RAID 0 questions....

[Mycobacteria]

My MB is P5N32 SLI SE, and I want to create a RAID 0.

Question 1: There are TWO inbuilt raid controllers on this MB!??!?! Which one should I use (I want the faster more reliable one): The nvidia RAID controller or the Silicon Image Serial ATA RAID controller???

Question 2: Once I create the RAID 0.... I noticed I can no longer see the SMART status or check the individual HD for errors using the Western Digital Data Lifeguard program. How do I get around this without breaking my RAID array?

Question 3: What stripe size should I use (I want it fast for games and loading up windows) I have the choice of either 8, 16, 32, 64 or 128?

Question 4: How do I know that my RAID 0 is any faster than my old normal setup. Because so far I havent noticed any difference at all. Eg it still takes about the same amout of time to format, games dont seem to play any faster, I dont feel that windows loads up any faster either.

 

[tuskenraider]

1. Probably won't matter much performance-wise, but I'd say the SI. Definately worth testing yourself if you can.

2. You can't.

3. I use 32K as a happy median. I've never noticed a performance difference having tried them all on various onboard controllers. There are some controllers that seem to prefer certain stripes, but not with your controllers that I've seen.

4. You may very well get no benefit but higher file transfer rates which doesn't equate to quicker OS/app performance. RAID will almost never make gameplay faster though it could improve program launch time and maybe level loads by minute amounts. Only way to verify improvement would be timing bootup and the programs you use with a stopwatch. You would need an imaging program to image your OS/app install on your RAID setup and then to a single drive to do a fair and accurate timing comparison.

 

[Mycobacteria]

My reflexes are kinda slow for stop watch, and I'm a bit lazy at the moment.

The format should be faster with a RAID 0 shouldnt it??

 

[tuskenraider]

My reflexes are kinda slow for stop watch, and I'm a bit lazy at the moment.

The format should be faster with a RAID 0 shouldnt it??

No, RAID0's benefit is spitting files so they can be read faster. You have twice the space to format with two drives, so twice as long.

 

[Mycobacteria]

Sorry I should make myself more clear, I have two 150GB raptors in RAID 0

Will the RAID 0 format 150 GB woth of HD space faster than a single raptor formatting 150Gb?

 

[boox2]

300gb will take alot longer than 150gb. myself i always use the quick format in xp setup or from windows,
as it works just fine.

 

[tuskenraider]

Sorry I should make myself more clear, I have two 150GB raptors in RAID 0

Will the RAID 0 format 150 GB woth of HD space faster than a single raptor formatting 150Gb?

No. RAID's benefit doesn't occur until a file structure is in place and there are actual files on it. The amount of time to format a drive will be the same no mattter what configuration it's in.

 

[youngbuck]

With your config I'd go with probably a 64k strip, or a 128k.

 

[Mycobacteria]

My theory was: With RAID 0 both HDs would format 1 mb each simultaniously thus in that 1 sec a total of 2mbs has been formatted.

Compare this to 1 HD NOT in RAID in that 1 sec he has only formatted 1 mb. Thus the RAID 0 HDs should theriotically be 2x as fast at formatting... but apparetnly im worng....

Obviously if its not any faster the theory would be:

While formatting a RAID 0 array the first HD is formatting and the second HD is jerkin jack untill its his turn.

Yeah I chose a 64mb stripe size....

 

[sneveTsS]

My theory was: With RAID 0 both HDs would format 1 mb each simultaniously thus in that 1 sec a total of 2mbs has been formatted.

Compare this to 1 HD NOT in RAID in that 1 sec he has only formatted 1 mb. Thus the RAID 0 HDs should theriotically be 2x as fast at formatting... but apparetnly im worng....

Obviously if its not any faster the theory would be:

While formatting a RAID 0 array the first HD is formatting and the second HD is jerkin jack untill its his turn.

Yeah I chose a 64mb stripe size....

Right, but if you have 2x150GB, that's 300GB. If you're formatting your RAID 0 at 2mb/s, it'll take you the same amount of time to format 1x150GB at 1mb/s.

 

[Mycobacteria]

Right, but if you have 2x150GB, that's 300GB. If you're formatting your RAID 0 at 2mb/s, it'll take you the same amount of time to format 1x150GB at 1mb/s.

Ohhhhh okay.... So I sugest this: IF I have a RAID 0 array consisting of two 74Gb Raptors which would = in size to one 150Gb raptor.

Now who can format faster, they both have to format 150gb woth of disc space. But surely the RAID setup would format faster right????

 

[tuskenraider]

Ohhhhh okay.... So I sugest this: IF I have a RAID 0 array consisting of two 74Gb Raptors which would = in size to one 150Gb raptor.

Now who can format faster, they both have to format 150gb woth of disc space. But surely the RAID setup would format faster right????

I tried searching for a definitive answer and couldn't find one. Put this way, an interesting question that made me rethink what I told you above. I do know both drives format together in RAID just for the fact of the noise difference of a single vs. two Raptors formatting in my own rig. The 74GB drives should finish first just based on the fact that they're smaller than a single 150, but they still have 150MB of space to do. What isn't known to me is if the format process happens in some type of order that requires each drive to wait/acknoledge a part of each others disk being formatted in sort of a back and forth operation or they both just independantly format like a single without reguard for the other. Sounds like you have some drives to buy and a test to run for us........

 

[Mycobacteria]

It would be totoally stupid if a RAID format was like this:

1st HD format 1 mb then stops and allows the 2nd HD to format 1mb then swaps back to the 1st HD to format 1 mb, then swap back to the 2nd HD to format 1mb. In this senario I would expect a RAID 0 to take a much longer time to format compared to the single HD formatting the same amout of disc space without RAID.

If they were independnet like this:

1st HD format 1mb AND at the same time the 2nd HD format 1mb then we would expect the format times would be cut by half. And this would be wothwhile considering I format my PC every couple of moths.

I probably wouldnt buy two 74Gb WD raptors just to test out my theory. But im sure someone out there has two 74Gb Raptors in RAID 0 and a 150Gb raptor spare.

 

[youngbuck]

I'd think that the RAID controller is smart enough to forward the formatting on to both drives simultaneously. Therefore, 2 74GB drives in RAID 0 would format in the same, or about the same, time that it'd take for a single 74GB drive to format.