Western digital green 500GB raid0! bad result!!!

[ali rafaty]

hi all

i have two western digital green 500 GB hard and use marvell raidVD0 with IDE SATA-III

more informations:

Property Value
Type Fixed hard disk media
Model MARVELL Raid VD 0
Interface IDE SATA-III
Serial Number be45f425d2ea0000
Revision MV.R00-0
Size 999 GBytes
Removable No
Master drive
Controller Buffer Size on Drive 8 MBytes
Capabilities DMA, LBA, IORDY
PIO Mode Support 0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
DMA SW Mode Support Not Supported
DMA MW Mode Support 0 - 1 - 2
UDMA Mode Support 0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 (ATA/66) - 5 (ATA/100) - 6 (ATA/133) - 7
Current UDMA mode None
Support NCQ Yes
Support IFPWRMNGTRCV No
SMART Support Yes
Attribute Name Attribute Value Threshold Value Raw Data

my motherboard is Gigabyte P55a-UD3p product link : http://www.gigabyte.us/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=3253

gigabyte says that if you use Marvell raid0 you have X4 speed!! and i do that .

http://www.gigabyte.us/FileList/Image/mb_overview_sata3_4x-b.jpg

now see the below link to see my hard drive bench mark!!!

http://service.futuremark.com/resultAnalyzer.action?resultId=345154&resultType=18 (pc mark vantage)

 

[vTL123]

The Raid 0 that is stated may not apply to HDDs but may instead apply to several SSDs in Raid 0.

Only SSDs have been able to break the SATAII bandwidth limit and once there are more than 1 SSDs in Raid 0, it requires more bandwidth.

It may have 4x the speed because SSDs in Raid 0 can make use of the higher bandwidth

 

[ali rafaty]

but i thing my problem is that i use sata 2 hard drive insted sata 3 .no no no!!!
my HDD speed is very bad and trash!!!

 

[vTL123]

Even then the HDDs can't even reach the 3GB/s limit of SATAII!!!

 

[ali rafaty]

Even then the HDDs can't even reach the 3GB/s limit of SATAII!!!

so what is your suggestion? my hard's kill my system

 

[Scanlia]

On the Gigabyte motherboard, it says that if you have, SATA 3 and two of them in raid 0, then you get 4x speed, but since you have two SATA 2's in raid 0, you only get 2x the speed. In the end it wont make a difference, because hard drives aren't fast enough to use up the full 6Gb/ps of SATA 3, so you can only get 4x speed with fast SSD's...

 

[Scanlia]

You either get some SSD's (they are pricey). Your benchmark is about right for two HDD's. The graph's your Futuremark thing is comparing to is the fastest system in the whole of futuremark, he probably has 4 SSD's in Raid 0, so don't worry. I hope that answered your question...

 

[vTL123]

So continuing on from what Scanlia said..

The fastest HDDs (10000rpm to 15000rpm drives) can't even reach the SATAII maximum bandwidth. U need maybe about 2 or 3 or more of them just to reach the SATAII bandwidth but just 1 very fast SSD is required just to bypass the Limit.

And yes, the scores in futuremark are just unbelievable, still don't understand why someone would play 1000+ just for some SSDs to benchmark with. Its even possible that the person managed to Mod it!

 

[ali rafaty]

thats matter!! my hard's speed is lower that 2X(see link at the end of my first post and check the hard section,then you can see my hard speed!!!!)
for example if i cut a file whit 6GB from drive c to another the speed is like that: at the start:356...154..and it stop on 75 and lower!

 

[Scanlia]

I depend what you are coping to, unless you copy to another two HDD's in raid 0, you won't be able to get the full speed out of it. Tell me what you copied to?

 

[Scanlia]

If you refer to this document, you will see that the average hard drive speed for western digital is 10-30 MB, so your 63.25 MB/s and your 38.74 MB/s HDD speed isn't too bad... Here is the link: http://www.wdc.com/en/library/2579-001151.pdf

 

[ali rafaty]

it was a HD movie even i test for .zip(5.3GB) .MDS(9GB)
now:
is it depend on MBB or BAid Raid Configuration if we forget sata2?

 

[Scanlia]

Yeah, forget SATA 2 or 3 because that won't make a difference to you speed with a HDD. So it depend on Raid 0 like you said. But keep in mind that Raid 0 uses a fair amount of CPU when using it, which might be a bottlenock when playing games and reading from you harddrive...

 

[vTL123]

Yeah, forget SATA 2 or 3 because that won't make a difference to you speed with a HDD. So it depend on Raid 0 like you said. But keep in mind that Raid 0 uses a fair amount of CPU when using it, which might be a bottlenock when playing games and reading from you harddrive...

Raid 0 doesn't use alot of CPU and if you read his system configuration, it would be fairly hard to bottle neck the system. It is based on the Chipset controller (ICH10R or 9 or 8).

But it still is possibe but highly unlikely that the system be bottlenecked because of the Raid Setup.

 

[gtvr]

Green HDs are SLOW HDs, compared to non-green, 7200 RPM HDs. They are energy efficient, and quiet, but not designed to be the fastest HDs available.

Even fast HDs are SLOW compared to good SSDs. SSDs are very expensive in terms of cost per GB, but their speed is higher (for transfer rates) or ridiculously higher (for access times).

4x is a marketing term. Forget it. The maximum bandwidth per channel of SATA is mostly irrelevant for what you are doing. Remember, each drive has their own channel. Let me put it this way - if there was a rule that said, no one playing in the NBA can be taller than 20' tall, you would say that's ridiculous, no person can be 20' tall. What if they changed it to 40' tall? It just doesn't matter.

So your HD by itself doesn't even meet sata I (1.5gb/s) rates. Who cares about SATA II or SATA III rates?

 

[Scanlia]

Black or Blue would be faster

 

[ali rafaty]

so thanks all but finally what should i do?

 

[vTL123]

You can either keep your current Hard Drives or get a new SSD. Paying extra for a slightly better pair of Hard drives aren't worth it unless you need the extra space.

But if you have to get new Hard Drives and don't want to get a SSD, the Samsung F3 500GB or 1Tb are very very good. The WD caviars Black are good as well. Same story with the Seagate 7200.12 series. Or you can go flat out and get a WD 10000rpm drive.... but even then the SSD will be available for a tiny bit extra

But if you do want an SSD, only one is need; Heaps are need if you want Raid 0 and even Raid 0 works when the read (or writes) are in different sectors of the Hard Dives. SSDs that are worth looking at:

Corsair whatever series...any ary good. Just make sure they support TRIM and have the Sandforce 1200 Controller.

Same with OCZ but try the 50Gb. 285mb/s read and 275mb/s write are pretty much amazing.

The Intels are also good but a new series is coming out Q4 2010.

So it really depends on your choice. The SSD should only be used for the Operating System and most ued applications (Web Browser or Adobe CS5 or whatever)

 

[Scanlia]

Continuing on from what vTL123 said, You should also have a look at these solid state drives, they go into your PCI-E slots for faster read times... http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid-state-drives/pci-express/z-drive-r2/mlc-performance-series/ocz-z-drive-r2-p88-pci-express-ssd.html

 

[gtvr]

I think those would be a bit spendy. traditional internal sata SSD should be a huge improvement at a moderate cost. Standard WD black, or other good 7200 rpm drive is not bad.

 

[vTL123]

Unless the people are have money growing of trees or a wallet the size of a golf course, or that they are people who run a massive server that requires a very responsive Storage system, the use of the PCIe SSDs are just....bad. SSDs are well known for their responsiveness and high read and write output but the downside is that these use a PCIe slot that could affect the number of lanes for other additional PCIe slots (GFX Cards, etc, etc)

I was deciding between 2 Samsung F3 1Tb drives in Raid 0 and a Corsair SSD after running out of space on the Seagate 500gb Drive. I decided on getting the HDDs because I download quite alot each month and that the SSD really has quite a small amount of space despite being very fast. I would rather wait that extra 10 seconds for the O.S to boot up or wait half a second or 1 second for an applicaton like Microsoft Word to boot up.

Huge improvement in Boot up times in the Raid 0 compared to the single Hard Drive. Despite being slightly noisier, the system feels alot more responsive. Saving or transferring files are alot quicker.

Really. Just forget about SSDs unless you would rather spend the money to have the performance increase. Only problem is that the more affordable SSDs have pretty small capacities and the 120Gb+ SSDs have huge prices. If you have patience, ad wouldn't mind waiting for half a second or 1 second for something to boot up, then there isn't very much point in getting an SSD.