usually results in faster web browsing, (it does, lol), but, yeah, really just any way to seperate your physical reads and writes to different drives, will improve performance