4x500gb 7200.10 RAID0/5 on ICH9R Benchmarks!

[jmorgan]

When I ran matrix raid 0/5 it took 24 hours to rebuild, now I run a raptor (OS/programs) with and raid 5 matrix raid, takes 12 hours to rebuild and the computer does not crawl as slow while rebuilding but I would not do any intensive stuff while it is rebuilding.

Also it had to rebuild quit often when I was running matrix 0/5 with 4 drives. Never had the problem when I was only running 3 in 0/5

 

[David_N]

I ran a few months with 0/5 and had no issues or rebuilds until my drive started clicking, I got a totally artifacted screen, and the drive died on me. The system is still definitely usable while rebuilding, but I won't do anything more than surfing until it's done.

 

[yorkman]

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.

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

Those results, if real and accurate, are absoluately insane...and I want them! ;-)

What is it that I'd need to have nearly the same results? What is the secret? Is it the controller or is it a combination of controller, ram, cpu...I'm talking about major contributors to those results, nothing else.

If I have an Asus A8N-VM CSM mobo with 2GB of DDR PC3200 ram, 2GHz AMD Athlon 64 3200 cpu, and 2 250GB hdd's in RAID-0 and 2 250GB in RAID-1, how close do you think that'll get me to your results of 3300+ MB/s burst speeds...ballpark, using one of these controllers in the $150 range:

http://canadacomputers.com/main.php?do=ShowProdList&cmd=pl&id=IO.356

I currently have 2 arrays on that mobo using the onboard nVidia controller. One is RAID0 with 2 Seagate SATA 250GB drives, the 2nd array is 2 Seagate SATA 250GB drives in RAID1.

Boot partition is 50MB (not GB) just to store basic load up files for XP SP2, ntldr, etc...XP is on D:\....30GB, E:\ is 207GB, mostly for zips/rars, F:\ is 25GB all for pics, G:\ is 200GB for more zips/rars and acronis trueimage backups of the 1st array (raid0). Pagefile is on D:\ with XP, as I didn't see any benefit in mirrirong the pagefile on M:\ where the 250GB mirrored drive is.

What write speeds do you get with that setup anyway?

Any advice on how I can significantly improve my read/write speeds would be appreciated...$$ is a concern for me as I just bought the 2 additional 250GB drives yesterday and used them for the 2nd raid-1 array...giving me an additional 250GB capacity increase.

I'm willing to sacrifice fault tolerance if I'll get much improved speeds over what I have now....which is only 215MB/s burst on the mirrored array (quick bench, empty 250GB), and 185MB/s on the RAID-0 (500GB, 90% full).

Thanks.

 

[yorkman]

I missed one important spec. before I wrote my previous comment. You have the Q6600, Intel's Core 2 Quad which is probably the MAIN factor why you got such remarkable scores, especially when compared to my scores with similar setup. Looks like I'll have to buy that in order to get what you have. That means building a whole new pc which unfortunately breaks the bank for me. Oh well, I'll have to wait much longer :-(

 

[dessert1st]

David,

Nice benchmarks. I was considering doing the same: RAID 0 for OS partition, RAID 5 for DATA partition.

If the OS is backed up to the RAID 5 partition, can the computer be restored in the event of a drive crash.

Here's an example, I've backed up my RAID 0 data onto the RAID 5. A drive fails, I replace it and let the RAID 5 rebuild itself. Then I run the system restore boot floppy to start the restore process from the backup file on the rebuilt RAID 5.

What do you think?

Thanks!

 

[jmorgan]

Raid 5 will only rebuild it self in windows, if windows wont boot it wont rebuild.

 

[Zerix01]

When I ran matrix raid 0/5 it took 24 hours to rebuild, now I run a raptor (OS/programs) with and raid 5 matrix raid, takes 12 hours to rebuild and the computer does not crawl as slow while rebuilding but I would not do any intensive stuff while it is rebuilding.

Also it had to rebuild quit often when I was running matrix 0/5 with 4 drives. Never had the problem when I was only running 3 in 0/5

WOW I've forced failures in my array of 3 500GB 7.2K drives to see how it rebuilds and it only took 2 hours and practically no CPU hit. 2 hours to rebuild 500GB's also seems to be the speed limit on these drives as I did some stress testing on them before making the array and a sector by sector zeroing out of the drive took about 2 hours.

Now I'm very curious why it's taking you guys 12 hours or longer, is it the SATA controllers? Windows vs Linux?

 

[Zerix01]

David,

Nice benchmarks. I was considering doing the same: RAID 0 for OS partition, RAID 5 for DATA partition.

If the OS is backed up to the RAID 5 partition, can the computer be restored in the event of a drive crash.

Here's an example, I've backed up my RAID 0 data onto the RAID 5. A drive fails, I replace it and let the RAID 5 rebuild itself. Then I run the system restore boot floppy to start the restore process from the backup file on the rebuilt RAID 5.

What do you think?

Thanks!

I don't want to annoy you guys too much by blowing the Linux horn here, but if my OS drive dies I can still boot off a Linux live CD and as long as it has mdadm installed I can assemble the array and access my data.

 

[marscay]

OP where have you gone?

was getting interesting but this thread is pointless without some write speeds

 

[jacklazara]

Great results! u have 2000gb gosh =)

 

[joesaiditstrue]

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.

if you can get 64bit vista to run a RAID0 boot partition, with 4GB of ram.. without getting this error:

TOP: c0000218 (registry File Failure}
The registry cannot load the hive (file):
SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its log or alternate.
It is corrupt, absent, or not writable.

please share your secrets, because it's a very common problem at the moment, one which i'm having

http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=677924

 

[Sparda]

.
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I also going to made some 3x500gb RAID 0/5 but a little bit worried about one failure drive...if it happen like you experienced.



RAID 0 > C: for OS || RAID 5 > D: storage. Soo the first question :

1. If one of my drive broken that contain 1/3 of both my RAID 0/5 array.......
can I still BOOT the drive C that contain Raid 0 to rebuilt Raid 5 since 1/3 of the Raid 0 portion is already destroy and MAY contain some important system files?

2. Now if the Raid 0 array can be boot into windows it will lost 1/3 of it capacity right? and the 1/3 portion of Raid 0 is surely gone since it unrecoverable.

3. If the Raid 0 cant be boot into windows. Then I must swap one new disk to the array, delete Raid 0 and made new Raid 0 to recover 1/3 portion that has been lost and lastly install new OS to rebuilt the Raid 5 ? Can it bulit 1/3 of the lost Raid 5 on a new fresh install OS ?



I already read some of those stickies but cant found my answer. I also learn that Acronis , BartPE , DriveXML tool are some good backup for Raid to made some drive image.

Answer from some experienced user needed...
.
.

 

[joesaiditstrue]

is it possible to run HDTach/HDTune on a smaller partition of a RAID0 setup? or do you need a RAID5 setup to do that?

example: i have a RAID0 (500GBx2), partitioned into 50GB (C:, OS), and 950 (D:, Storage)

is it possible to benchmark the C: partition only? i'm having problems with my bench software separating the partitions, it's only seeing the whole disk

 

[noegruts]

.
.
I also going to made some 3x500gb RAID 0/5 but a little bit worried about one failure drive...if it happen like you experienced.



RAID 0 > C: for OS || RAID 5 > D: storage. Soo the first question :

1. If one of my drive broken that contain 1/3 of both my RAID 0/5 array.......
can I still BOOT the drive C that contain Raid 0 to rebuilt Raid 5 since 1/3 of the Raid 0 portion is already destroy and MAY contain some important system files?

2. Now if the Raid 0 array can be boot into windows it will lost 1/3 of it capacity right? and the 1/3 portion of Raid 0 is surely gone since it unrecoverable.

3. If the Raid 0 cant be boot into windows. Then I must swap one new disk to the array, delete Raid 0 and made new Raid 0 to recover 1/3 portion that has been lost and lastly install new OS to rebuilt the Raid 5 ? Can it bulit 1/3 of the lost Raid 5 on a new fresh install OS ?



I already read some of those stickies but cant found my answer. I also learn that Acronis , BartPE , DriveXML tool are some good backup for Raid to made some drive image.

Answer from some experienced user needed...
.
.

Please don't post your question into other people's threads and please don't post the same question into multiple threads.

 

[Audioaficionado]

Please don't post your question into other people's threads and please don't post the same question into multiple threads.

to the forums Sparda. Yes it's better to start your own thread but only after you've done a though search of the forums on the subject first and couldn't get the necessary answers.

Multiple posting is a no no.

 

[David_N]

Hi guys, sorry for my absence, I've been pretty busy lately pulling money together for my new system (see the mac in my sig )

I'm short on time right now, but I'll do an update later today and answer all the questions that have been asked.

Thanks,
David

 

[Sparda]

Please don't post your question into other people's threads and please don't post the same question into multiple threads.

Actually I dont mean to hijack this thread. But as you can see the question is for the thread starter David_N since one of his disk in his RAID setup broken. That applies to my question.

And for the 2 post of the same question. Sorry for that . I thought That questions are quite important regarding building broken matrix raid setup. So I post the same question in the stickies. There a lot of experienced user reading the stickies..so maybe they can answer the questions.

But wth rule is a rule right..... ....ul thanks for the welcome sign
.
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[Joeteck]

Brings back memories....

http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=5264435&postcount=44

http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=5264462&postcount=46