RAID 0

[orionman]

Hey!
My first post, but i've been reading this site since the begining of the summer.

I have read the FAQ about RAID and I still have a few questions before i make any move.

I'm looking to set up a RAID 0 setup and I want to get few tips from you guys.

here's my rig:
P4C 3Ghz
2x512 MB DC
2x120 GB SATA
MOBO:AOpen AX4SPE-UN i865P
can be seen there: http://usa.aopen.com/Products/mb/AX4SPE-UN;AX4SPE-UN(P).htm

Should I buy a RAID PCI card? will I see any boost for gaming and normal load, ( a bit of audio processing but it's mostly for faster Boot and faster gaming loads...

If you think it may be worth the $$ I'm gonna buy a card probably on this site
www.tigerdirect.ca (yeah I'm from Canada)
so If you any suggestion..

thx!


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Do it

 

[RichPLS]

The fastest and least processor drain RAID anything is with a hardware chip based card. And all cards are not hardware based, first off.
Basically, if you card has 64megs memory, it is hardware based. These typically cost more the $30 a card.
But you will get a boost using onboard RAID, just not as much as hardware...

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[RichPLS]

Last I checked, they are still more than $30 a card, like the ones you suggest from CB.com

I favor <A HREF="http://www.bestpricedv.com/Detail/27314" target="_new"> this one... </A>

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[RichPLS]

You get that <A HREF="http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/UPS_UP.asp" target="_new"> with this! </A>

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[jclw]

The Southbridge ICH5R controller would have been the best option if Aopen had forked out the extra $1 to intel for it.

But as such you'll have to buy one. <A HREF="http://canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=007279&cid=IO.570" target="_new">http://canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=007279&cid=IO.570</A>

*Dual PIII-800 @900 i440BX, Tualeron 1.2 @1.6 i815, Celeron 2.6 330J @4.0 i915, P4 3.4 650 @4.0 i955*

Oh and also, Hardware acceleration and cache is only used for RAID 5. So don't bother looking for a non-RAID 5 card with it.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by jclw on 08/02/05 00:03 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[orionman]

Thx for all the answers, but can you give me more info about tigerdirect.ca? and why is it so bad, Ive seen a lot of post from scottchen and he seems to know his business .

So only Raid 5 cards which are expensive like 200$ are using hardware acceleration ? and if I stay with a Raid0 setup (software since there's no hardware???), will I see a huge CPU usage??
Should I spend 30? 50? 70?? or 200? for that card. Since I already have a SATA controler on my mobo, its nice to have RAID but IF i loose a lot of CPU to get 10% while heavy loading... I'm not sure it is worth it. So if you guys can spot me a good card ( and all agree on one )
it could be nice hehe

Where should I shop online? I should ask Scottchen himself hehe for tigerdirect :O :O


Have a good day


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Do it

 

[emogoch]

The reason good RAID 5 cards are so expensive is that there's a ton of extra processing that happens when you do a write to the disks. See <A HREF="http://"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks#RAID_5"" target="_new">here</A> for some decent info on how RAID 5 works. What causes the system slowdown are the parity information writes and checks. This is where the controller card comes into play. The cards have a processor on them (called an XOR processor) that handles all the partiy calculations without having to take cycles from the CPU.

Tom's has an article <A HREF="http://"http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20041119/"" target="_new">here</A> about running RAID 5 in a pure software mode vs. using a controller card.

However, going back to your original question about RAID 0. RAID 0 doesn't involve all the heavy calculations that RAID 5 has. All that 0 does is split the data in two (or more). I haven't actually speant that much time looking at benchmarks for RAID 0, but my guess would be that there wouldn't be any tangible difference between using RAID 0 on your SATA chipset and having a separate controller card for it (at least not a reasonably priced one). While I'd expect a minor performance hit in processing (unverified, might be handled right in the chipset), your overall disk read and write performance will go up significantly as you're able to read and write data from multiple disks at once as it's still nearly impossible to saturate the I/O busses as compared to the rate that HDD work.

 

[RichPLS]

I favor <A HREF="http://www.bestpricedv.com/Detail/27314" target="_new"> this one... </A>

If you want a 3-port model, it runs about $180.

I have seen no negative reviews on this hardware, and no third party drivers needed, included within XP and is a very stable secure RAID card with powerful XOR engine. You can use three drives and get the speed of a RAID 0 with the security of a RAID 5.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[emogoch]

I'd wait for them to release a version that runs off a PCI-E lane (or 4), as a maxed out RAID 5 (or RAID 0 for that matter) should be able to max out the standard PCI bus. SATA2 would be nice as well. Of course, once all that happens, this card should drop in price too

Wonder if it also supports RAID 0+1?

 

[RichPLS]

Maybe, maybe not on the drop in price. These RAID cards are not nearly so volatile as CPU's and GPU's, and their price seems to be rather static. I would expect in a year, the selling price will be within 10% of what it is now.
In my case, my motherboard is an Gigabyte 8KNXP Ultra-64 and has 2 PCI-x 64-bit slots, so I want the PCI-x version for the added bandwidth now, not later.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[emogoch]

Ya, I wouldn't expect much of a price drop either since it's the XOR that's driving costs up, and they haven't changed in well over 5 years. A price drop is just an added bonus of PCI-E getting released.

Speaking of which, just looking for confirmation: PCI-E is PCI Express, and PCI-X is just an updated version of PCI, or is it the other way around?

 

[RichPLS]

Your right, PCI-X is 64-bit PCI, double the bandwidth and is not for video cards, more designed for servers and RAID cards.
PCI-E is newer.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[jclw]

I've found that any CPU overhead imposed by a southbridge RAID 0 controller is more then balanced by the fact that you don't have any PCI bandwidth or latency issues.

*Dual PIII-800 @900 i440BX, Tualeron 1.2 @1.6 i815, Celeron 2.6 330J @4.0 i915, P4 3.4 650 @4.0 i955*

 

[jclw]

There are PCIe 8x SATA raid cards. LSI makes one. intel rebrands one that LSI makes as well.

My Promise SX4 RAID 5 array maxes out the PCI bus on reads (~100MB/s). It writes consistently at ~60MB/s.

My intel ICH7R southbridge controller will read at nearly 200MB/s with a RAID 5 array, but the writes are pitiful - they'll peak at 40MB/s but most of the time they're around 20~30MB/s.

*Dual PIII-800 @900 i440BX, Tualeron 1.2 @1.6 i815, Celeron 2.6 330J @4.0 i915, P4 3.4 650 @4.0 i955*

 

[jclw]

Sorry for all the posts guys (and girls if applicable), but I hate this forum software.

RAID 5 doesn't really have much use on the desktop. I run a RAID 5 array on my file/media server to store data, and a RAID 0 array on my workstation for OS & Apps.

I find CPU usage when using RAID 0 kind of odd. I don't notice any additional lag when doing anything, but some benchmarking programmes report heavy CPU usage.

My CPU usage is kind of odd, since I'm using EIST. For those who don't know EIST automatically adjusts the CPU voltage and speed (via the multiplier) depending on CPU load. My CPU is an i650 running at 3.3GHz idle and 4.0GHz under load. Chipset is an i955X with the ICH7R southbridge. Drives are four 74GB Raptors.

This is a HDtach bench of my system idle:
<A HREF="http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/2975/idledisk6ji.gif" target="_new">http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/2975/idledisk6ji.gif</A>
18% CPU load. During this bench my CPU remains at 3.3GHz

This is a HDtach bench of my system while running a 4M SuperPI:
<A HREF="http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/5283/loaddisk2cp.gif" target="_new">http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/5283/loaddisk2cp.gif</A>
9% CPU load. During this bench my CPU remains at 4.0GHz

This is a HDtach bench of my system while running a 4M SuperPI with HT disabled in BIOS:
<A HREF="http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/5197/loaddisknoht5be.gif" target="_new">http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/5197/loaddisknoht5be.gif</A>
0% CPU load. During this bench my CPU remains at 4.0GHz

Look at the results however you want, but I don't notice any kind of slowdown when using the RAID 0 array. When I was testing the controller in RAID 5 yes, but not RAID 0.

*Dual PIII-800 @900 i440BX, Tualeron 1.2 @1.6 i815, Celeron 2.6 330J @4.0 i915, P4 3.4 650 @4.0 i955*

 

[orionman]

Once again, thx for your posts.
Okay, I decded to not spend 180 USD on a RAID5 card
And by the way, I don't have any RAID feature on my southbridge and my MoBo is AGP, so no PCI-E. I must admit I'm lost, I just can't figure out what the last benchmarks mean. So can someone translate? Don't forget I'm only looking for RAID 0 not 5. As I said, it's mostly for gaming and audio processing.

thx
Orion


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Do it

 

[emogoch]

Right, getting back on topic.

For RAID 0, you won't need an expensive controller card, just a reasonable one that has the features you want (I've never looked into it, so I can't offer any suggestions). The other part that others will be able to tell you that I won't is how to get your system to properly handle booting from HDD's connected thru the controller card, as it's not as simple as having drives connected thru the IDE or onboard SATA connections.

 

[emogoch]

They may be software, but you're not going to take a large performance it, especially when compared to the I/O gain. The only real disadvantage of using any RAID 0 solution is the 'unreliability' of the system, where you are significantly increasing your risks. I won't disagree that hardware is better, and you get what you pay for, but I'm just saying that so long as your run your CPU at 100%, 24/7, you're more likely going to notice the I/O increase than the performance hit. Especially since a consideration for this is to load game levels faster.

 

[RichPLS]

Should not be more than 2 to 3%

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[RichPLS]

Hardware raid does that.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[orionman]

OK good
So between cheap cards, there's no difference at all?? or there is something I should look for?
I've read something like, I wont be able to boot from a Software RAID disk? is that true??
I only have 2 disks.


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Do it

 

[RichPLS]

Not true, you can boot from software only RAID cards or software onboard RAID's.
The only difference being CPU usage and compatibility transferring array to another machine.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[orionman]

Nice,
i'll check this out and come back with a specific model to have your final ''Do it'' stamp.



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Do it

 

[mozzartusm]

What about on-board Raid?

ASUS P5WD2 Premium
Intel 3.73 EE @ 5.6Ghz
XMS2 DDR2 @ 1180Mhz

<A HREF="http://valid.x86-secret.com/records.php?PHPSESSID=792e8f49d5d9b8a4d1ad6f40ca029756" target="_new">#2 CPUZ</A>
SuperPI 25secs

 

[orionman]

???
explane


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Do it