RAID 0 Guide: Set-up, OS installation, and Optimization - Page 7

vbhard · 31st July 2002, 6:47 PM

I know what you are saying but I would rather prefer the PCI RAID card.

Any places that you know of as long as the website is in english?

d99jos · 1st August 2002, 2:22 AM

In Xp if the options in diskmanagement tool are greyed out, how are you supposed to format and change the partion to active? If you want to set up a raid 0 system on 2 disks.

vbhard · 1st August 2002, 8:36 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by d99jos
In Xp if the options in diskmanagement tool are greyed out, how are you supposed to format and change the partion to active? If you want to set up a raid 0 system on 2 disks.

Did you click/highlight the partition to make it active? Also you can run and customise your own console by going to 'start'> 'run' and type in 'mmc'...choose what you want in there

d99jos · 2nd August 2002, 5:13 AM

Nevermind, solved it the hard way, ie installing xp 3 times.
1st create one 8 gig system partition, then
in xp create a big 16k size. Then remove the 8, and install on the big. Create small, and then finally reinstall.

jakevsnake · 4th August 2002, 12:20 AM

I have been experimenting with a Raid 0 config on a P4 system for the past 3 days. I have yet to be able to duplicate the kind of performance demonstrated on this site. I am referring to the Winbench 99 disk inspection test. I also saw a graph of this in a thread from Chainbolt.

Here is my system config.

p4 2.26mhz, pc1066 512mb, Gigabyte GA-8IHXP mobo (850e chipset), windows xp pro, 2x WD800jb HD in Raid 0, stripe, 16k, using a Fastrak TX2000 PCI Raid controller, Leadtek g4ti4400

I have the Raid drive partitioned as FAT32, 3 partitions, 1 6gig, 1 46gig, 1 98gig. I have used Customizer XP to tweak various cache settings according to what it recommended as well as some various others. When I do the Disk Inspection test on my drive the graph jumps all over the place. I notice that Chainbolts graph and the one in the Overclockers review of a RAID 0 setup with my same hard drives was more constant over the whole drive. Basically staying a little over 80MB/sec with slight variations.

I read about PCI Latency on this site but it referred to the VIA chipset and that was the chipset used for the review on this site. I am wondering if the Intel chipsets suffer as well and how I can fix that. I know this can be a little complicated to teach someone but I would greatly appreciate anyones help.

Jason

Big-C · 6th August 2002, 10:44 AM

Hi guys,
Looks like i made a mistake in buying two Seagate Barracuda 80gigs for my RAID setup. My absolutely pathetic results seem to be reflected by other peoples experiences.

My question is whether anyone has actually recieved the replacement drives from Seagate, and what kind of performance they see from the updated drives.
I'm wondering if I should be RMA'ing then with Seagate, or whether i should go back to the shop where i bought them and trying to swap them for some WD's.

TIA

Big-C
Whirlpool Folding Team

chainbolt · 7th August 2002, 2:49 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by jakevsnake
I have been experimenting with a Raid 0 config on a P4 system for the past 3 days. I have yet to be able to duplicate the kind of performance demonstrated on this site. I am referring to the Winbench 99 disk inspection test. I also saw a graph of this in a thread from Chainbolt.

Here is my system config.

p4 2.26mhz, pc1066 512mb, Gigabyte GA-8IHXP mobo (850e chipset), windows xp pro, 2x WD800jb HD in Raid 0, stripe, 16k, using a Fastrak TX2000 PCI Raid controller, Leadtek g4ti4400

I have the Raid drive partitioned as FAT32, 3 partitions, 1 6gig, 1 46gig, 1 98gig. I have used Customizer XP to tweak various cache settings according to what it recommended as well as some various others. When I do the Disk Inspection test on my drive the graph jumps all over the place. I notice that Chainbolts graph and the one in the Overclockers review of a RAID 0 setup with my same hard drives was more constant over the whole drive. Basically staying a little over 80MB/sec with slight variations.

I read about PCI Latency on this site but it referred to the VIA chipset and that was the chipset used for the review on this site. I am wondering if the Intel chipsets suffer as well and how I can fix that. I know this can be a little complicated to teach someone but I would greatly appreciate anyones help.

Jason

Hi Jason:

could you fix the zig zag STR?

EazyduzIt · 7th August 2002, 3:19 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Big-C

I'm wondering if I should be RMA'ing then with Seagate, or whether i should go back to the shop where i bought them and trying to swap them for some WD's.

Big C, check this out:

Quote:

Raid 0
Looking at their amazing transfer rates under RAID 0 it's safe to say that both the IBM 120GXP and the Western Digital 1000JB are excellent choices. But the 120GXP is our recommended choice for RAID 0. One reason is the lower power consumption and the lower temperature. This is important when coupling 2 or even more disks for RAID operations. Another reason is the cost: 2 of the aggressively priced IBM 120GXP (40GB) cost less than 1 unit of the Western 1000JB, provide only 20% less storage, but perform when RAIDed clearly faster than a single 1000JB with 100GB. The Maxtor D740X would be again only our third choice. The volatile transfer rate diagram is a reason for concern.

1st choice: IBM 120GXP
2nd choice: Western Digital 1000JB
3rd choice: Maxtor D740X

shootout

The site and forums aren't fully a 100% hence the formatting of that tech article.

jakevsnake · 7th August 2002, 9:46 AM

Chain,
I havent had any luck with the zigzag STR problem yet. I am still using the 16/16 stripe size with NTFS. I would like to see someone who has the same mobo and hd combo do a benchmark on their sys. I am tired of tweaking my system right now since I havent had much time to enjoy playing games or making mp3's. I would still take any suggestions you or others may have.

Jake

chainbolt · 12th August 2002, 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by jakevsnake
Chain,
I havent had any luck with the zigzag STR problem yet. I am still using the 16/16 stripe size with NTFS. I would like to see someone who has the same mobo and hd combo do a benchmark on their sys. I am tired of tweaking my system right now since I havent had much time to enjoy playing games or making mp3's. I would still take any suggestions you or others may have.

Jake

there are a lot of weird things around. Maybe this is a Winbench 99 artefact? Have you tried to replicate the zigzag with HDTach 2.61?

BBB · 16th August 2002, 7:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by vbhard

Did you click/highlight the partition to make it active? Also you can run and customise your own console by going to 'start'> 'run' and type in 'mmc'...choose what you want in there

OK once you have started XP with it installed on D: drive, start Disk management (however) and you select the C: partition, then right click, the option to format is greyed out. How do you do the repartition / format then?

All the instructions are cool up to that point, and I've done the create RAID /install XP 4 times without success.................

Bion1c · 16th August 2002, 8:18 PM

Chainbolt you rock!!!!!!!! another great article thats saved me loads of time

cheers!

chainbolt · 19th August 2002, 1:53 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by BBB

OK once you have started XP with it installed on D: drive, start Disk management (however) and you select the C: partition, then right click, the option to format is greyed out. How do you do the repartition / format then?

All the instructions are cool up to that point, and I've done the create RAID /install XP 4 times without success.................

this is because XP is automatically regarding C: as the boot drive and therefore not allowing to re-format it. The problem can be prevented by giving a different drive letter, when the drive is formatted.

Bion1c · 20th August 2002, 11:35 AM

OK, I ran into a few problems using this guide .. thought it might be useful to share the info:

Chainbolt doesn't mention that Win2k won't defragment any NTFS volumes with a cluster size greater than the default (4k). Don't think you can use a 3rd party tool to get around this either - I tried quite a few with no success. I got the impression talking to people that it was a limitation of the file system but I don't think this is the case.

There's an additional HDD in my system set aside from the RAID array (primarily for backups) that has a 4 GB partition I can use to test OS's. I installed WinXP on this to see if it could defragment my RAID volumes. It could, which means that its the Win2k OS itself that has a problem. Incidentally, after defragmenting the system drive on the RAID array, Win2k was quite happy to boot to it, so no changes were made to file system..

Quite surprising that MS hasn't fixed this in a service pack actually.

Anyway .. just something to watch out for ..

vbhard · 20th August 2002, 11:41 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bion1c

Quite surprising that MS hasn't fixed this in a service pack actually.

Anyway .. just something to watch out for ..

there is a file that you need to delete for defragmentation to work..not sure what it is called i forgot

will let ya know it is mentioned somewhere in this thread i think

4th August 2002, 12:20 AM	#95
jakevsnake Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Japan Posts: 3	Raid 0 config and benchmark issues I have been experimenting with a Raid 0 config on a P4 system for the past 3 days. I have yet to be able to duplicate the kind of performance demonstrated on this site. I am referring to the Winbench 99 disk inspection test. I also saw a graph of this in a thread from Chainbolt. Here is my system config. p4 2.26mhz, pc1066 512mb, Gigabyte GA-8IHXP mobo (850e chipset), windows xp pro, 2x WD800jb HD in Raid 0, stripe, 16k, using a Fastrak TX2000 PCI Raid controller, Leadtek g4ti4400 I have the Raid drive partitioned as FAT32, 3 partitions, 1 6gig, 1 46gig, 1 98gig. I have used Customizer XP to tweak various cache settings according to what it recommended as well as some various others. When I do the Disk Inspection test on my drive the graph jumps all over the place. I notice that Chainbolts graph and the one in the Overclockers review of a RAID 0 setup with my same hard drives was more constant over the whole drive. Basically staying a little over 80MB/sec with slight variations. I read about PCI Latency on this site but it referred to the VIA chipset and that was the chipset used for the review on this site. I am wondering if the Intel chipsets suffer as well and how I can fix that. I know this can be a little complicated to teach someone but I would greatly appreciate anyones help. Jason __________________ P4 2.26GHZ 533fsb PC1066 Kingston RDRAM 2x256 Gigabyte GA-8IHXP 2x Western Digital WD800jb HD Leadtek G4Ti4400 Audigy Gamer soundcard Windows XP Pro

7th August 2002, 9:46 AM	#99
jakevsnake Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Japan Posts: 3	Chain, I havent had any luck with the zigzag STR problem yet. I am still using the 16/16 stripe size with NTFS. I would like to see someone who has the same mobo and hd combo do a benchmark on their sys. I am tired of tweaking my system right now since I havent had much time to enjoy playing games or making mp3's. I would still take any suggestions you or others may have. Jake __________________ P4 2.26GHZ 533fsb PC1066 Kingston RDRAM 2x256 Gigabyte GA-8IHXP 2x Western Digital WD800jb HD Leadtek G4Ti4400 Audigy Gamer soundcard Windows XP Pro

20th August 2002, 11:35 AM	#104
Bion1c Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Melbourne Posts: 1,034	Defragmenting OK, I ran into a few problems using this guide .. thought it might be useful to share the info: Chainbolt doesn't mention that Win2k won't defragment any NTFS volumes with a cluster size greater than the default (4k). Don't think you can use a 3rd party tool to get around this either - I tried quite a few with no success. I got the impression talking to people that it was a limitation of the file system but I don't think this is the case. There's an additional HDD in my system set aside from the RAID array (primarily for backups) that has a 4 GB partition I can use to test OS's. I installed WinXP on this to see if it could defragment my RAID volumes. It could, which means that its the Win2k OS itself that has a problem. Incidentally, after defragmenting the system drive on the RAID array, Win2k was quite happy to boot to it, so no changes were made to file system.. Quite surprising that MS hasn't fixed this in a service pack actually. Anyway .. just something to watch out for ..

31st July 2002, 6:47 PM	#91
vbhard Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Sydney Posts: 2,536	I know what you are saying but I would rather prefer the PCI RAID card. Any places that you know of as long as the website is in english?

1st August 2002, 2:22 AM	#92
d99jos Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 32	In Xp if the options in diskmanagement tool are greyed out, how are you supposed to format and change the partion to active? If you want to set up a raid 0 system on 2 disks.

2nd August 2002, 5:13 AM	#94
d99jos Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 32	Nevermind, solved it the hard way, ie installing xp 3 times. 1st create one 8 gig system partition, then in xp create a big 16k size. Then remove the 8, and install on the big. Create small, and then finally reinstall.

6th August 2002, 10:44 AM	#96
Big-C Member Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 7	Hi guys, Looks like i made a mistake in buying two Seagate Barracuda 80gigs for my RAID setup. My absolutely pathetic results seem to be reflected by other peoples experiences. My question is whether anyone has actually recieved the replacement drives from Seagate, and what kind of performance they see from the updated drives. I'm wondering if I should be RMA'ing then with Seagate, or whether i should go back to the shop where i bought them and trying to swap them for some WD's. TIA Big-C Whirlpool Folding Team

16th August 2002, 8:18 PM	#102
Bion1c Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Melbourne Posts: 1,034	Chainbolt you rock!!!!!!!! another great article thats saved me loads of time cheers!