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SATA RAID 0 Problem

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The Weazel

New Member
Joined
Apr 27, 2004
Location
Newcastle
hello just joined this forum as i am having a problem with a pair of 80 Gig Maxtors in RAID 0 On the Sil 3112, when I RAID 0 them i get slower performance than just a single drive and i mean noticably slower not just benchmarks both drives are fine on their own.
what i have tried so far

Rebuilding RAID array several times
used all different block sizes
fresh reinstall of OS
Newer drivers for everything
also tried testing when not in windows, norton ghost writes slower to the RAID 0 than it does to an individual drive during a restore a single drive takes 4 mins and when in RAID 0 it takes 6 mins to restore the same image.

this has been bugging the hell out of me because when i first installed them in RAID 0 they worked like a dream.

all i have on them is Windows XP pro and a few essesntial programs everything else is held on seperate drives.
can someone help please

my specs
XP Pro on
Athlon xp 2500@3200
Leadtek K7NCR18D pro 2
1 Gig DDR3200
Radeon 9800 pro 128meg
Pioneer DVR107D DVD-RW
Pioneer 121 DVD-Rom
2x 80 Gig Maxtor Diamond Max + 9's SATA Identical drives
1x 40 Gig Maxtor Diamond Maz + 8
 
Wow! Thats really wierd! You might have a sucky silicone chip....what I mean is your onboard sata raid chip could be defective. I don't know much about Leadtek mobos but I would try a pci sata card or another mobo with a proven sata raid chip on it like Abit or Asus. I love my Intel ICH 5 the best sata raid on a mobo there is, but thats for Intel...maybe some AMD bros could give some advice on a good AMD or VIA or NVidia advice for mobo SATA raid?
 
Hey..
You are not alone. I have same problem. I just bought 2 pcs. Syba sil 3112a sata raid card and 4 pcs.Maxtor 160 gb, 8mb cache Hdd. 1 is for friend and 1 is for myself. After I've installed clean Winxp the sound and video problem accour. these sound and video are skipping during play and DH-tech is slower than my previous PATA or IDE raid. My friend's computer act same as mine. I tried to swap all of the PCI slots to avoid IRQ conflict , but same result. :(
So i think that should be my decent sata raid card or something. then I've decided to buy new HighPoint 1520 SATA raid card. I'll be received today. I'll let you know that my problem has solved.
 
I have Gigabyte motherboard with 2xSeagate 80 SATA with the Sil RAID controller on board adn its been working fine. It was a little picky about my HDD at first but that was because one of my drives was the newer model up than the other and one had a better seek time than the other. I exchanged the drive for the newer one and havent had any problems yet. These contoller cards are very picky about the drives you have on it. For instance One of my drives was ST380023AS and the other one was the ST380013AS. Identical drives from the same family just one has a better seek. I now have 2x ST380013AS and everything is fine. If thats not the problem I would let your MoBo company know. If its under warranty they should fix it free. You might even get an upgrade.
 
Finelly..
I got my HighPoint1520 sata raid card today. This card solved my problem. Reinstall WinXP, it takes only 25 minutes. Test video and sound work fine (previous sata raid control card sil 3112a cause choppy sound and skipping video) . The only dispointed is HD TACH test slower than my previous PATA raid (IBM 80 GB X2 with Sil 306 ATA 133 RAID) but install winxp is faster than PATA though. Maybe I should upgrade my HD TACH v2.61 to 2.7 and get faster result since SATA is newer for 2.61 version. Hope you'll also get this HP 1520 card and get fixed. I got it from newegg.com and It's only $53.

:) :)
 
Ahh crap im in the same boat, got 2x160gb Samsungs and im getting dreadfull performance from the Raid0 array........ using an Abit NF7-S.

Was hoping i didnt have to buy a card.
 
SATA RAID 0

well i'm glad a few more people have replyed i just had a look at my hard drives and noticed although they are the same make and model they have different drive controller chips on them, can't remember the names but they are from 2 different manufactures. the fact that they worked great at first is what is bothering me is there a new bios or firmware for the onboard RAID controller as i do not want to use an additional PCI card , might just buy a new Mobo with a different raid controller or a new pair of drives. shame cos i really like my mobo, think ill try changing the drives first.

AND HERE WAS ME THINKING FINALLY MY SYSTEM IS COMPLETE, till the time is right to go 64 as i am not planning on building a new system till Socket 939, PCI express, SATA 2 & DDR 2 are well established.

OH WELL Must go to work even if it is just to buy more upgrades.
 
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