RAID advice

[CALV]

Hi all,

Looking at setting up rais 0 on my system, have currently 1 40 gig ibm 7200 in there, will get another of the same, board is abit kt7a raid, and thats the raid controller I will be using, have a couple of questions.....(erm havnt read the manual as im at work - meant to bring it but forgot- and want to buy the hdd on the wqay home)
1. How much performance increase will I see (please answer ony if you have done it)
2. Do I set the drives to master/slave or what, di they go on one channell or one on each
3. Can I keep the data on my current drive or will it be zapped?
4. If I decide its not worth the hassle, can I go back to just one drive without data loss ?
5. any other advice welcome

Thanks


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[Lars_Coleman]

In order to set up a RAID array you define the array and then have to partition and format the volume. So you won't be able to keep the data on your drive if that drive is going to be used in the array.

I have my Promise RAID controller running RAID 0, but I am running three hard drives. One is my boot drive (when I built it I didn't want to lose data), and the other two are on separate cables on the RAID controller. I'm using the array for my swap file, some data storage, and games. I don't know what type of performance I'm getting off of it just because HDTach 2.61 doesn't work with Promise RAID controllers and I just haven't done a bench on it. It has a notciable difference from my boot drive but I just don't know by how much ...

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[FatBurger]

1. I get around 33MB/s with my KT7a-RAID (RAID 0). My drives are right between the 75GXP and the 60GXP. Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60.

2. Set them both as master, on separate channels. That will ensure the best performance.

3. No (except with RAID 1).

4. With RAID 1, I'm pretty sure you can. With RAID 0, no.

5. Stripe size should preferably be 64k. Larger for large files (if you do video editing), smaller for smaller files (like if you are an icon designer :-Þ

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[Lars_Coleman]

Bummer man. You only get 33MB/sec on your RAID. I get 36MB/sec on just my boot drive on the motherboard controller. I'm not sure with my RAID array at this point but I will soon find out cause I came accross HDTach 2.60.

Check it ::: <A HREF="http://home.earthlink.net/~larscoleman/benchnew.html" target="_new"><font color=blue>Click it</font color=blue></A>

<font color=red>BIOS updates do wonders ....</font color=red>

 

[FatBurger]

What drives do you have? I WILL beat you
BTW, that's from Sandra, not HDTach. I'll run HDTach before and after I format to install XP.

My entire suite of benchmarks are <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/fattyburger/benchmarks.html" target="_new">here</A> if you're interested. They might not be totally current, but pretty close.

Oh, I checked out the page again...my memory scores are about 200 higher than that now.

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[Lars_Coleman]

I have all Maxtor drives from the Diamond Max Plus 60 series. I have about five of them ...

<font color=red>BIOS updates do wonders ....</font color=red>

 

[FatBurger]

ROFL
Well no wonder. You can't compare 5 drives in a RAID 0 with two.

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[Lars_Coleman]

Misunderstanding I think. I only have three in this system right now. I have five of those drives from that series. Not all in an Array. Two sitting, I'm booting off of one not in the array, and the other two are used for the swap file, data storage, and games.

Sorry man! LOL

<font color=red>BIOS updates do wonders ....</font color=red>

 

[FatBurger]

Oh well. I'll be doing plenty of tweaking this weekend, I'm sure. Hopefully I can get a new BIOS and some new Via's

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[CALV]

Thanks for the replies all, unfortunately I couldnt get the new hdd as someting came up , looking at getting one in the next week or so though, I'll benchmark my current drive (40 gig deskstar 60) and see what Im currently gettting.


Next time you wave - use all your fingers