What do I need for 74x4 raptors in raid 0?

[One_Hertz]

I went a comp upgrading spree and ordered all the conroe stuff and decided to switch to 4 raptors in raid as well. Right now I have 2x74gig sata1 raptors, so adding two more wont do since I am already nearly hitting the sata1 limit of 150mb/s in transfer rates. I guess I'll be selling these two and buying 4 of the newer 16meg cache sata2 models. The board I'll be using is p5w dh deluxe.

1) Can I do 4xraptors in raid 0 using that boards onboard controllers?
2) Is it worth it performance wise to get a raid card? (its gona have to be pci-e since my pci is already saturated by my x-fi)
3) I read that raid-0 doesnt speed up everything and some times different raid setups are more benfitial. Anything better I can do with 4 raptors? (raid 5 for ex.)
4) Any other suggestions appreciated.

[ripken204]

1.yes
2.yes, if u can afford a good one that is
3.raid0 gives you the best performance, raid5 is for backup purposes
4.um... those 16mb raptors are still sata1

[psyconut713]

he's right, the 16MB raptors ar SATA1, i am thinking that some day, we will get a raptor with perpendicular recording. think about it, raptors have 4.6 Ms seek, perpendicular recording has 4.2 Ms, combine the two......10,00RPM perpendicular recording.....thats gonna be sick some day

[One_Hertz]

hmm if they are sata1 the how do some peole get 250 meg/s raiding 4 of them...

[phelan1777]

any idea on price for the older Raptors? I have one 74GB (8MB), looking for a second one.

[SlackerXL]

I have two of the ADFD's in raid 0
and i can say they worth every single € i payed for them...
i had the opportunity to test even a raid 0 with 4 of them
but the performance didn't scale nicely on the ICH7R...
just didn;t justify the extra cost, performance-wise
So if you're gonna do it...
do it right..
get yourself an areca pci-e 1220
and get them on Raid5 array...
you'll still have 200 blazing fast gigabytes for Os & Apps
with the advantage of the data protection the fourth disk has to offer...

if i remember correctly Newegg had some "open box" 1220's
at a very nice price a few days ago..

[One_Hertz]

I have no care for data redundancy as the raptors will be solely for games. Am I misunderstanding the 150mb/s limit as of per sata cable, meaning if I have 4 drives and 4 cables I'll have 600mb/s theoretical maximum?

[SlackerXL]

I have no care for data redundancy as the raptors will be solely for games. Am I misunderstanding the 150mb/s limit as of per sata cable, meaning if I have 4 drives and 4 cables I'll have 600mb/s theoretical maximum?
the limit comes from the controller
not the disks...
and don't pay too much attention to the HDtach burst speed...

it is not easy to reach sata2 limit on average read-write speeds..
4 raptors are surely not enough

if you have the chance
please try to setup a 4x74raid0 and a 4x74 hardware raid5
to see for yourself which is the best way to spend your $$

[One_Hertz]

the limit comes from the controller
not the disks...
and don't pay too much attention to the HDtach burst speed...

it is not easy to reach sata2 limit on average read-write speeds..
4 raptors are surely not enough

if you have the chance
please try to setup a 4x74raid0 and a 4x74 hardware raid5
to see for yourself which is the best way to spend your $$

but the raptors are sata1 drives... That doesnt matter?

[Order]

If you are going to spend that much, think about SAS. 15k RPM.

[One_Hertz]

If you are going to spend that much, think about SAS. 15k RPM.

Thats like 1100 per drive...plus controllers. Still wondering if I can get more then 150mb/s if I raid 4 raptors together...

[Order]

Not even close, man.
Approx 300 per drive and a cheap zero channel controller for around 150.

[ripken204]

Thats like 1100 per drive...plus controllers. Still wondering if I can get more then 150mb/s if I raid 4 raptors together...
yes you can
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=raptor150raid&page=5&cookie%5Ftest=1

263mb/s sustained transfer and 650mb/s burst speed

[SlackerXL]

yes you can
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=raptor150raid&page=5&cookie%5Ftest=1

263mb/s sustained transfer and 650mb/s burst speed

those benchies are done on the prementioned areca controller...
the results where as expected...
and keep in mind that the new 74gb ADFD's single platter & 16mb cache disks
perform better than the ones tested by GPC...

[One_Hertz]

Not even close, man.
Approx 300 per drive and a cheap zero channel controller for around 150.

hmm, not bad at all, but sadly I already have 2 raptors, so I am just gona buy two more... and perhaps a decent controller depending on how much $ all my upgrades come to.

That review is was very helpful, thx ripken. I can still do four raptors using onboard raid instead of that controller to achieve only slightly less performance right? (no cutting me off at 150?)

[Order]

Unless you are using a RAID level that involves some type of parity, you really won't see much if any perceptible performance differences when using a dedicated card versus onboard RAID 0.

[gravelayer]

You can get an "old" 74G Raptor on eBay for $70...
I currently have 2 in RAID0 and have been watching the eBay prices as I was thinking of selling mine and going to a new SATAII Raid0 setup.
After seeing what I can get I'll just stick with the two 74G raptors for now :)

[One_Hertz]

Hellllooo pci limit. Ok I guess I cant really do it using onboard, which proved to be pretty lame for my uses. I hope I can find a decent pci-e 4 port raid conotroller soon.

http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/4641/pcilmitjr5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[alfaunits]

Intel onboard controllers (ICHxR), IIRC, is NOT limited by the PCI limit. At least ICH5 is not, I seriously doubt ICH6/7 are.
PCI-e might impose limitations however - every board has some limitations, such as multiple controllers on the same BUS, thus even though you got PCI-e x8 slot, it won't yield even x1 due to other installed cards.
If you have ICH7 )you do on p5w dh), go with it for 4 raptors. Areca won't even work in that board (ATI chipset x16 support GPU only, x1 PCI-e is useless for storage).

[One_Hertz]

Intel onboard controllers (ICHxR), IIRC, is NOT limited by the PCI limit. At least ICH5 is not, I seriously doubt ICH6/7 are.
PCI-e might impose limitations however - every board has some limitations, such as multiple controllers on the same BUS, thus even though you got PCI-e x8 slot, it won't yield even x1 due to other installed cards.
If you have ICH7 )you do on p5w dh), go with it for 4 raptors. Areca won't even work in that board (ATI chipset x16 support GPU only, x1 PCI-e is useless for storage).

Thats what I used... ICH7R on the p5w dh, and that is what I got. Its is limited by something at 130mb/s, and not by the raptors themselves because that wouldn't make any sense for four of them to be that slow plus the graph doesn't curve down.

[syne_24]

Intel onboard controllers (ICHxR), IIRC, is NOT limited by the PCI limit. At least ICH5 is not, I seriously doubt ICH6/7 are.
PCI-e might impose limitations however - every board has some limitations, such as multiple controllers on the same BUS, thus even though you got PCI-e x8 slot, it won't yield even x1 due to other installed cards.
If you have ICH7 )you do on p5w dh), go with it for 4 raptors. Areca won't even work in that board (ATI chipset x16 support GPU only, x1 PCI-e is useless for storage).

Yea I contacted Areca and Asus about it but both didnt gave me a clear answer. My original plan was to get a Areca 1210 too but I wasnt sure if the 2nd PCi-Ex16 support non-gpu card. Its kinda dumb because some board works right? (i believe the nforce ones) So why dont they standarize it?

@One_Hertz

That graph is your 2 old raptors on the P5W right? That looks about right, I remember mine was like ~137. Anyways this is the new ADFD ones here and as you can see is not just the 16/mb revision, its better overall.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g156/syne_24/raid0.jpg

[alfaunits]

@One_Hertz
I thought that was your 2x74 G's, not 4x74?
ICH definitely does not have PCI bus limit, the Intel documents specify that, so unless your board is faulty, it's not the PCI limit you're facing.

@Syne_24
They did standardzie it as much as possible - ATI allows GPU only, nVidia allows anything. You won't get anything more without those two biggies merging :-)

[syne_24]

Thanks alfaunits, I didnt know that. I've been buying nforce boards all this time, I thought it works both ways. :) I hope ATI change this in the future because it would make things more flexible to user. Either that or start adding a 3rd pci-e 8x or 16x for non-gpu slot.

[alfaunits]

Yes, I would've gone with A8R32 when I did my S939 system, but opted for A8N32 only because I needed x4+ PCI-e slot for RAID card :(
ATI lost on that.

[One_Hertz]

I am pretty positive there is something wrong with my board cause my speed keeps increasing like 10mb/s a day for no reaon that I am aware of. Now I am at this speed:

http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/8799/4x74gbraptorsmm1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Anyone have ANY idea as to what the heck is happening to my 4 raptor raid setup? Its clearly not pci limit, but something IS limiting those drives becasue the transfer speeds dont curve down like they should.

Both graphs I posted are of the 4 raptor raids.

[syne_24]

Sound like there is some problem with the intel raid controller. Did you try disabling NCQ and defrag? Is there a latest raid driver? I'm not looking forward to decrease performance once I get my p5w at all.

You got 4x Raptor and should be at the ~360 range with a nice curve downward, bursting at around ~500, and sustain read ~300.

[One_Hertz]

Sound like there is some problem with the intel raid controller. Did you try disabling NCQ and defrag? Is there a latest raid driver? I'm not looking forward to decrease performance once I get my p5w at all.

You got 4x Raptor and should be at the ~360 range with a nice curve downward, bursting at around ~500, and sustain read ~300.

How do i disable NCQ? I did all other stuff

[Reinvented]

How do i disable NCQ? I did all other stuff

Go into device manager, click on IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, and then select the channel that your current RAID setup is on. More than likely, it's two, so right click, and hit properties. There will be two parts, Primary, and Secondary. On each, there are options for Read and Write Caching, along with NCQ.

[One_Hertz]

nope nothing there... No options at all really

[alfaunits]

IDE/ATAPI for SATA RAID?:)
Go into device manager, click on IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, and then select the channel that your current RAID setup is on. More than likely, it's two, so right click, and hit properties. There will be two parts, Primary, and Secondary. On each, there are options for Read and Write Caching, along with NCQ.

[One_Hertz]

lol figured out the problem... its HDTach itself. It doesnt seem to benchmark correctly with my setup. I tried two low level benchmarking tools and they both showed approx 280mb/s av read whcih is here it should be. Thank god...

Although I am dissappointed at hdtach, always thought it was a good benchmark.

thx for your help everyone

[jonicadalton]

Although this may be obvious remember that all you need is one drive to fail and your array will be completely lost. :eek: I would recommend using the onboard controller if at all possible and put the extra money into a good backup device if you don't have one already, ie. an esata solution. Backups will be mission critical for your setup if you raid 4 drives together.