Look Here At Areca 1210 Raid Performance

[Ace-a-Rue]

just showing what a superior raid card can do for your raid array.

RAID 0
128K STRIPE
TWO 320G SEAGATES 7200.10 DRIVES (PERPENDICULAR TECHNOLOGY)

installed on a Biostar TForce 6100-939 in the solo 16X PCIe slot...this board has onboard video.

here are the specs of the raid card: http://www.areca.us/products/html/pcie-sata.htm

EDIT:....reference word of "cache" means "Write cache"!!

[syne_24]

Man if only the P5W-DH will alow non-gpu on the 2nd PCI-E slot. I'm have to wait for a 590 board.

Why did you setup a 128K strip block? I'm willing to bet 16K or 64K you will double that performance on your read

[Ace-a-Rue]

i will try it, eventually...i recently moved to 128K since i occassionally deal with DVD movies.

my biggest thing, at the moment, is checking how disabling NCQ affects the performance...

the specs for this card on the website says 128 mb of onboard dram but my card has been upgraded to 256 mb....i read somewhere that Areca was going to do that for the next generation cards.

[syne_24]

disabled it bro I forgot to tell you..I've read some results about NCQ slows down 2-4% on performance wise. Also disable read cache too.

Yea I think 64K is a good strip for movies right? Atleast that's what nvraid said. I really want an Areca 1210 card now, but board wont support it :(

[Ace-a-Rue]

guess what with NCQ disabled!:) ....i always thought NCQ would help...what testers do is use server environment test programs which test data across the entire drive...now...that, in my mind, defeats NCQ...i think NCQ for single users in a desktop environment does help....at least with this card!

[syne_24]

Hmm interesting.. I've seen results on Raptors with NCQ disable in Raid-0 on a side-by-side comparison and it was clearly faster. Maybe it has something to do with your drive being perpendicular?

Did you try disabling reach cache also? If you get a chance to switch to 64K it'll be interesting to see compare with 128K block. I know I was on 64K and went to 16K and it's definitely faster for loading windows and stuff. But with larger files I think 64K or more would be ideal.

[Ace-a-Rue]

OK...here it is with NCQ and Cache disabled....now we are back to where we were with the first one...now...the cache setting in the bios was in the "Auto" position before i disabled it...now i will go back and enabled NCQ with the cache disabled to see what the result is like.

[Ace-a-Rue]

results is still the same with NCQ enabled and "Write cache" enabled...hard to keep track:) ...with this card and maybe perpendicular technology...NCQ is a good and viable technology for the home user

[Ace-a-Rue]

this one is the 64K Stripe...just a slight improvement in burst rate...by 10 clicks:)

[Ace-a-Rue]

i can't wait until i put 4 drives together;)

[fhpchris]

That must be one FAST array! I cannot wait to see results!

[Ace-a-Rue]

one more and i am done...this one is 32K Stripe...enough said!

[Otaking71]

I can tell you hdtach is a strange beast when it comes to raid controler benchmarking. Winbench's is more accurate tbh.

[Ace-a-Rue]

Just became aware of this RAID controller; looking for some advise. Referring to my system specs below, would I realize a sizeable performance gain if I purchase this controller using my existing (2) drives in a RAID 0 configuration or would a (4) drive array be even better? Using HD Tach, my current burst is ~420MB/s with NCQ and Read Caching disabled. Stripe Size = 32K, Cluster Size = 16K.

hard to tell!..your burst speed is not shabby for using a board controller...the Areca card has onboard memory, its own processor and I/O chipset...the card's bios offers numerous options to adjust for performance and rebuilding when using the upper echelon raid arrays.

this card cost around 340....for me, it was good investment...i tell you something about this card and speed...i use Norton Ghost 2003 to back up my "C" partition...it only takes me approximately 2 minutes to save or recover 7 G's of data while in the DOS mode...it is blazing fast!

[Premmer]

hard to tell!..your burst speed is not shabby for using a board controller...the Areca card has onboard memory, its own processor and I/O chipset...the card's bios offers numerous options to adjust for performance and rebuilding when using the upper echelon raid arrays.

this card cost around 340....for me, it was good investment...i tell you something about this card and speed...i use Norton Ghost 2003 to back up my "C" partition...it only takes me approximately 2 minutes to save or recover 7 G's of data while in the DOS mode...it is blazing fast!

Just installed a 1210/RAID 0 with (2) 250G Seagate 7200.10s. Bought card from Ewiz @ $299 shipped. May add (2) additional 250Gs.

There is a sizable difference in burst between HD Tach and HD Tune. Has anyone else made a comparision between the 2 utilities?

[SlackerXL]

Just installed a 1210/RAID 0 with (2) 250G Seagate 7200.10s. Bought card from Ewiz @ $299 shipped. May add (2) additional 250Gs.

wow
that 8.9ms is totally insane for a 7200drive raid0...
something is wrong with that picture...
or am i missing something?

[Premmer]

wow
that 8.9ms is totally insane for a 7200drive raid0...
something is wrong with that picture...
or am i missing something?

Agree, it is unusual. I did have the 2 drives setup on the DFI RAID controller for a breif period of time and as I recall random access time was ~ 13ms however the RAID volume was sized at maximum capacity, 500G. For the results I posted the array capacity was sized at 50G. Could it be related to the smaller than typical track/sector seek distances due to the reduced volume size? Maybe someone on this forum can provide an explaination?

Will be installing 2 additional drives next weekend. Plan to size array volume at 50G again. That would decrease the track/sector seek distances even further. I'll have to check the access time after the install.

[Ace-a-Rue]

Just installed a 1210/RAID 0 with (2) 250G Seagate 7200.10s. Bought card from Ewiz @ $299 shipped. May add (2) additional 250Gs.

just awesome!...i guess making it a voume separate from the OS allows the true speed to come out using the Areca card and the 7200.10's.

here is an ATTO bench..program is old and maybe not totally accurrate anymore but it does show the raw power of the Areca card!!

[Ace-a-Rue]

i think i might try the volume for grins..hehehe

[Premmer]

just awesome!...i guess making it a voume separate from the OS allows the true speed to come out using the Areca card and the 7200.10's.

here is an ATTO bench..program is old and maybe not totally accurrate anymore but it does show the raw power of the Areca card!!

Can you benchmark your array using HD Tune? I'd like to see if your burst is reported considerably lower than with HD Tach.

[Ace-a-Rue]

ok...just downloaded it!

[Ace-a-Rue]

here are 3 drives in raid 0 with 128K stripe.

[Ace-a-Rue]

4 drives:

[Premmer]

4 drives:

Thanks for running HD Tune. Unless I've missed your HD Tach results for the 4 drive setup, can you post HD Tach results for the exact hardware configuration shown here? I want to be sure I'm comparing apples to apples. Thanks again.

Which utility, HD Tune or HD Tach, reports more accurate results?

[TV Addict#2]

soon I'll have alot of the same parts,cpu vga,motherboard,but I want to try a raid0 array with 15.4k scsi cheetahs.I found this controller card that handles the function I want:

LSI LOGIC LSI21320RB-F PCI-X SCSI Controller Card RAID 0/1
I'm gonna see if areca has a model with just two or three ports for raid0 scsi
found 36G 15.4k scsi cheetahs for $93.00 each
my raptor array has 16k/16k block size,I handle mp3 files but tranfers bigger files with a quickness too
raptors may become two page file drives

[Ace-a-Rue]

Thanks for running HD Tune. Unless I've missed your HD Tach results for the 4 drive setup, can you post HD Tach results for the exact hardware configuration shown here? I want to be sure I'm comparing apples to apples. Thanks again.

Which utility, HD Tune or HD Tach, reports more accurate results?

HDTach shows the same SRS but burst is higher (800+) than reported by HDTune...

not sure which bench is more accurrate...if i were to guess, i would say HDTune!

[TV Addict#2]

I wanted to bench my 16k/16k 36G raptor array just can't arrange idle time found a newer model of that controller card though LSI LOGIC LSI22320RB-R PCI-X SCSI Controller Card RAID 0/1,$80.00 shipped

[Premmer]

HDTach shows the same SRS but burst is higher (800+) than reported by HDTune...

not sure which bench is more accurrate...if i were to guess, i would say HDTune!

Thanks for running the comparision. I agree with your guess.

Will be installing 2 additional RAID 0 drives this weekend. I'll post the results using both HD Tune and HD Tach.

[WeStSiDePLaYa]

Just installed a 1210/RAID 0 with (2) 250G Seagate 7200.10s. Bought card from Ewiz @ $299 shipped. May add (2) additional 250Gs.

There is a sizable difference in burst between HD Tach and HD Tune. Has anyone else made a comparision between the 2 utilities?


your results are useless and cannot be compared to the thread starter's results.


the beginning of hdds are faster, and you set up your raid to use a small portion of them, so your perfomance numbers will be artificially higher.

set your array up proper and then look at the difference, you will have slower access time and less read/write speed.

[nox_uk]

looks similar to mine:

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=74659

scroll down for the HD Tach. Had it a while, thinking about adding another in there...

Nox

[Premmer]

your results are useless and cannot be compared to the thread starter's results.


the beginning of hdds are faster, and you set up your raid to use a small portion of them, so your perfomance numbers will be artificially higher.

set your array up proper and then look at the difference, you will have slower access time and less read/write speed.

Your missing my point. I'm not trying to compare my array's performance to the thread starter's. I'm trying to confirm that there is a sizable difference in reported burst between HD Tune vs HD Tach.

As for your second statement, tell me something I don't know. There is nothing artifical about the results if one is willing to sacrifice capacity for performance.

[Ace-a-Rue]

looks similar to mine:

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=74659

scroll down for the HD Tach. Had it a while, thinking about adding another in there...

Nox

are you using the Areca raid controller?

EDIT:...i checked you specs at that link and i see it is the Areca 1220 card...good show!

[alfaunits]

Are you sure about that? A guy at 2CPU.com is using Areca on P5W-DH:
http://www.2cpu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77049&page=2
Though ATI chipset s***s for non-GPU (arggggh)
Man if only the P5W-DH will alow non-gpu on the 2nd PCI-E slot. I'm have to wait for a 590 board.

[syne_24]

Are you sure about that? A guy at 2CPU.com is using Areca on P5W-DH:
http://www.2cpu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77049&page=2
Though ATI chipset s***s for non-GPU (arggggh)

say what? Someone told me that on ATI CF board it wont accept non-graphic card on the 2nd pci-e. While SLI board will accept either one. Atleast that's what I've been told.


Edit: I read that one guy who did get it to work with updated drivers. I wonder if there is still issues with it tho.

[Durzel]

Is there a tangible benefit to using an Areca ARC-1210/1220 over the Intel ICH7R on the latest Intel boards?

I appreciate benchmarks of the Areca card have been shown but without a frame of reference to compare it against I just don't know how much better it really is, plus synthetic benchmarks can often lie (enabling Writeback Cache on Intel Matrix RAID yields completely mad burst speeds of 3000MB/sec+)

[alfaunits]

For 2 drive configuration you will not see any benefits of using Areca over ICH. Even more, the ICH does not heat up as much as Areca or other external controllers do.
ICH is not limited by the PCI/X/E bus, like external controllers. While the burst rate does not show any trasnfer rates related to the hard drives directly, it does show connectivyt bottlenecks are far smaller on the ICH.

If you plan to use 4 drives, Areca might give some performance boosts due to integrated processor, but even then, very rare.

If you plan to use RAID 5, don't even consider onboard stuff, unless you are running a ZCR on a server motherboard (essentially an external card).

[Durzel]

Thanks for that. I only planned to use 2 x 74GB Raptors in RAID0 so what you've said is a great help. :toast:

[cmanser]

The ICH on the P5W DH had 3 SIDE connectors that can be used in Raid - I have heard some people say only use multiples of 2 in raid - i.e. 2 drives - 4 drives - ect.

Would adding the 3rd drive on this controller be good or bad?

[syne_24]

The ICH on the P5W DH had 3 SIDE connectors that can be used in Raid - I have heard some people say only use multiples of 2 in raid - i.e. 2 drives - 4 drives - ect.

Would adding the 3rd drive on this controller be good or bad?

hehe funny you mentioned that. I was thinking of going 3x raptors too. It's ashame the P5W only has 3 connectors on the ICH7. Yet there is the Jmicron crap which I dont even use.

[cmanser]

hehe funny you mentioned that. I was thinking of going 3x raptors too. It's ashame the P5W only has 3 connectors on the ICH7. Yet there is the Jmicron crap which I dont even use.

Let me know what you decide on the 3X Raptors - that is what I wanted to do also - get 3 of the new 36GB 16MB cache drives - should be screaming fast.

How many drives can you put on the Jmicron controller?

I see the port on the back pannel but where are the rest?

[syne_24]

i think the other jmicron port is on the board beneath the mosfet. It's retarded I dont even know why they did that. They should have got rid of the jmicron and add the ports to IC7.

[Durzel]

i think the other jmicron port is on the board beneath the mosfet. It's retarded I dont even know why they did that. They should have got rid of the jmicron and add the ports to IC7.That port is for an external SATA drive I think.

[alfaunits]

Speed will not scale nice if the drives are not a power of 2. It's worth a try, for an average user (read: not video editing etc.) 3 -> 4 won't make a great difference,

ICH7 has a strict set of ports, ASUS or anyone for that natter cannot simplu add ports to it :D
That number should be 4 though, what's going on?

[cmanser]

Speed will not scale nice if the drives are not a power of 2. It's worth a try, for an average user (read: not video editing etc.) 3 -> 4 won't make a great difference,

ICH7 has a strict set of ports, ASUS or anyone for that natter cannot simplu add ports to it :D
That number should be 4 though, what's going on?

Anyone have any hard numbers showing the difference between 2 and 3 drives?

[syne_24]

Theoretically my performance has always exactly double; so I get about 77.5 per drive x2 = 155/MB average read right now. Now if I add the 3rd drive it should be ~232/MB average read. Waiting on a rebate or price cut from newegg, and I'll find out for sure.

Has it been proven that 3 drives instead of 4 is bad? I've heard from 3-4 usually not much improvement but 2-3 is still faster.

[cmanser]

Speed will not scale nice if the drives are not a power of 2. It's worth a try, for an average user (read: not video editing etc.) 3 -> 4 won't make a great difference,

ICH7 has a strict set of ports, ASUS or anyone for that natter cannot simplu add ports to it :D
That number should be 4 though, what's going on?


This could be nice. I was reading through the problems and fixes thread for the P5W DH and one of the posters said you can use 4 SATA drives in Raid using the Intel ICH7 controller. You use ONE of the EZ Raid SATA connectors as your 4th port and it will work.

SOMEONE TEST IT OUT!! ( You should be albe to use it with any of the other ports for Raid - so if you are Raiding 2 drives you can use any of the three and one of the EZ Raid.

Cmanser