Raid 0 slower than non raid??? What??

[BlazingArrow]

So i've had Raid 0 set up with 2 x WD 36 gig 10,000 HD's on XP for years, but only on Vista for about six months.

Last week I built my parents a new computer, and got them a seagate HD 16 cache, and loaded vista on there computer. We are both running vista, but when I go to switch accounts on my computer, it takes WAYYY longer to go to the log in screen to log into another user. However on my parents computer, I have 4 users (2 on mine) and it goes instantly to the log in screen.

Can anyone explain why this is? Is my raid0 hard drives slower then one single??

[zanzabar]

u have an ancient drive of course the new one will be faster, with 72k rpm the 320GB platters are about 40% faster than the 260GB platters and its been like that for the last few generations and u are 4 or 5 generation back

[BlazingArrow]

u have an ancient drive of course the new one will be faster, with 72k rpm the 320GB platters are about 40% faster than the 260GB platters and its been like that for the last few generations and u are 4 or 5 generation back

?????? WHAT?

I know my hard drive is older, but I have two 10,000 RPM WD Raptor Hard drive's in Raid 0.

My parents have this new HD that I installed:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148262

So you're telling me that this hard drive is faster than mine, at 10,000 RPM, Raptor HD's in Raid 0????

[EniGmA1987]

yep thats what hes saying. Although I really dont think it would be a HUGE difference. It is probably other stuff on your computer that is making it slower, like fast user switching turned off ;)

[BlazingArrow]

yep thats what hes saying. Although I really dont think it would be a HUGE difference. It is probably other stuff on your computer that is making it slower, like fast user switching turned off ;)


Can you please explain to me why this would be? I was under the impression that Raid 0 increased a systems speed/performance, and I also thought 10,000 RPM HD were faster than 7200.

It's a HUGE difference. On my parents machine, it switches almost instantly to the log-in screen, where as my computer it hangs, hangs, hangs, then finally comes to the log-in screen. I would say it's a difference of 15-30 seconds (which i know is minimal but I still want the FASTEST machine!).


It is probably other stuff on your computer that is making it slower, like fast user switching turned off ;)

Ok there is no need for sarcasm....My system has no other 'stuff' on my computer that would cause it to be slower.

Again, here are my specs compared to my parents HD specs:

WD Raptors

Interface SATA 1.5Gb/s
Capacity 36 GB
RPM 10000 RPM
Cache 8MB
Average Seek Time 4.6ms
Average Write Time 5.2ms
Average Latency 2.99ms

Seagate:

Interface SATA 3.0Gb/s
Capacity 250GB
RPM 7200 RPM
Cache 16MB
Average Seek Time 8.5ms
Average Write Time 10ms
Average Latency 4.16ms

Now, how can the seagate possibly be faster???

[One_Hertz]

A 15-30 second difference is certainly not due to hardware. Like someone else said, this is a software issue (unless one or both of your raptors are dieing).

[Clob]

Don't let the spindle speeds throw you off. You access times may be nice, but the transfer rates would be lacking compared.

[BlazingArrow]

A 15-30 second difference is certainly not due to hardware. Like someone else said, this is a software issue (unless one or both of your raptors are dieing).

Ok, this would make sense...but it doesn't. Because I tried to switch users right after loading windows vista, and the speed has always been slow. Is there a way I could test to see if one hard drive is faulty? Or do you have any suggestions as to what software would cause my system to act in such a sluggish manner.

If one, or both of my raptors were dying, wouldn't I see other issues with my system?? Nothing else is running slow.

Can anyone confirm that these older raptors are simply inadequate compared to the newer HD's, and explain why there would be such a difference in speeds between my set up and my parents??

More importantly, is it possibly the Raid 0 that is making it slow? Should I try and load vista onto a single drive??

[BlazingArrow]

Don't let the spindle speeds throw you off. You access times may be nice, but the transfer rates would be lacking compared.

transfer rates? :confused::confused:

[One_Hertz]

Don't let the spindle speeds throw you off. You access times may be nice, but the transfer rates would be lacking compared.

seq transfer rates on two of those is definitely more than one 250GB drive. OP: there are tools available from the manufacturers to check drive health. If they are dieing, the first thing that normally happens is that they become slow (due to bad sectors). Normally it causes BSODs as well.

[BlazingArrow]

seq transfer rates on two of those is definitely more than one 250GB drive. OP: there are tools available from the manufacturers to check drive health. If they are dieing, the first thing that normally happens is that they become slow (due to bad sectors). Normally it causes BSODs as well.

Thank you, now i'm getting somewhere. So from what your saying is with my set up switching users 'should' be faster.

Here is one more observation that might help. I can't defrag my Raid set up. Whenever I try, it just hangs and never completes. Could this be a sign that something is up? Possibly with my drivers?

[One_Hertz]

Here is one more observation that might help. I can't defrag my Raid set up. Whenever I try, it just hangs and never completes. Could this be a sign that something is up? Possibly with my drivers?

Sounds like dieing drives to me. Go check! WD has diagnostic software available.

[[XC] riptide]

So i've had Raid 0 set up with 2 x WD 36 gig 10,000 HD's on XP for years, but only on Vista for about six months.

Last week I built my parents a new computer, and got them a seagate HD 16 cache, and loaded vista on there computer. We are both running vista, but when I go to switch accounts on my computer, it takes WAYYY longer to go to the log in screen to log into another user. However on my parents computer, I have 4 users (2 on mine) and it goes instantly to the log in screen.

Can anyone explain why this is? Is my raid0 hard drives slower then one single??

Your 7200rpm drive http://home.arcor.de/cm50k/bilder/HDTach_Long32MB.jpg

On my old HDtach database a 2 x Raptor360 Raid0 is 73MB/s. Nearly 15% faster is your Seagate.

[One_Hertz]

riptide;3648600']On my old HDtach database a 2 x Raptor360 Raid0 is 73MB/s. Nearly 15% faster is your Seagate.

:slapass::cord:

I am so friggin tired of telling people that HDtach doesn't test raid arrays properly. Especially when caching is off (it just shows speed of one drive).

73MB/s is the speed of one raptor. 140+ is the speed of them in raid0.

[Clob]

Check this out.

The minimal read speed of 1 36gb raptor is 43Mbs and that of a 320 is 62Mbs. I can see how you can be getting slow speeds if your raid controller is crapping out, or one of your drives are on its death bed.

I can assume that this isn't your exact setup, but its pretty close.



Tom's Hardware - Benchmark Costs per Gigabyte Index (http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3-5-hard-drive-charts/compare,668.html?prod%5B2029%5D=on&prod%5B1781%5D=on&prod%5B1783%5D=on&prod%5B1822%5D=on)

[[XC] riptide]

:slapass::cord:

I am so friggin tired of telling people that HDtach doesn't test raid arrays properly. Especially when caching is off (it just shows speed of one drive).

73MB/s is the speed of one raptor. 140+ is the speed of them in raid0.

Listen. The same Database has a single WD360 at average 49.7MB/s read. And also there are tons of HDtachs screen around that show scaling as platter/disks increase. I can accept that HDtach with show some skew with cache on/off...

[turbotrey]

I'll run HD Tach or Tune on my PC tonight with my 36gbx2 Raptors and my 640gb WD Black to see the diffs. I think the tests show the 36x2 faster.

[Clob]

Yeah. We have determined that much. Problem is his extreme slow speeds. Likely a shabby windows install, Raid controller, or a drive crapping out.

[turbotrey]

RAID 0 36x2 Raptors's

http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s264/treyprice/WD36x2RaptorRAID0HDTuneTach.jpg

WD 640gb Black

http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s264/treyprice/WDCWD6401AALSHDTuneTach.jpg

[EniGmA1987]

I would run that again a couple more times and see if you still have that massive performance drop near the beginning.

[turbotrey]

I would run that again a couple more times and see if you still have that massive performance drop near the beginning.

I just ran it 4 more times and got the same result. What does that mean? The drive does have data on it. When I do the defrag it shows almost all of the data at the far left of the display.

[3Z3VH]

I'd be willing to bet this is just an issue of the older PC being used more, hence, your Windows Profile has a LOT more data in it, than the brand new windows profile created on your parents' computer.

Right-click on your My Computer icon, go to Properties, then the Advanced tab. Click on the User Profiles button and look at the size of your profile. I guarantee it is MUCH larger than your parents'. This profile stores every personal user setting for every piece of software on your computer, and many of those settings get loaded into memory when you log in, and must be saved back to disk when you switch users or log out. You CAN delete this profile from your machine by logging in as another administrator account on the machine, but you will lose anything you have on the desktop, or in your My Documents, and you will lose and bookmarks, cached searches, Outlook e-mail, etc you have on your machine, unless you back them up first (so I rarely recommend people do this unless they are in a business environment, and have their data backed up).

If the profile gets deleted, Windows creates a new one from scratch next time you log in as that user.

[Jamesrt2004]

just backup + reformat, helps when my comp slows down :)