Hardware RAID VS Software RAID - issues

Joeteck · Apr 22, 2009

I've been a fan of Matrix raid for some time. Real impressed with the speed.

Just recently I picked up a 3ware 9690SA-8i controller.

Would you believe that the Matrix raid is faster, MUCH faster than hardware RAID??

I'm not pleased with this card at all. I wanted to move to a Dual PCI-E board where I can put this baby in for some real speed, but its not working out as expected.

I've ran all three types of hard drive benchmarking.

HD tune
HD tach and
HD_speed

HD_speed is the only one that comes close to what the throughput should be with the 3ware..

Screen shots coming..

Charr · Apr 22, 2009

What slot was the card in when you were benchmarking it?

DEZMOND · Apr 22, 2009

Are you running identical drives in both setups?

Joeteck · Apr 22, 2009

DEZMOND said:
Are you running identical drives in both setups?

Yes... Thats the strange part. and same computer. Using the other 16x PCI-e slot

asus mobo P5WDG2 Pro

Joeteck · Apr 22, 2009

Here is the 3ware 9690SA-8i RAID card...

Joeteck · Apr 22, 2009

Ok, here is the Matrix RAID setup 4 x 80gig SATA II

hank123 · Apr 22, 2009

something cant be right. That thing should smoke.

Charr · Apr 22, 2009

Is the card getting locked into 1x bandwitdh? If you have a PCI video card, its worth giving it a shot.

Joeteck · Apr 23, 2009

Charr said:
Is the card getting locked into 1x bandwitdh? If you have a PCI video card, its worth giving it a shot.

I did just that, still no change... How do I change the PCI-e slot speed? Did not know it was changeable.

fritzman · Apr 24, 2009

Joeteck said:
I did just that, still no change... How do I change the PCI-e slot speed? Did not know it was changeable.

I think he means rip out your nice PCI-Express video card from your 16x PCI-Express slot, and put the 3Ware into that, while you run graphics off a PCI graphics card... or is that what you did? AFAIK the speed of the slots is determined by the design of the board.

JCLW · Apr 25, 2009

Matrix RAID is not software RAID. Software RAID would be using the Windows RAID function (found in server versions of Windows). You could call Matrix RAID "dumb" since it doesn't have it's own processor, but it is still hardware RAID.

Can you post ATTO screenshots please? http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1137/ATTO_Disk_Benchmark_v2.34.html

DEZMOND · Apr 26, 2009

Joeteck said:
Yes... Thats the strange part. and same computer. Using the other 16x PCI-e slot

asus mobo P5WDG2 Pro

I have the same board, but the ws-pro version.I just put a standard pci vid card in,hd2400,seems good and stable.

MongGrel · Apr 26, 2009

Technically I guess, on the Matrix one.

Does have a chip for it I guess, use both flavors myself and pretty much always though of it as software Raid here. On-board RAID would be more accurate I guess.

Not sure but I'd assume the board is a P35 chip just from the name, had a P45 chipset Asus board in here and had to go to a X48 chipset on the current one to get my old 1210 to run right with the card.

Yeah, some chipset's will default down on the PCI-E slots speed wise and fudge things up.

Joeteck · Apr 26, 2009

Intel Matrix RAID is software raid since it does not have a dedicated CPU for disk IO. If you look at the screen shots I posted notice 0% cpu used but its slow as crap. However I did rip out my 8600GTS and slapped in my 9690SA RAID card ($600). and the free software Matrix RAID blew the doors off of it.

BoT · Apr 26, 2009

Intel MATRIX is not a software raid. it is hardware and is provided and powered by your south bridge/ ICH. it's loaded before any software and BIOS.
It's onboard raid compared to a dedicated raid.
It's not the same .. not even close to software raid.

i would also say that the communication over the pci-e is not running properly.
if you have a second slot, try switching the cards. your video should fine on the second slot for testing purposes.
also check if you have the caches enabled when the raid card is setup. different raid controllers react different to cache enabled drives.

Neuromancer · Apr 26, 2009

The slow burst speed is because write back cahing is not enabled. Dunno about on XP, but in Vista you can go into device manager and select your storage device and it should be listed in there to enable both levels of it. I would suspect that it is possible to di it in XP as well.

Joeteck · Apr 27, 2009

Neur0mancer said:
The slow burst speed is because write back cahing is not enabled. Dunno about on XP, but in Vista you can go into device manager and select your storage device and it should be listed in there to enable both levels of it. I would suspect that it is possible to di it in XP as well.

Actually thats with 512MB cache turned on...

BoT, all ICH south bridges don't have that kind of power...so its software RAID. Nothing bad about it.. Does a great job for a software RAID solution. If you can provide true data to prove what you're saying, then I'll read what you read to make you think its hardware. The term "hardware" RAID is because it uses it own on board CPU to process all I/O. The CPU has nothing to do with any I/O for any didcated hardware solution, hence the 0 percent used to give me my results...

EDIT: I just learned something... ICHxR is considered Firmware RAID...neither hardware or software....interesting..

BoT · Apr 27, 2009

the ICH is powerful enough to support raid and it is a processor/ co-processor and so is able to manage it's own tasks.
it's not a software raid because it only uses software to interact with the user not the hardware. a software raid manages the raid and parity through software and a hardware raid through hardware commands. a hardware raid could literally be invisible to a OS while a software raid could not

BoT · Apr 27, 2009

Sofware RAID

well i guess we both were somewhat right .. read

...During early stage bootup the RAID is implemented by the firmware; when a protected-mode operating system kernel such as Linux or a modern version of Microsoft Windows is loaded the drivers take over.
These controllers are described by their manufacturers as RAID controllers, and it is rarely made clear to purchasers that the burden of RAID processing is borne by the host computer's central processing unit, not the RAID controller itself, thus introducing the aforementioned CPU overhead which hardware controllers don't suffer from. Firmware controllers often can only use certain types of hard drives in their RAID arrays (e.g. SATA for Intel Matrix RAID, as there is neither SCSI nor PATA support in modern Intel ICH southbridges; however, motherboard makers implement RAID controllers outside of the southbridge on some motherboards). ...

that's according to wiki

BoT · Apr 27, 2009

this is software RAID according to wiki

Hardware RAID VS Software RAID - issues

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