Ultra Slow Raid 0 Help! DS3 Rev.1

[Daveyboy0109]

Hi, i am having problems with my Raid 0 array.
Works fine boots up ok, everything runs great, but when benching, i only get 80MB/s MAX with Hdtach.
I am using the Jmicron controller, as the ICH8 controller is not raid on my mobo.

i cant understand what is going on, i should be getting 120MB/s+
I am using 2X Seagate Barracida 250GB drives 16MB Cache 'ST3520620AS'

I installed the latest drivers at F6 install point, and i am using F10 Bios.

Realy dont have a clue whats going on here, can anyone help?

By the way, im using XP pro SP2 and dual booting to Vista Ultimate, although I had this problem way before with just XP in the array.

My Full System Spec Ic;

E6600 OC'd 3.28
Geforce 8800gts 640MB OC'd to 625/1.8
Gigabyte DS3 Rev.1 Mobo
2X 1GB Geil 800Mhz Ultra low latency at 4-4-4-12 OC'd 820Mhz
2X Seagate Barracuda 250GB Raid 0 'ST3520620AS'
Arctic Freezer 7 Cooler
EMU 1212m Soundcard
Jeantech NIX ATX Gaming case

 

[archae86]

i cant understand what is going on, i should be getting 120MB/s+
I am using 2X Seagate Barracida 250GB drives 16MB Cache 'ST3520620AS'

What is the basis of expecting 120MH/s+ for this configuration?

 

[Daveyboy0109]

well benchmarks on lesser systems give much better performance.do you mean I shouldnt expect good performance out of jmicron controller?

 

[joex444]

I've got the DQ6 Rev 3.3, using the Intel ICH8R chipset.

From that, I have 2x320GB Seagate 7200.10 16MB HDs installed as RAID0.

In HDTach, my sustained read speeds, the one that is graphed...well, without sounding like a geek, it looks like a gaussian wave packet centered at 85MB/s, with +/- 5MB/s occuring approx every 120GB. This makes some sense, if it used 3 platter sides, but they use 4 (as it has about 2% wasted space, it can't do anything but use all the sides available).

Anyways, my sustained speeds are 80-90, so the low end is pretty good.

Now, if you're talking about the interface burst speed, that's a different story. My interface speed is actually 312MB/s, which pretty much exceeds SATA-II specs, but whatever.

 

[Daveyboy0109]

Sorry, but that was about as useful as windows vista.
You should be getting wayyy faster speeds than that!
I know the controller I am using isnt very good, so I was asking if anyone knew of a way to speed it up a bit, mabe a setting i have missed, or something in the Bios i have missed.

then ICH8 controller is great though! Ive seen similar systems with rev .3 going way over 120MB/s

how come hd tach shows average speed benches of RAID 0 on via and intel raid controllers and they are getting 120MB/s sustained

 

[cricounet]

I've 2x80 Go Hitachi in Raid0 using Jmicron Controler on ,y DS3 rev1 (BIOS F10)

I've 120Mb average speed on hdtach (win xp sp2)

May be you need to install the latest drivers jmicron

http://moonlyupdates.online.fr/Pilo...2 WHQL (2000-XP-2003-Vista 32bit & 64bit).rar

Have you another Disk on the intel sata port ?

What Bios are you using ?
rgds

 

[Daveyboy0109]

I am usinf F10 Bios currently, although i had the same problem with F7 that the mobo came with, I had hoped F10 would have fixed the issue but it has not.

I installed the driver you recommended, but that has futher decreased my HDTach bench results, average is 80MB but drop almost to nothing at points

It seems the cache is not working correctly, if I go to raid 0 in disk management, under policies enchanced write cach and enchanced performance options are not checked. so if i do check them and click OK, when I go back to policies they are both unchecked again. there seems to be no 'Apply' option, only OK.

also under disk drives (RAID 0) driver is V. old, but i can not find a more up to date driver.

GRAID SCSI disk device
6.0.6000.16386
21/06/2006
PROVIDER: Microsoft
That doesnt look right either.

 

[kalez]

I have 2x320GB Seagate ST3320620AS in RAID0 with DS3 Rev.1 and BIOS F7 and same problem with speed - HD Tach shows ~90 MB/s through entire volume although this drive alone should score ~80 initially.

For comparison i have another two drives in software striped dynamic volume which (2x250GB, older and different drives) surprisingly are faster than Gigabyte RAID.

installed controllers are
Intel(R) ICH8 2 port Serial ATA Storage Controller - 2825 v.8.0.0.1008
Intel(R) ICH8 4 port Serial ATA Storage Controller - 2820 v.8.0.0.1008
JMB36X Standard Dual Channel PCIE IDE Controller v.1.0.0.0 (for pata DVD-RW)
+ Primary and Secondary IDE Channels
and SCSI controller GIGABYTE GBB36X Controller v1.14.0.0

I have tried other drivers and F10 bios and ACHI mode without improvements. Does anyone know correct controller drivers or bios settings that make it faster?

 

[rwpritchett]

I think I can help you guys out. I have both RAID0 with 2x160GB 7200.7 Seagates and one 320GB 7200.10 Seagate. All are on an Intel ICH8R controller.

It sounds like DaveyBoy was getting close to the solution... write caching is not enabled for your array. What you need to do is enable it using the Intel Matrix Console instead of Windows Device Manager. Goto Intel's website, download and install the latest driver and Matrix console. Then enable write caching as in the picture:

That should improve your HDTach benchmarks noticably.

Here's my RAID0 with write caching DISABLED:

...and here is the same array with write cache ENABLED:

For comparison, here is my single Seagate 7200.10 (PMR is impressive, eh?):

Hope this helps. Post back if it solves your problems.

 

[cricounet]

you're mobo is not ds3 , because ds3 is using jmicron chipset for RAID 0 configuration and you're mobo is using INTEL ICH8 chipset for the raid

rgds

 

[jepoks]

hope this helps
click here

i think it's bec. of the sb ds3 uses ich8 while ds3p above uses ich8r

 

[rwpritchett]

My mistake, I thought you also had the ICH8R RAID controller. I forgot Gigabytes have their own controller setup. Regardless, the principle should be the same. My board also has JMicron which has a similar utility to enable the cache. I'm sure Gigabyte has a utility as well.

When I go into device manager, my write cache boxes are unchecked. If I check them and exit, they remain unchecked when I go back to them. The Intel console, however, does enable the cache setting and it remains set after I exit.

Perhaps Windows doesn't allow two programs to control the settings. For example, I know that when I install the WiFi software for my wireless, Windows is unable to change wireless settings... I must use the third party software.

 

[Daveyboy0109]

Unfortunately im still just as stuck as before, Im pretty sure its write-back cache, but I just can not enable it!

There seems to be no gigabyte or J micron tool to allow you to enable this feature.

 

[gremlin000]

Daveyboy,
I think I have the better part of a solution! I was having this exact same problem with nearly the same hardware. I just bought Seagate 7200.10's for a RAID 0 array (320GBx2) and I wanted to hook them up to the JMicron controller on my Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 (same as DS3 without the solid state capacitors). I had a huge problem installing Vista (JMicron makes some horrendous drivers) and since the Gigabyte driver would simply not work for me I continued digging. As it turns out, the Asus P5B uses the JMB363 controller as well. I went to their website and found the driver here. This allowed me to install Vista but I was receiving the exact same poor RAID 0 results in HDTach (~80MB/s average read, ~150MB/s burst). I thought the entire time that write caching was enabled since I had enabled it in device manager, but after reading your post I checked mine and there was the problem again. So it was back to the drawing board.
Anyway, after reading rwpritchett's post about the external RAID configuration utility, I decided to join the hunt for a utility that worked with this controller. Wasn't I surprised when I realized that the utility was ALSO in the ASUS driver I already had! I ran the setup and the utility installed fine. After a reboot, I looked for settings in the utility, but there were none. Device Manager had changed a little and said that the device would not allow changing write caching, so I figured why not run HDTach again. The results were much better! The average read is still at 80, but the burst is above 200 now. The utility must make the change automatically and not allow you to configure it. (As a side note, this installation also fixed the problem I had with getting the IDE channel on the JMicron to work under Vista...this is a common problem apparently as well).

In any case, for some reason Sandra refuses to give me much information about my drives so I can't even truly tell whether they are running in SATA 3Gb mode or not. I hope this information helps, and if anyone knows how to ensure my drives are running at their max speed, feel free to jump in!

 

[Zorg]

After reading your post, and the others I thought I would run HD Tach on my 74GB Raptor just for fun. Here are the results:
Average Read 75.6MB/s
Burst 135.2MB/s
Random Access 8.2ms
I think your RAID0 numbers should be a lot higher given the aggravation and increased risk of failure.

 

[Daveyboy0109]

You know what guys. I found the problem and I have fixed it!!!!!!! After months and months of trying!!

You know what i did???

I got rid of the DS3, because the Jmicron controllers are aweful and their drivers are worse!

I bought an asus p5b deluxe mobo.

HD Tach results are now...................

AVG 140MB/s
Burst 2450 MB/S (Wooooooooo!!!)
Random access time 13.4ms

So for all of you out there with the same problem, i recommend switchedg to a mobo with the intel ICH8R controller! absolutely blown away with the benchmark results now!

 

[Dave_McMahon]

Think this is newer than first post at least.

http://www.jmicron.com/Driver.htm
ftp://driver.jmicron.com.tw/jmb36x/Win2k_xp_Vista/JMB36X_R1_17_17.zip

Gonna try this on my board with some "pratcise" old shit ATA drives in RAID 0 and 1 and thrash them to test! if the Jmicron is no good with latest drivers will just get a PCI-e RAID 0 card.