RAID 0 and Hard Drive Partitions

[Svenn]

I'm about to set up my RAID 0 setup on my Promise SX4000 w/ 256MB PC100 Cache. I'm wondering how I should partition my 240GB? I was told to do a 1GB or so partition first as Virtual Mem so that it was quicker access. Also, does more space on the Windows drive help any? Thanks

[Dissolved]

well i might be wrong on this, but i believe having the swap file off the raid0 array is best. as in having it on a regluar drive.

[Svenn]

I'm running just a RAID 0 array. No other drives.

[CCW]

Yup, thtas true, run the swap file on a different drive and performance will be a lot better.

Craig

[Dissolved]

Originally posted by CCW
Yup, thtas true, run the swap file on a different drive and performance will be a lot better.

Craig

and also, partitioning a raid array i dont think is a good idea.

if i were you id invest in a 80gb or a somewhat fast drive, and use it for your inportant files, and to hold the swap.

raid0 on a overclocking pc is deadly. if you crash from too much fsb or any windows error in raid0 you have a high rate of loseing that info on those 2 drives.

[Svenn]

I don't have important files. The most important thing I have is MP3s and if I lose them, I really don't care.

As far as partitioning... it's 240GB. I don't want one big 240GB drive... that's insane. I'm running 40 Windows, 80 Games, 20 Apps, 20 MP3s... although none of those are close to being used... I'm gonna use the rest to install and mess around in linux...

[Dissolved]

whats the point of having large harddrives if your gonna parition them into 5?

ill have to ask, but i dont think partitioning drives on the same array will help in any way. No mater what the data will be spilt across the 2 drives. ill ask a friend and see what he thinks.

[felix88]

unless you put the partition for virtual memory(this is the swap file, right?) on another drive, there is no reason to have a seperate partition. well, maybe to help with fragmentation, but you won't see any performance boosts from it.

[FreakyShadow]

Originally posted by Svenn
I'm about to set up my RAID 0 setup on my Promise SX4000 w/ 256MB PC100 Cache. I'm wondering how I should partition my 240GB? I was told to do a 1GB or so partition first as Virtual Mem so that it was quicker access. Also, does more space on the Windows drive help any? Thanks

Here's the way I have mine:

5GB Windows partition.
1.5GB Swap partition (swap file is only 256MB).
Application/Game partition (28GB).
Storage partition (2GB). I don't do mp3s and stuff - this is just for files I don't want to download again (patches, drivers, etc.).

Partitioning can and does speed up your system, if done right. You want to keep the swap file as close to the beginning of the drive as possible. If you have Windows and all your programs on one partition, you can't do that.

You want a 4GB minimum partition for Windows itself. Then have a 1.0 or 1.5 GB swap partition - even if you only use 256MB like me. Then have bigger partitions for apps/games and storage.

It would be even better if you had the swap partition on a separate drive, so Windows could access files and swap at the same time. I'll be reformatting in another couple of weeks, and I'll be doing it that way.

[Tex]

Originally posted by felix88
unless you put the partition for virtual memory(this is the swap file, right?) on another drive, there is no reason to have a seperate partition. well, maybe to help with fragmentation, but you won't see any performance boosts from it.

It does not help to put the swapfile in its own partiton on a raid-array other then to avoid fragmentaion etc..

The swapfile mist be on a seperate drive and with ide it really does not help near as much as with scsi either.

But dividing a raid array into multiple partitons is very important to avoid fragmentation unless you defrag daily. Or even sooner... (grin)

I have multiple boxs here att the house with either ide Raid or scsi. The diferance is under IDEAL conditions with everything PERFECTLY defragged an ide raid array can duplicate or exceed a very very fast scsi single drive. But anytime you have to get the heads moving (meaning not a perfect sequential read or write) the scsi just kicks ass. You get super performance relatively speaking with the ide raid but ONLY when its perfectly defragged.

An OS on a IDE raid array that has not been defragged in a couple days even, scores much much lower while the scsi non-raid seems to just keep on running at a higher speed.

The 3.5 ms access takes a hold and just kicks ide butt IF and ONLY IF the heads start having to move. Ona long sequential read or write the ide raid is very strong on some things but remember also... It sucks your cpu cycles to get anything off ide raid from a promise or hpt etc.. as the cpu must do the raid striping functions also. With scsi the cpu usage is 1 to 4 percent on a big file copy for instance. Thats why ide raid can hurt gaming and scsi does not.

So the key to keeping the ide raid running always att he highest speed is cutting it up to always try and control the defragmentation as much as possible. Move the temp and internet files to their own partition. Move the pagefile and stuff to their own partition etc..

Still not even close to the fastest scsi divided among multiple disks as scsi will issue reads and writes to multiple drives simultaneosly and ide does a read or write and waits to get the response for example.

If performance is not important then leave the ide raid array in one partition and don't worry about defragging. But then again ... why mess with ide raid at all then?? As in a week it benchmarks slower then a single drive also??

This is where scsi really kicks booty. The 3.5ms accesss helps overcome the speed degradation caused by disk fragmentation.

Tex

[Tex]

Here is an atto of a fast modern scsi drive but hardly one of the dozen fastest drives etc...

I paid $120 for this 73gb U320 scsi. This is done in a 32bit slot on a kr7 also.

Tex

[Tex]

But maybe more interesting is this $43 dollar drive.

Tex

[CCW]

Originally posted by Dissolved
and also, partitioning a raid array i dont think is a good idea.

if i were you id invest in a 80gb or a somewhat fast drive, and use it for your inportant files, and to hold the swap.

raid0 on a overclocking pc is deadly. if you crash from too much fsb or any windows error in raid0 you have a high rate of loseing that info on those 2 drives.

Dissolved - I would partition a RAID array either,m waste of the RAID cos if you transfer data from one part to another your gonan be losing speed.

I have just set up my new RAID0 array (2 x 60Gb) and Ive found its very slow and this is half of the amount you have! (Mine doesnt have cache however). Do you need 240GB?

A 20GB ATA133, 7200RPM 20Gb , say 5 of em in RAID5 will provide redundancy and speed and give you a healty 100GB. Also, this will protect you if you overclock because RAID5 has good redundancy, however, the single point of failure is only having one RAID card! :D Still, it would be fast as hell. I wana get a RAID50 set up one time.

Thats how Id do it if i had the dosh!

Craig

[felix88]

CCW, in a Raid5 array you don't get all of the space from the drives. i believe you'd only have 80GB if you had 5 20GB drives.

also, RAID 5 can be very CPU intensive if you don't have a good controller card. it's also not much faster than a single disk either.

[Dissolved]

Raid5 is good with a good card.
it uses 1 drive for error proection.
and if you have 4+drives its worth it.

[felix88]

i thought writes were VERY cpu intensive and weren't that fast. reads may be another case altogether.

[CCW]

Hi, yeah sorry, parity information is stored on one of the drives.

Craig

[Dissolved]

Originally posted by felix88
i thought writes were VERY cpu intensive and weren't that fast. reads may be another case altogether.


like i said, Some GOOD raid5 cards ie. Elite 1600/1650 series cards are great for raid5.. if you have like 4~10 drives ull be faster then anything but it depends what you are looking for..

i mean the 15k.3 36gb drives do 60~80mbps now.. so 2 of those in raid 0 will max out a basic 32bit pci desktop motherboard.

So for a grand you could have the fastest scsi drives in raid0 that will max your pci bus..

or you chould spend a grand on ide, and be slow and have drives fail now and then with a hellova space.. :)

So theres a line here, and when it comes down to it you just gotta think Do you really need speed or space? For me personaly i hate any kind of OS lag.. scsi is good for that, ide wouldnt be cuz of access rates..

So im still learning, but if you want scsi, better plan on spending a gooa amount of money if you want fast drives.

[CCW]

for me? speed, dont need space....thats why i forked out for scsi, but raid on ide drives i have just to speed whtings up a bit

Craig

[Dissolved]

what do your drives do in atto?

[CCW]

I dont have atto, Im gonna have to download it, do you know where I can download it from?

Craig

[felix88]

i've got a little thing on atto here. it's even got instructions on downloading it.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7899

[CCW]

Cheers Felix!

Craig

[CCW]

Er is it this one:
Windows ExpressPCI Configuration Tool v2.20 ?
Thanks,
Craig

EDIT - 21:38 - Looks like I wont be going to school tomorrow :D Blizzard here in England.

[FreakyShadow]

Originally posted by CCW
Er is it this one:
Windows ExpressPCI Configuration Tool v2.20 ?
Thanks,
Craig

EDIT - 21:38 - Looks like I wont be going to school tomorrow :D Blizzard here in England.

No, it's the Windows SCSI Utilities Version 1.63 for the ATTO disk benchmark.

[CCW]

damn! well i mgoing to bed, tired, will have a look tomorrow,

Thanks,
Craig