4x500gb 7200.10 RAID0/5 on ICH9R Benchmarks!

[David_N]

I finally got around to running some benchmarks on my hard drives, below are the results. I hope they help some people decide on their storage setup or at least give some insight.

Setup:

Motherboard: Abit IP35-Pro
RAID Controller: Onboard Intel ICH9R
Drives:
SATA0 - 500gb Seagate 7200.10
SATA1 - 500gb Seagate 7200.10
SATA2 - 500gb Seagate 7200.10
SATA3 - 500gb Seagate 7200.10

The setup is divided in to a 60gb RAID0 Boot drive {C:}, and a 1.32tb RAID5 Storage drive {E:}. Stripe sizes are 128kb on the RAID0, and 64kb on the RAID5.

Tests will be done using Windows XP Professional 32 bit and Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit. Below are the results, I'll leave the analysis up to you for now.


Windows XP Professional 32 bit
Quick Benches (8mb Zones)
60gb RAID0:

1.32tb RAID5:

Long Benches (32mb Zones)
60gb RAID0:

1.32tb RAID5:

Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit
Quick Benches (8mb Zones)
60gb RAID0:


1.32tb RAID5:




Long Benches (32mb Zones)
60gb RAID0:


1.32tb RAID5:



All tests were done with my Q6600 at 3.6ghz (450x8) and ram running 1:1 at 450mhz (4-5-4-11). I hope you found the results interesting and helpful, if you would like to see anything else feel free to ask and I'll do what I can for you. If anything looks out of the ordinary, please point that out too. Feel free to discuss the results below, and thank you for reading

 

[bchur83]

Can you run an ATTO test to show what the write speeds are? I am looking into possibly getting a C2D and using the Raid 5 for a storage server, and am interested in write results.

 

[David_N]

Can you run an ATTO test to show what the write speeds are? I am looking into possibly getting a C2D and using the Raid 5 for a storage server, and am interested in write results.

I certainly can, I'll do that tonight

 

[Albuquerque]

Makes me want to reconsider my 1 x 750 and get 4 x 320's in RAID5

 

[David_N]

Talk about irony... The first drive in the SATA0 port died about ten minutes ago during a quick game of CoD4. This puts my system down, hopefully the warranty is still active on the drive (07/02/07)... I think I have a little time left on it


I'll bring the drive back and have a new one when I come home whether I have to buy it or whether I get it through return, so I'll try and get some ATTO results up for you tomorrow.

 

[theELVISCERATOR]

INSANE scores dude....!

Hey why does my raptor disapeear when I select AHCI mode and I am supposed to?

I am booting off an old drive right now thats IDE (RAPTOR LATE), but thats another sob story...

don't see much about this anywhere...

If I get rid of the IDE can I go AHCI mode? (weird because its on the JMB363 controller I thought).....

arghh..

 

[Vio1]

how fast does your pc feel in real world use? boot time?

 

[David_N]

INSANE scores dude....!

Hey why does my raptor disapeear when I select AHCI mode and I am supposed to?

I am booting off an old drive right now thats IDE (RAPTOR LATE), but thats another sob story...

don't see much about this anywhere...

If I get rid of the IDE can I go AHCI mode? (weird because its on the JMB363 controller I thought).....

arghh..

I haven't had any luck gettign AHCI mode to work under any circumstance. You are right, the AHCI mode is on the JMB controller, it shouldn't hurt you running in IDE mode. I'm actually using my raptor for my pagefile and nothing more... I got it before I discovered the wonders of RAID

how fast does your pc feel in real world use? boot time?

Real world it's snappier than anything I've ever used. The boot screen is gone before the blue bars get a chance to move, I think two sections of one bar show up before the screen disappears.

In CoD4 I haven't been beat while loading maps. Average loading time for a map is between 2 and 3 seconds.


I love it

 

[jmorgan]

Please back up your important stuff, you also have not experienced the problems with matrix raid and I would hate for you to lose your data.

 

[theELVISCERATOR]

I am in AHCI mode running Intel Matrix drivers.....

Just one raptor right now my new 150, but there will be others!

 

[ToddLC]

Nice results, David.

What OS are you running?

Also, what do you have on your boot drive (volume) beyond the OS? Do you back this volume up because of lack of redundancy?

 

[aoch88]

Whats the maximum number of drives for a RAID 0? If the board has 6 SATA connectors then I presume it'll be 6?

 

[Albuquerque]

Nice results, David.

What OS are you running?

Also, what do you have on your boot drive (volume) beyond the OS? Do you back this volume up because of lack of redundancy?

He mentioned it boots before the blue bars get a chance to move, so I'm pretty sure that's XP Professional -- or else it's Win2K but I doubt it

 

[David_N]

Please back up your important stuff, you also have not experienced the problems with matrix raid and I would hate for you to lose your data.

The only info on the boot drive was an install of XP Pro 32bit, CoD4, and 3DMark06. I keep all my important stuff backed up in both the RAID5 and an external setup and across the network if it's really important.

Nice results, David.

What OS are you running?

Also, what do you have on your boot drive (volume) beyond the OS? Do you back this volume up because of lack of redundancy?

XP Pro 32 bit, CoD4 and 3DMark06, nothing important. See above for my backup routine.

Whats the maximum number of drives for a RAID 0? If the board has 6 SATA connectors then I presume it'll be 6?

I haven't attempted anything beyond four droves, so I can't give you an answer, sorry.

He mentioned it boots before the blue bars get a chance to move, so I'm pretty sure that's XP Professional -- or else it's Win2K but I doubt it

Yup, XP Pro 32bit





I returned the broken 500gb drive, and it was dead, I got a new drive on the spot under warranty

Right now I'm installing 64bit Vista Home Premium and giving it another chance. I'll run the same benchmarks in Vista and see if anything changes.

 

[Dice]

These results are very nice!

 

[theELVISCERATOR]

I still think the burst speeds are a glitch of some kind...that ram drive speed...

 

[David_N]

I'm having a hard time finding the install files for my ICH9R controller... When it gets to the point where I need to install the drivers for my RAID, I can't find any on the motherboard CD, and I can't buy any floppy's locally nor does anyone have any near by...

Can anyone point me in the right direction to find the 64bit Vista drivers that will work on a USB drive? Then I can get some more benchmarks up

 

[aja]

I still think the burst speeds are a glitch of some kind...that ram drive speed...

The burst speed typically is an indication of data written to the drive's cache, not the drive platter itself - hence the RAM speeds

 

[theELVISCERATOR]

I'm having a hard time finding the install files for my ICH9R controller... When it gets to the point where I need to install the drivers for my RAID, I can't find any on the motherboard CD, and I can't buy any floppy's locally nor does anyone have any near by...

Can anyone point me in the right direction to find the 64bit Vista drivers that will work on a USB drive? Then I can get some more benchmarks up

go to intels website....

bit tricky but you can find stuff eventually....

I would start with something like ICH9R Vista drivers....

 

[David_N]

I ended up finding them stashed away on an external hard drive, I couldn't find the driver that I needed because my laptop (asus eee... very nice by the way) is running linux, and I'm a total linux noob so I had some issues there...

Anyways, it works, I'm waiting for my RAID5 to rebuild (25 hours left, does that sound right?) and then I'll run some 64bit Vista benchmarks for you all to compare