WD Raptors and Raid on P5WD2

[eduncan911]

Hype: Hehe, that's one thing I did NOT do. Use both at the same time. I set them up on the mobo, measured speed across the RAID0 and RAID1 HDDs (I think that was about 78 to 85MBps on the RAID0 Raptors). Switching to the SX4 card with writeback cache was at about 108MB/s, until I overclocked everything. Then I got 133Mb/s (the max for the PCI bus, cool!). The writeback cache is awesome.. Measuring over 1.9GB/s throughput (for up to 200MB of data chunks obviously). I wanted that for gaming (screenshots) and for my coding (instant builds/writes).

But never had them both running at the same time.

[rest I am stating without reading the others posts above, I'm lazy... Actually, I code the software for Forums/Blogs/Galleries for a living so i don't tend to lurk around much]

I don't see why it can't be done though. Which PCI slot are you using? I do know that one of the PCI slots is a bus mastering slot. I think it's the one next to the PCI-E main slot (on the P5AD2). Don't know about hte WD2.

You will have issues (won't boot) with the SX4 card installed in the bus mastering slot. Try different slots?

Also I seem to recall a bios option for assigning either what is the busmaster, or disabling bus mastering on the PCI slots. Something like that.

Btw, why are you trying to run both? Jez, that's a lot of SATA ports you have then! lol

 

[cripy]

am I the only one who didn't have a problem with raptors and this motherboard?

 

[eduncan911]

am I the only one who didn't have a problem with raptors and this motherboard?

re-read my posts... I didn't either.

 

[cripy]

sorry are we the only 2 that didn't?

 

[hyperasus]

My problem isn’t with raptors or any other drive. My problem is with using a Raid controller along side Intel raid. I have 4 250GB Seagates I raid 5 with the SX4 for data storage. I wanted to use two of my raptors on Intel raid 0 for a boot drive. For now I am stuck with just 1 raptor(which still works great). I think I am going to give up trying to use the SX4 in my PC and build a cheap file server for it. Then I am going to raid 10 all 4 or my raptors on my P5WD2. To hell with trying to store all my data in my personal computer. I want speed. Bring on the RAM drives lol.

 

[eduncan911]

For speed, use 4 drives in RAID0 (not 10 or also known as RAID0/1).

But there inlies the issue with PCI period. With a single Raptor 74GB, I've seen 80 to 90MB/s on mobos. What that means is once you use two in RAID0, you already have maxed/peeked your PCI bus (bandwidth) as I have done at 133MB/s.

Going RAID0/1 on 3 or more drives is just overkill with no benifit in speeds.

That's why I use my SX4 with two raptors in RAID0 to max my throughout for my boot/OS drive. And then I use two large HDDs in RAID1 for my data storage, on the same card.


The bandwidth limitation of 133MB/s is ticking me off (coming from a SCSI world for almost 8 years). That's why I am waiting on the PCI-E SATA controllers to hit the market. That's got to be faster then the PCI 32bit slots.

My issue with that analogy is the existing mobos out there with PCI-E 1x and 4x slots still go through the PCI Bus on almost all architechures I've seen. Meaning, that would still limit it to 133MB/s.

Guess I'll wait for the 8x PCI-E SATA cards to come out (if they do).

 

[hyperasus]

I thought the onboard ICH7 controller was not limited by the pci bus???? Is that not correct?

 

[eduncan911]

I thought the onboard ICH7 controller was not limited by the pci bus???? Is that not correct?

Yes, it is limited. It all goes through the same bus.

 

[RangerXLT8]

Get to windows with your SATA IC7HR controller (the one with four SATA ports) set to Configure SATA as IDE. Install all the drivers for RAID/SATA, both the Silicon controller and the IC7HR.

Now, move your 716SA to the silicon controller (the one with just one SATA port). Attach your drives to be RAID'ed to the IC7HR controller as well as your main drive. Set up RAID in the bios, and you should be okay.

If this doesn't work, update the bios for your motherboard as well as the plextor drive.

I'm sorry I didn't elaborate more, I'm at work right now.

Thanks you soo much! I'm going to do this first thing tomorrow.

 

[JCLW]

I thought the onboard ICH7 controller was not limited by the pci bus???? Is that not correct?

Yes, it is limited. It all goes through the same bus.

Incorrect. Southbridge controllers have no PCI bus limitations. My ICH7R array will push nearly 250MB/s in sequential, or 400MB/s in burst.

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Every intel chipset since the i440BX has supported bus mastering on all PCI slots.

Any luck changing IRQs around?

 

[hyperasus]

Unfortunately my case is very limited so I could not fit the controller in to any other slots. I gave up and made me a file server which now holds that controller card. I’m still real curios if it would have worked in another slot.

 

[JCLW]

That was quick. What did you build? I'm using an i915 + Celeron 330J for my SX4.

 

[JCLW]

He was having trouble running the SX4 in PCI slot 3, the only available PCI slot in his system due to his watercooled SLI setup. Reading the P5WD2 manual wouldn't help him.

Also, Nasgul, you'll probably find that the intel NIC is a better choice then the Marvell NIC as the intel controller is, well, made by intel - plus it is located on a PCIe bus not the PCI bus.

 

[JCLW]

Since cable tops out at 4mbps (or 8mbps if they use two channels) you won't be able to tell the difference on a 1000mbps line as you're only using 0.4% of the theoretical bandwidth. You'd only notice the difference transfering files between computers on your local area network.

 

[hyperasus]

I finally got around to moving some equipment around so I could try installing my controller card into one of the other PCI slot on my P5WD2. No matter which pci slot I use it still doesn’t work if I have the onboard ICH7 raid enabled. Seems there is an incompatibility with this controller card and MB.