first attempt at RAID 0 - OK results?

[wquiles]

I posted these scores earlier for my new hard drives:
- WD 80GB, 7200, 8MB
http://m3coupe.com/computer/WD80GB.jpg

- Maxtor 60GB, 7200, 8MB
http://m3coupe.com/computer/Maxtor.jpg

THe Maxtor was quicker but since I had another identical WD 80GB I decided to try using them both in RAID 0 with a Promise TX4000 PCI card. It took me a long time to setup since I did not realized that I needed to use DOS 6.22's FDISK and Win98 Startup Disk's FORMAT to get Win2k (SP3) to recognise the new drive. Is there an easier way to doing this (FDISK/FORMAT within Win2K did not worked at all).

I partitioned the WD 150+ GB array into a 40GB and a 110GB. Here are my initial results (16K strippe on RAID aray) for the 40GB (outter disk area):
http://m3coupe.com/computer/RAID0-WD.jpg

and the for rest of the array (110GB inner tracks):
http://m3coupe.com/computer/RAID0-WD-Inner.jpg

(how can I show the images right inside this post?)

This looks to be right around TWICE as fast as the single WD drive so I guess RAID 0 is working. Any suggestions/comments to improve this or should I be happy with this performance?

William

 

[tuskenraider]

Scores don't look too horrible, but most test with Direct I/O set to "neither", repost tested like that...........

 

[wquiles]

OK, here are the two again, with Direct I/O set to neither:

The Maxtor OS/Programs drive:
http://m3coupe.com/computer/Maxtor-2.jpg

The RAID 0 drive (now has some data - earlier it was still empty):
http://m3coupe.com/computer/RAID0-WD-2.jpg

What does these new results mean? Other things to try and/or improve?

 

[Pla]

It seems you get twice the speed of a single drive - congratulations.

When you put 2 drives in raid-0 the theoretical improvement will be 2 times. So your results are as expected.

 

[tuskenraider]

(how can I show the images right inside this post?)

Click IMG button and put the url in there.

What does these new results mean? Other things to try and/or improve?

Looks OK......but, if you get Partition Magic you can change the cluster size in Windows to 16K to match your stripe, that should speed things up a little. Did you defrag yet? If you didn't yet, bet that improves your performance and scores a little as well.

 

[wquiles]

tuskenraider,

I ran the defrager before the test, but have not changed the cluster size yet. I have an older copy of Partition Magic version 7.0 - will this work or do I need a newer version?

What do you mean by the IMG button? Where is that?