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- Nov 23, 2005
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- Reading, PA
I boot in about 10 seconds as well..... 
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Enter The Matrix: Slice out and get the best part from your hard drives
- Thread starter bing
- Start date
- Thread Starter
- #62
M Diddy said:Well, I decided to give it a shot.... Not that complicated for me as I deal with Mid Range servers on a daily basis and know my fair share about RAID.
I set up a 50GB RAID 0 and the other 125 to RAID one.... I'll let the pic speak for it's self.....
Great result !
Waiting to see after you applied few tweaks using this TuneXP, check my few posts back, it delivers lower CPU and higher burst ! Please use this HD Tune to see the seek map too, at least you can show how are your WD perform at those tight area.
10 secs boot time ? Might getting better after the tweak !
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i updated to the intel matrix 6.1 and right clicked on the arrays and write back was disabled, so i enabled it on both arrays...hard to say if it was enabled before the update, but i could swear that it appeared to be.....anyways, here is my latest hdtach
- Thread Starter
- #65
G2145 said:
Hey G2145, congrats, finally you crossed that 1GBps barrier !
Seems like it was a major changes at this new version, I guess Intel has just enabled that secret switch to boost the link from NB to SB !
Although it was just pure HD buffer to main memory and no mechanical, still curious how it managed to exceed that theoritical Sata speed ? And beats PCI-E Raid controller burst like the expensive Areca 1230 ?
Got similiar result from an old German c't Magazine benchmark program H2bench that known to be consistent, try it here -> H2bench für Windows V3.6 , fyi it is a console/text mode proggy no nice GUI but quite detail and convincing (at least for me).
Psstt.. that burst is OC-able ! M Diddy got > 2GBps !
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- Thread Starter
- #67
Latest windows driver and the console both are version 6.0.0.1022 and my bios rom option is "v5.6.2.1002 ICH7R wRAID5" at the top line of Intel bios screen when Ctrl-I pressed at bios post period.
But I think that bios rom has nothing to do with the performance since it is there just to manage raid configuration pre OS installation or during recovery procress, while for utilization and optimization will be taken care by the driver and the matrix console.
Those benchies number doesn't mean anything, the only matter is did you experience any significant difference before & after driver update ? Like boot time or others ?
But I think that bios rom has nothing to do with the performance since it is there just to manage raid configuration pre OS installation or during recovery procress, while for utilization and optimization will be taken care by the driver and the matrix console.
Those benchies number doesn't mean anything, the only matter is did you experience any significant difference before & after driver update ? Like boot time or others ?
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haven't timed it yet...but as far as i can tell, probably very little difference....
it takes me about 1 minute 5 seconds to boot from the very first appearance of the POST screen to the point of the HD activity light stops and i have done a lot of trimming, but haven't trimmed every service or program from starting...TuneXP may have helped a little, but nothing spectacular....
it takes me about 1 minute 5 seconds to boot from the very first appearance of the POST screen to the point of the HD activity light stops and i have done a lot of trimming, but haven't trimmed every service or program from starting...TuneXP may have helped a little, but nothing spectacular....
- Thread Starter
- #71
ajrettke said:
Yep, its still a mystery and all benchmarks I've done from low level to high level synthetic one shows above theoritical Sata 3GBps bandwidth per Sata port !
This weird burst is getting crazier since driver version 6, forget that 1.3GBps, look at M Diddy result, it was above 2GBps.
Anyway, it is the average/sustained speed and seek time improvements using narrow space for raid 0 that is interesting.
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- Canberra, Down Under
Simple: it's not measuring the burst speed to the SATA drive. It's measuring the burst speed out of the Intel (software) RAID driver, which is probably pretty close to memcpy speed. So it's not at all surprising that you're seeing multi-GB/sec speeds. However these speeds have just as much relevance as SATA burst speeds to actual performance (ie: none).
- Thread Starter
- #73
I was guessing that as well since that burst number was "OC-able" ! LOL
Maybe Intel use the advantage of the tight integration between their own build south bridge ICH to north bridge to gain or use the bandwidth efficiently.
Since its free and the most important is it doesn't impact much on the CPU & memory, I would say it ain't hurt to enable it.
Maybe Intel use the advantage of the tight integration between their own build south bridge ICH to north bridge to gain or use the bandwidth efficiently.
Since its free and the most important is it doesn't impact much on the CPU & memory, I would say it ain't hurt to enable it.
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2003
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- Canberra, Down Under
It doesn't even get as far as the sourth bridge. What happens is that the RAID driver (since it's all software) uses the system memory as a cache. I'm not 100% sure how HDTach etc measure the burst speed, but if it's in the usual fashon (utilising the read-ahead caching on the disk) then it's quite probable that it's hitting the RAID driver cache (since it's designed to hit the HDD cache), and not even going anywhere near the disks.
A similar thing happens if you configure hardware RAID adapters in a particular way (usually different to their normal configuration, since normally they focus on maximising throughput on many concurrent requests not sequential speed). You can get burst rates of close to 500MB/sec from an ancient clunker of a disk if the controller is sitting in a 64-bit 66MHz slot - even more if it's in a PCI-X or PCIe slot.
That said, I personally wouldn't bother with turning on writeback cache for a RAID1 or RAID0 array, especially if it's software RAID (like Intel's matrix RAID). You just end up caching the data twice - once at the OS filesystem level and once at the RAID driver level. In addition, you increase the chance of losing data (hardware RAID has BBUs for a reason ...). While it might make some particular benchmark numbers bigger, it'll probably very slightly slow down real-world performance overall. Writeback cache is really only important if you're running RAID5 or similar where it's expensive to do partial stripe writes. OTOH, if you've got hardware RAID, then you've got the RAM sitting there so you might as well use it: at one time last year I had a computer with 128MB RAM which had a RAID card with 256MB RAM
A similar thing happens if you configure hardware RAID adapters in a particular way (usually different to their normal configuration, since normally they focus on maximising throughput on many concurrent requests not sequential speed). You can get burst rates of close to 500MB/sec from an ancient clunker of a disk if the controller is sitting in a 64-bit 66MHz slot - even more if it's in a PCI-X or PCIe slot.
That said, I personally wouldn't bother with turning on writeback cache for a RAID1 or RAID0 array, especially if it's software RAID (like Intel's matrix RAID). You just end up caching the data twice - once at the OS filesystem level and once at the RAID driver level. In addition, you increase the chance of losing data (hardware RAID has BBUs for a reason ...). While it might make some particular benchmark numbers bigger, it'll probably very slightly slow down real-world performance overall. Writeback cache is really only important if you're running RAID5 or similar where it's expensive to do partial stripe writes. OTOH, if you've got hardware RAID, then you've got the RAM sitting there so you might as well use it: at one time last year I had a computer with 128MB RAM which had a RAID card with 256MB RAM
- Thread Starter
- #75
emboss said:
Tried HDTach, HDTune, Atto, PCMark05, Sisoftware Sandra, H2Bench all are showing similiar result that it is "a lot" better with write cache enabled.
Seems like all those benchies were "fooled" by this Intel's stuff, any idea for this noob on what is the better or best benchmark program that you recommended to "properly" benchmark and hopefully will show the "truth" ?
Fyi, I backed out from using IOMeter to test it since it is not relevant nor realistic for a desktop class to have a massive requests bombardment like server does.
Spotted an Areca 1230 PCI-E with 1GB cache burst speed (cache to main memory without mechanical involvment) with lot of disks on RAID 0, which is still below 800MBps, what is this means ? Poorly configured one ? or Areca is a fake raid too ?
That said, I personally wouldn't bother with turning on writeback cache for a RAID1 or RAID0 array, especially if it's software RAID (like Intel's matrix RAID). You just end up caching the data twice - once at the OS filesystem level and once at the RAID driver level. In addition, you increase the chance of losing data (hardware RAID has BBUs for a reason ...). While it might make some particular benchmark numbers bigger, it'll probably very slightly slow down real-world performance overall. Writeback cache is really only important if you're running RAID5 or similar where it's expensive to do partial stripe writes. OTOH, if you've got hardware RAID, then you've got the RAM sitting there so you might as well use it: at one time last year I had a computer with 128MB RAM which had a RAID card with 256MB RAM
Again, please suggest any other benchmark program or tricks that I'm not aware of ? I will be happy to test it out & report it here, and hopefully to bust this Intel gimmick !
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2003
- Location
- Canberra, Down Under
bing said:
Easy: just ignore the burst speed. Burst speed is irrelevant in any case, so it's not like you're losing any useful information. Normal I/O (such as sustained reads, or PCMark benches, etc etc) will be unaffected by the high burst speed (ie: driver caching).
bing said:
It just means that you can move 1 GB/sec between the card's memory and main memory. This is not surprising - the 1230 uses the Intel IOP333, which has sitting between the PCIe and memory controller a PCI-X bus (133MHz, 64 bits). This means that you can move 1066 MB/sec between the memory and the PCIe interface which ... surprisingly ... is what you get
You could have any disk you like connected to that and you'll always get the same burst speed (which is precisely why burst speed is useless).This is exactly what I was meaning when I mentioned that you could get insane burst speed with old disks with a RAID card.
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2006
Hi There
Im in the process of building a new rig and was really torn on hard drives like wether to a raptor or raid 0 some sata drives. i got to a point that i was just going to get one 320GB seagate and leave it at thyat since i couldnt justify the cost of a raptor and the thought of losing all my data from a raid 0 worried me. Though now i see this Matrix raid which would alow me to have the benifits of raid 0, and still have some protection. I do have a couple questions though...
first off, roughly what percentage of the drive is considered fast? Im now planing on getting 2 250's (like you have ) and was curious what the rough max of that raid 0 partition could be before it gets into the slower part of the disk.
Secondly would it be possible to use a program such as norton ghost to back up the raid 0 partition onto the raid 1 partition so when the raid 0 fails and i lose that data, i could restore it again?
and thirdly im assuming the intel matrix raid only works on intel chipset boards such as a Asus P5W DH Deluxe and not on other chipsets such as the up comming nforce5 boards, is this assumption correct?
so my general plan would be to get as much as i could onto the raid 0 partition, since i dont usually have hundreds of gigs of stuff on my computer, and try to back up it all up on the raid 0 partition if thats possible.
Thanks alot in advance for your help
Im in the process of building a new rig and was really torn on hard drives like wether to a raptor or raid 0 some sata drives. i got to a point that i was just going to get one 320GB seagate and leave it at thyat since i couldnt justify the cost of a raptor and the thought of losing all my data from a raid 0 worried me. Though now i see this Matrix raid which would alow me to have the benifits of raid 0, and still have some protection. I do have a couple questions though...
first off, roughly what percentage of the drive is considered fast? Im now planing on getting 2 250's (like you have ) and was curious what the rough max of that raid 0 partition could be before it gets into the slower part of the disk.
Secondly would it be possible to use a program such as norton ghost to back up the raid 0 partition onto the raid 1 partition so when the raid 0 fails and i lose that data, i could restore it again?
and thirdly im assuming the intel matrix raid only works on intel chipset boards such as a Asus P5W DH Deluxe and not on other chipsets such as the up comming nforce5 boards, is this assumption correct?
so my general plan would be to get as much as i could onto the raid 0 partition, since i dont usually have hundreds of gigs of stuff on my computer, and try to back up it all up on the raid 0 partition if thats possible.
Thanks alot in advance for your help
- Thread Starter
- #78
1st of all, wellcome to OcF !
Same here, don't feel that Raptor can make it worth for the money after seeing this Seagate performs especially with matrix raid.
Hey, I got 8 ms seek time and 160MBps sustained speed, not bad compared to Raptor with that investment right ?
Well, if you see my previous post #55 here -> How much is enough ? , it is obvious that the best part is from 0B to about 50GB region, since the sustained/average transfer is still at their best approx. at 150-160 MBps, and if you watch closely, starting at position above 50GB area, its starting to decrease down to the slowest & sh*tiest part at the end about 80MBps.
Of course it will depends heavily on how big your OS "and" all your programs files will consumed ? Also don't forget the pagefile too and some spare 5 to 10 GB is enough imho.
For me, since I'm broke he..he.., actually I'm planning to make it 3 drives in near future by adding one more drive. Current setup for the Raid 0 (C:drive) is 40GB taken 20GB from each drive which is enough at this moment, while leaving about 250-20 = 230 GB left each, this 230GB each is now on Raid 1 for protection.
Yep, its a waste since it is raid 1, but this will change once I add another drive, it will increase the Raid 0 up to 60 GB, again still 20GB from each drive but it will increase the sustained speed to approx. 240MBps, while for existing 2 drives Raid 1 will be converted to Raid 5, and it will be more efficient, since on raid 5 simple calculation, that will make about 230GB x (3 drives - 1) = whopping 460GB which more than enough for me.
That was the 1st thing when I knew this matrix raid, I tested out and find it is easy to recover from single drive failure.
I just want to sleep well every night without worrying that important stuffs hanging in the middle of the drive right ? Sounds familiar ?
Forget bout that expensive Ghost, I use the freeware DriveXML and made a scheduled on midnight to make the boot/system drive (Raid 0) image to the Raid 1 drive. I tried so many times simulating a disaster for single drive failure by formating one of the drive and hook it up again and restoring the image.
Just read throughout my posts there, I remember mentioned that I only needed 15-30 minutes to restore my C: drive complete with OS+program files !
Of course with an assumption that the replacement drive is alrready in place ! Please remember this in setting your expectation before using this matrix raid !
I heavily recommend that you grab DriveXL and BartPE for cheap & easy recovery. Made the BartPE boot CD embedded with the Intel Raid driver + DriveXML in it, and placed that CD inside the PC case, just incase got problem in lan party !
Well, just see my "validated" PCMark05 score, especially for start up, encryption & compress and compare it to OcF champions. Anyway I got 10 seconds XP boot time, isn't that fast enough and worth for my lowly cheap < $600 rig ? And yet I'm still using the yucky onboard VGA ! he..he.. yeah I don't play games.
Ditto as above, recovery process is easy, "BUT" I suggest you the 1st thing to do is "practice" and "simulate" your self before really using it. It should not take too long, I spent few hours on it and I feel like an expert now for Matrix Raid recovery process.
Of course, don't forget the capture & save the drive image in the 1st place.
Making the drive image for 40GB content out of 60 GB driveat Raid 0 and transferred to Raid 1 volume takes bout 10 to 15 minutes with DriveXML at normal compression level.
My pleasure, if you don't mind after you set it up, please share your result & experience here.
Variable2212 said:
Same here, don't feel that Raptor can make it worth for the money after seeing this Seagate performs especially with matrix raid.
Hey, I got 8 ms seek time and 160MBps sustained speed, not bad compared to Raptor with that investment right ?
first off, roughly what percentage of the drive is considered fast? Im now planing on getting 2 250's (like you have
Well, if you see my previous post #55 here -> How much is enough ? , it is obvious that the best part is from 0B to about 50GB region, since the sustained/average transfer is still at their best approx. at 150-160 MBps, and if you watch closely, starting at position above 50GB area, its starting to decrease down to the slowest & sh*tiest part at the end about 80MBps.
Of course it will depends heavily on how big your OS "and" all your programs files will consumed ? Also don't forget the pagefile too and some spare 5 to 10 GB is enough imho.
For me, since I'm broke he..he.., actually I'm planning to make it 3 drives in near future by adding one more drive. Current setup for the Raid 0 (C:drive) is 40GB taken 20GB from each drive which is enough at this moment, while leaving about 250-20 = 230 GB left each, this 230GB each is now on Raid 1 for protection.
Yep, its a waste since it is raid 1, but this will change once I add another drive, it will increase the Raid 0 up to 60 GB, again still 20GB from each drive but it will increase the sustained speed to approx. 240MBps, while for existing 2 drives Raid 1 will be converted to Raid 5, and it will be more efficient, since on raid 5 simple calculation, that will make about 230GB x (3 drives - 1) = whopping 460GB which more than enough for me.
That was the 1st thing when I knew this matrix raid, I tested out and find it is easy to recover from single drive failure.
I just want to sleep well every night without worrying that important stuffs hanging in the middle of the drive right ? Sounds familiar ?
Forget bout that expensive Ghost, I use the freeware DriveXML and made a scheduled on midnight to make the boot/system drive (Raid 0) image to the Raid 1 drive. I tried so many times simulating a disaster for single drive failure by formating one of the drive and hook it up again and restoring the image.
Just read throughout my posts there, I remember mentioned that I only needed 15-30 minutes to restore my C: drive complete with OS+program files !
Of course with an assumption that the replacement drive is alrready in place ! Please remember this in setting your expectation before using this matrix raid !
I heavily recommend that you grab DriveXL and BartPE for cheap & easy recovery. Made the BartPE boot CD embedded with the Intel Raid driver + DriveXML in it, and placed that CD inside the PC case, just incase got problem in lan party !
Well, just see my "validated" PCMark05 score, especially for start up, encryption & compress and compare it to OcF champions. Anyway I got 10 seconds XP boot time, isn't that fast enough and worth for my lowly cheap < $600 rig ? And yet I'm still using the yucky onboard VGA ! he..he.. yeah I don't play games.
Ditto as above, recovery process is easy, "BUT" I suggest you the 1st thing to do is "practice" and "simulate" your self before really using it. It should not take too long, I spent few hours on it and I feel like an expert now for Matrix Raid recovery process.
Of course, don't forget the capture & save the drive image in the 1st place.
Making the drive image for 40GB content out of 60 GB driveat Raid 0 and transferred to Raid 1 volume takes bout 10 to 15 minutes with DriveXML at normal compression level.
My pleasure, if you don't mind after you set it up, please share your result & experience here.
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- Thread Starter
- #79
Update :
GOOD NEWS !
Especially for you who are worrying whether mobo failure will loose your important stuffs in the matrix raid array ? You should stop worrying from now !
Last few days, been through the upgrade process from my current mobo Asus P5LD2-VM DH to Asus P5B Deluxe Wifi. CPU still on D805, and waiting for "The Next Big OC Chip" next year or even kentsfield at this q4.
The matrix raid disks array Raid 0 + 1, which was created at the old mobo 945G chipset with ICH7 southbridge are just working fine when plugged directly at this new P965 with ICH8R.
Didn't even care bout the drive to port assignment, just plugged at port 1 and 5 and it just works.
Those two volumes was readable using BartPE boot CD with embedded matrix driver when they were plugged at the new mobo for the 1st time.
As expected, the OS which was at the raid 0 couldn't boot properly since it was totally on new platform with different mobo & GFX ! Instead of going through the tedious Windows Safe Mode for recovery, I decided to do the clean OS install at Raid 0 system drive.
Of course the most important thing is all my stuff in the Raid 1 volume is safe and untouched.
Will update the performance different once I settled witht this new mobo.
GOOD NEWS !
Especially for you who are worrying whether mobo failure will loose your important stuffs in the matrix raid array ? You should stop worrying from now !
Last few days, been through the upgrade process from my current mobo Asus P5LD2-VM DH to Asus P5B Deluxe Wifi. CPU still on D805, and waiting for "The Next Big OC Chip" next year or even kentsfield at this q4.
The matrix raid disks array Raid 0 + 1, which was created at the old mobo 945G chipset with ICH7 southbridge are just working fine when plugged directly at this new P965 with ICH8R.
Didn't even care bout the drive to port assignment, just plugged at port 1 and 5 and it just works.
Those two volumes was readable using BartPE boot CD with embedded matrix driver when they were plugged at the new mobo for the 1st time.
As expected, the OS which was at the raid 0 couldn't boot properly since it was totally on new platform with different mobo & GFX ! Instead of going through the tedious Windows Safe Mode for recovery, I decided to do the clean OS install at Raid 0 system drive.
Of course the most important thing is all my stuff in the Raid 1 volume is safe and untouched.
Will update the performance different once I settled witht this new mobo.
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