Enter The Matrix: Slice out and get the best part from your hard drives

[freeagent]

not to shabby for a straight raid0 setup

If you dont have all of your stuff isntalled, and have an extra few minutes to reinstall windows, make your first slice at 100gb, and leave the rest for whatever, i use the second slice for my game program files

you should see an improvement that will make you giggle

 

[fritzman]

There I think you should be able to review my current results that I get with write back cache enabled

Good work. As said above... you'll be surprised once you get it sliced up. Access times will drop and it will feel a bit more snappy.

 

[Baby3ater666]

What stripe size do use Freeagent? I might go with 120GB RAID 0 for my games and OS since I got like 20 of them but I only play a few like CoD4, good ol' Crysis and some others Installing my games on the RAID 0 would be logical right? Faster load times = awesomeness!

 

[fritzman]

What stripe size do use Freeagent? I might go with 120GB RAID 0 for my games and OS since I got like 20 of them but I only play a few like CoD4, good ol' Crysis and some others Installing my games on the RAID 0 would be logical right? Faster load times = awesomeness!

128kb is the default. It will be fine, but you could try 64kb and see if it makes a difference. Just do a basic quick install and bench, then redo with the other and compare.

 

[Baby3ater666]

I'm going to go along with what you said fritz and see which way yields better results but I'll have to wait till I get home unfortunately

 

[Baby3ater666]

Hey guys well here's my results from using a 128k size strip. What do you guys think?

 

[Baby3ater666]

Should I partition my RAID 1 drive now or should I wait and see if a lower strip size is better?

 

[fritzman]

Holy Kamoley... look at that access time! 5.7ms. That's awesome.

I would experiment before setting up the raid1.

That's gonna be pretty hard to beat though.

Is that with Winows7? Which version?

 

[Baby3ater666]

Nope using Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 x64! So what you think I should quickly try and go with a 64k strip? What else do you think I should I try before finalizing everything?

 

[freeagent]

See

Skip the raid1 and just run a 0/0 slice

 

[fritzman]

Nope using Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 x64! So what you think I should quickly try and go with a 64k strip? What else do you think I should I try before finalizing everything?

I would, just because now is the time to test it and see if it's better in your case...

If you intend to go Windows 7... I would be installing that now rather than Vista, but for Vista... that's a great result.

 

[Baby3ater666]

Do you think I'll get noticably better performance on Win 7? Would using RAID 1 for the other array really benefit my setup at all or should make it a RAID 0 as well? I understand what RAID 1 is but how will it benefit my RAID 0 array? After your reply I might have a go try at using a 64k stripe. I might go with Win 7.

 

[fritzman]

Do you think I'll get noticably better performance on Win 7? Would using RAID 1 for the other array really benefit my setup at all or should make it a RAID 0 as well? I understand what RAID 1 is but how will it benefit my RAID 0 array? After your reply I might have a go try at using a 64k stripe. I might go with Win 7.

I think it's definitely worth trying, esp as you are at this stage... it runs a whole lot more like XP and doesn't have all the extra baggage that Vista does, so yes... I believe it will be quicker, esp in bootup & loadup times, and that's what you're after.

Raid0 or raid1 for the 2nd part is really up to you... I suggested raid1, as if you have 1 drive take a dive, you still have the stuff from the raid1 part. For me... I have an identical drive to my C drive as the 1st part of my raid10, so if I drop a drive, I can boot to it and carry on. If you did that with your raid1, you could do the same.

Either way, you must have a decent backup source aside of your arrays, for all the stuff you can't be without.

 

[freeagent]

64k works alright, i did not see too much of a difference useing it, i think i gained a little in the access time, but lost a little in the str, or maybe it was the other way around? i cant remeber.

i just ran that test, you can see i made my windows slice a touch too big



i like the space tho, i should try 104gb. i like to take my total space, and divide it by an even number, like say 4, or 6, etc.. so in my case, i went against my better judgement, and used an odd number (3), but if i used say 419.2 / 6, then that would put me down into the 6.6ms range

 

[Baby3ater666]

Alright well I'm going to do a Windows 7 install then Think I should stick with the 128k size or should I try 64k? idk I'm going to try 128k with 7. I don't want to go too low with my HD space for my games and whatnot. Might try 100GB and see if that benefits at all, do you guys think it will?

 

[fritzman]

Alright well I'm going to do a Windows 7 install then Think I should stick with the 128k size or should I try 64k? idk I'm going to try 128k with 7. I don't want to go too low with my HD space for my games and whatnot. Might try 100GB and see if that benefits at all, do you guys think it will?

I think you're on the money... 100Gb / 128kb / Raid0 / W7, and decide about the remainder later.

 

[bing]

Hi folks,

Just to pop up here for an offtopic matters.

Just knew from a PM that this particular thread is now stuck in the new section in this forum called : Achievements - The Show-Off Forum

Thanks to all contributors in building this wonderful thread. (Also big thanks to the generous Fritzman as well )

 

[Baby3ater666]

Alright Fritz I'll give it a shot and see how it plays out with Win 7 and the numbers you suggested. Will post results .

 

[Baby3ater666]

Here's the results guys Win 7 x64.

 

[freeagent]

sick!