Raid 0 Hardware :banana::banana::banana::banana: :)

[NapalmV5]

you got a 3rd multi?
if its not the cables check the ssds pins.. if all are no jumpers/jumpered the same way


edit: check cap truncation @ raid system
the 8x you posted @ 240GB was set @ 10G truncation
if you want 100% GB disable truncation

[Buckeye]

Yup no other Multi cable and everyhthing else seems in order.

If I move that one connector around I get the Hot Spare issue on what ever drive I have it attached to.

I can create a raid np and even install Vista without issues.

So working on getting another Multi.

They claimed it was tested out before it was set to me but I have this issue. Now its hard to contact support... we tested it out before we sent it to you, must be your end

gezz new cable coming on Tuesday, what a pain.

[NapalmV5]

i thought you got the 1231ML kit (w/ 3x multi cables)

if they created a global hot spare one ssd gets marked but not the cable

and when you delete the hot spare it goes back to normal

i take it they sent you different multi cables? because they created a hot spare.. i guess that P1 cable is for hot spare only.. weird

[Buckeye]

i thought you got the 1231ML kit (w/ 3x multi cables)

if they created a global hot spare one ssd gets marked but not the cable

and when you delete the hot spare it goes back to normal

i take it they sent you different multi cables? because they created a hot spare.. i guess that P1 cable is for hot spare only.. weird

Yes I purchased this through DVnation. It came with 2 cables even tho there is 3 sockets.

Each cable has 4 SATA connectors, labeled P1-P4. So its one of the SATA connectors labeled P1.

You know that could be it tho Nap with the P1 connector on that cable being for Hot Spare only. But they claim it showed all 8 SSD's when tested, go figure.

Do they even make a cable like that ?

[NapalmV5]

not that i know of..

but if both multi cables are the same P1-P4 which is fine.. means that P1 cable is doa.. why youre getting the buzzer

i checked dvnation.. thats not the kit 1231ML.. the kit includes 3x cables.. wow lots of $ for that storage system you purchased which begs for a better controller

860MB/s is the limitation of the 800MHz iop341.. even @ 7x youre getting 840MB/s + the extra MB/s to around 855MB/s the other ssd is pretty much a waste unless you use it as hot spare

like i said @ pm the adaptec 5805 the only 1.2GHz and its a dual-1.2GHz available atm for around 500$ is the controller youd want to run 8x ssd on


im looking @ the adaptec 5805 + 4x 15K sas or maybe 8x sata.. ill let you know how it performs if do get it

[Buckeye]

not that i know of..

but if both multi cables are the same P1-P4 which is fine.. means that P1 cable is doa.. why youre getting the buzzer

i checked dvnation.. thats not the kit 1231ML.. the kit includes 3x cables.. wow lots of $ for that storage system you purchased which begs for a better controller

860MB/s is the limitation of the 800MHz iop341.. even @ 7x youre getting 840MB/s + the extra MB/s to around 855MB/s the other ssd is pretty much a waste unless you use it as hot spare

like i said @ pm the adaptec 5805 the only 1.2GHz and its a dual-1.2GHz available atm for around 500$ is the controller youd want to run 8x ssd on


im looking @ the adaptec 5805 + 4x 15K sas or maybe 8x sata.. ill let you know how it performs if do get it

Yup they didn't send me 3 cables, it should have. I have contacted them about that.

I get the buzzer when I try and delete the Hot Spare, it sits there for a min then the buzzer goes off.

According to them this is the best controller for the job.

[[XC] NetburstXE]

[xanvincent]

That's some insane burst speed, too bad they cost too much right now.

[Buckeye]

not that i know of..

but if both multi cables are the same P1-P4 which is fine.. means that P1 cable is doa.. why youre getting the buzzer

i checked dvnation.. thats not the kit 1231ML.. the kit includes 3x cables.. wow lots of $ for that storage system you purchased which begs for a better controller

860MB/s is the limitation of the 800MHz iop341.. even @ 7x youre getting 840MB/s + the extra MB/s to around 855MB/s the other ssd is pretty much a waste unless you use it as hot spare

like i said @ pm the adaptec 5805 the only 1.2GHz and its a dual-1.2GHz available atm for around 500$ is the controller youd want to run 8x ssd on


im looking @ the adaptec 5805 + 4x 15K sas or maybe 8x sata.. ill let you know how it performs if do get it

Thanks Nap, I look forward to your input on that card. If it's good then I might just swap it out with the one I have.
http://www.compsource.com/pn/2244300R/Adaptec_13/

[NapalmV5]

That's some insane burst speed, too bad they cost too much right now.

my 300$ highpoint rr3510: around 1300MB/s burst

heres one thing about low profile vs full.. 300$ 128MB arc1210 was faster/snappier than the 900$ 1024MB arc1230 @ boot up.. winxp installed faster by about ~20sec.. even though burst was lower

256MB arc1210 equaled the 1024MB arc1230 burst

low profile: shorter traces: less components: mem chips soldered: lower latency: faster controller and less $

Yup they didn't send me 3 cables, it should have. I have contacted them about that.

I get the buzzer when I try and delete the Hot Spare, it sits there for a min then the buzzer goes off.

According to them this is the best controller for the job.

Thanks Nap, I look forward to your input on that card. If it's good then I might just swap it out with the one I have.
http://www.compsource.com/pn/2244300R/Adaptec_13/

in your case i beg to differ.. if youd use the controller maxed out in a storage/backup rig than yeh who cares if it uses 9 or more cpu% or if you dont get full storage performance

but because it is maxed out it uses a lot more cpu% than usually.. it needs some headroom to keep low cpu%

5805 note: 2244100-R (kit): cables included 2244300-R: no cables

the other controller that youd want to run 8x ssd on is the highpoint rr3520 if 1.2GHz iop341 like the retail box shown and not the 800MHz stated.. idk what is up with highpoint.. still no response.. ill givem a call tomorrow

[p0tter]

certainly nuts(cost - yikes), but I do look forward to the results!

Thanks for quote a pic on the very next reply.... forum noob!

[Buckeye]

my 300$ highpoint rr3510: around 1300MB/s burst

heres one thing about low profile vs full.. 300$ 128MB arc1210 was faster/snappier than the 900$ 1024MB arc1230 @ boot up.. winxp installed faster by about ~20sec.. even though burst was lower

256MB arc1210 equaled the 1024MB arc1230 burst

low profile: shorter traces: less components: mem chips soldered: lower latency: faster controller and less $



in your case i beg to differ.. if youd use the controller maxed out in a storage/backup rig than yeh who cares if it uses 9 or more cpu% or if you dont get full storage performance

but because it is maxed out it uses a lot more cpu% than usually.. it needs some headroom to keep low cpu%

5805 note: 2244100-R (kit): cables included 2244300-R: no cables

the other controller that youd want to run 8x ssd on is the highpoint rr3520 if 1.2GHz iop341 like the retail box shown and not the 800MHz stated.. idk what is up with highpoint.. still no response.. ill givem a call tomorrow

Thanks Nap for your imput.

They seem to think Areca 1231ML is the fastest right now, perhaps because thats who they have arrangments with to sell products for, who knows.

But I want to run my OS on this raid so if there is a better card I will go with that. It will be intersting to see a storage card shoot out

[Buckeye]

Ok after some trouble the Raid is up and running.

Turns out I had to update the BIOS on the EVGA 790i Ultra to get everything to work. I was only seeing 7 SSD's out of the 8 no mater what I did, it results in the Hot Spare problem even tho that drive was fine. Problem solved.

Installed Vista Ultimate 32bit and fully updated. I had problems with 64bit and driver signing, I might take a second look at that.

But for now...

The Raid is getting about 725 MB/s which is to low. So a question is...

What settings for the Raid card should I have set ?
Is there any settings in Vista that I should do ?

As I am running SLI or Quad with 2x 9800GX2's I have to install the Raid card in the non express slot between the two GPU's. Is that a problem ?

It also runs very Hot and would set off the temp beeper so I put a fan blowing on the card and that solved that problem. Looking at a better solution for that. I know I can pull off the HS and use one of Vinces LN2 puts to cool it

All in all this system is running so fast ! even on stock settings. I can not wait for the SS Phase Cooler for this ! As I will be running a Chiller also I might look into putting the Raid Card in that loop, not sure if I can find the right fittings tho.

Update:
I have it pretty stable at 800 MB/s now.
I think some of the problem is I am running the OS on the Raid. I think most graphs I have seen are simply a Raid 0 and running the OS on a separate drive.

Update again
Different readings from different programs.
HD Tach reports about 825 MB/s
HD Tune reports about 650 MB/s
Everest reports a nice stable 873 MB/s

[NapalmV5]

i get the same performance @ no os vs os.. at least on xp w/ no pagefile

id do 7x ssd and see how much this controller hinders performance vs 8x ssd

from my experience with 1230 + 8x raptor: 7x raptor was faster than 8x

you may get better/same results @ 7x

read/write cache enabled?

the controller needs x8 pcie.. x8 pcie 2.0 even better if you want full performance

[Buckeye]

Thanks Nap

Yes I have write back enabled. Thats the way to go instead of write through as far as I can tell ? Indexing is turned off in Vista. I did finally get Vista 64bit working nicely and results did get better, but not by a large amount.

I have it installed in the first slot after the first 9800GX2, it's a black slot which is 8x I believe. I have not tried it in a 16x slot yet. To do that I would have to take out the 2nd 9800GX2 which is not how I want to run this rig. Who knows tho maybe next month when new Nvidia Cards come out I might change the setup if they are better. Most likely I could not run TRI-SLI and use the Raid card, unless I go to a different motherboad, or maybe a different Raid card.

hmm.... I do have page file turned on, might give it a try with that off.

I was just trying to figure out why all these programs report such different results.

But I was asking myself... self... would I even notice anymore bandwidth as it is so fast now

I picture the way they tested was something like...

Computer all setup with OS on a seperate HD and up and running... the test machine. This way they could change test setups very fast not needing to go through OS installs for each test.
Plug in Raid card and SSD's
Fire up computer and use Vista to install drivers for Raid card.
Raid is alive and run HD Tach

Mine is boot up computer and go to Raid card BIOS, create Raid
Install Vista and use drivers from floppy disk, or other method. I used a CD with new 64bit Areca drivers from there website this last time.
Vista 64 is now up and running on the Raid, tweak Vista features.
Run test programs

[NapalmV5]

on vista youre just not gonna get the same performance youd get on xp

what are you getting now @ hdtach ?

out of all the hdd benchmarks i did on areca controllers + raptors.. hdtach is the closest one to actual performance

310MB/s @ hdtach
300MB/s actual performance @ dvdshrink

copy app @ windows is not a good app to bench storage transfers

edit: do you have x38/x48 chipset based mobo u could test on?

controller performance also varies from chipset to chipset

[m^2]

Aren't you afraid of running 8 drives in RAID 0?
Is small performance benefit over RAID 5 worth risking data loss? If I were you I would definitely go for RAID 5 (or 10, but 5 should be faster for home use) and enjoy having redundancy.

[Buckeye]

Aren't you afraid of running 8 drives in RAID 0?
Is small performance benefit over RAID 5 worth risking data loss? If I were you I would definitely go for RAID 5 (or 10, but 5 should be faster for home use) and enjoy having redundancy.

Yes after it get done with testing and ready to run this baby for work and fun I will go to a Raid 5 config.

[m^2]

So why are you testing with RAID 0 instead of 5? Sure it's fun, but doesn't really tell you what can you expect from the final system.

[Buckeye]

I am testing in Raid 0 atm for speed, while I wait for my Phase Cooling to be complete. The whole rig will need to be torn apart then and I will go for final config.

[Mr.Guvernment]

yan i wish i could get some SSD's, these numbers are just insane,getting close to 1G!


original pic source


http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/battleship/


http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/mtron16/

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=530580

[Buckeye]

Ok I thought I would post a sort of history of this Raid, most of the pictures have all been posted in the first part of this thread.

How it stands now...

I took the lower HD cages in the TJ07, drilled a few holes so I could mount all 4 SSD's in each cage, so two cages = 8 SSD's


The whole machine will be torn apart to install the Phase/Chiller setup so I haven't paid much attention to cable management.



History of the build.

This build started off with using just 1x 32GB MTRON Pro SSD for the OS. This unit came and I tested it on my current rig by installing Vista and firing that baby up. It was very fast, so much so that I decided to move on to a Raid 0 setup to push it even farther.

I ordered the second SSD, another 32GB unit and a Areca ARC-1231ML to run the Raid 0 setup with.

This is when the fun started…

Equipment came and I then started up building the new rig, even tho I did not have the Phase cooling setup yet, I decided to run this baby at stock to see what it could do. Plugged it all in and went to setup the Raid… the Areca ARC-1231ML was seeing the SSD’s as failed drives ! oh nooo’s

Talking with tech support we decided to send the whole Raid back to have them take a look at it. It turned out that the Raid card was bad. I then got a crazy idea on building my own SSD Battleship. I had them connect 6 more SSD’s for a total of 8 in Raid 0 and test it all out before sending it to me. The results were very exciting, you can see the HD Tach results that I post above. They even tried using 10 SSD’s in my Raid to go over 1 GB/s bandwidth but they just would not do it. As I said above these units put out totally crazy bandwidth and even the Areca ARC-1231ML could not keep up with 10 in Raid 0. The Raid was box’d up and set to me.

The big day came !!

Ok so now I had all the parts and installed everything. First thing I tried to setup the Raid. Problem… Only 7 of the 8 SSD’s were seen by the Areca, the 8th SSD was seen as a Hot Spare, I went great, a bad cable. I tried moving the one cable around to different SSD’s to confirm and yup, always a Hot Spare. Another cable was sent to me.

Now it is getting interesting… new cable came and same problem Trying all kinds of different cable locations, only using 4 SSD’s which worked fine, it was just 8 that was giving me the problem with Hot Spare. I installed Vista 32anyway on 7. Now taking that 8th SSD I plugged it into the motherboard and bypassed the Areca… wait the MB BIOS saw it fine… booted into Vista and it saw it fine… what the heck was going on ???

By this time I had tried many, many different things with this setup and was very frustrated.

So I just went ok lets update the motherboard BIOS, I don’t like doing that as I had a bad flash on a Striker before and it was a total pain to fix. Never mess around with your main work machine without a having a spare machine in case things go wrong HAHA. But this time everything went fine, Yeah !

I hit the power button and Woot !! I can now see all 8x SSD’s in the Areca BIOS Yeah !!
It turned out t was a MB BIOS issue after all.

I start getting the Raid setup which goes great. Now on to install Vista. Having driver signing issues with vista 64 before I decided to use 32bit. It all went well and I had Vista Ultimate 32 up and running in no time. Man it was fast !

But Vista 32bit is not what I had planned on running with this rig, so I decided to go for 64bit.

More fun begins !

Using the supplied driver disk for the Areca I created a floppy with 64bit drivers. Started the Vista Ultimate 64bit installer and when you get to the point where you tell it where Vista is to install, I see no drive (I only had the Raid connected at this point), inserting the floppy and hitting Refresh, I still see no drivers for the Areca. Gah ! did I create the wrong driver disk, or for 32bit ??? I tried it again making sure I used the 64bit drivers, again nothing !!

Oh man does it ever stop HAHA

Going to Areca website I found new 64bit drivers, download them and made a CD, booted Vista Installer and Bingo there it is YEAH !

And Surprise these drivers have been signed !! Yeah again, no more driver signing issues.

So now I am happy, it’s running very, very fast !
From the time the Areca initializes, till you are sitting on the desktop ready, it’s about 8 seconds HAHA !
In fact when you see the Black Screen with the Round Vista Logo, right before it goes to the desktop, there are 2 sounds that are played, one for the Vista Logo and one for the desktop. It loads so fast that both sounds play at the same time.

What could I suggest for others wanting to use SSD’s in their rigs…

First off my setup is WAY overkill for a desktop. However if you are doing things like video encoding and things like that this Raid will Rock your world. I would love to try this out with a Skulltrail setup hehehe, perhaps a new evil plan is taking shape


Speed wise these SSD’s scale very well, almost too well. With 8 in my raid I am hard pressed to find a card that can keep up with the bandwidth. Not that it would matter much in trying to get every bit of bandwidth that the 8 can provide, it’s just too fast now and anything faster would simply be over kill, not that it isn’t already


So to sum it all up. SSD’s are very fast, with a .01 access time you will find your new setup springing to life, apps load very, very fast, write times could be a bit better and small file usage will slow you down, but nothing compared to HD’s. Anything short of a Raptor Raid 0 setup will not even come close. They make no noise, generate no heat and are very low power. Oh and did I say that they are FAST ! LOL Perhaps waiting a bit for newer drives would make sense, but with computers we can always wait for newer equipment, CPU’s, GPU’s its never ending, and when you do actually spring for new stuff it’s always out dated in no time.

Another example of the speed of these… I installed AoC on the Raid and fired that up, load times are extremely fast when zoning. The load bar just flies across the screen. Going into the tavern in the newbe areas there is no delay, perhaps a second is all. The longest load time I had was maybe 3 seconds when doing the White Isle quest. I have not tried Crysis yet but I expect there to be almost no delay in loading new areas.

I went back and played a bit of AoC on my old main rig, QX6700 and 2x 74GB Raptors in Raid 0, it was painfully slow now, Ha !

So now all this rigs needs is cooling for a nice OC and then I will see what this monster can do.

[Mr.Guvernment]

i hate you! like others, if i could just have ONE of these!!! if i didnt have $3k in camera gear to buy one of these would be on my list!

[m^2]

I've got one idea...How about using 2+ cards to split load and get more bandwidth? Would it be possible to make a software RAID 0 of them and install Windows on it?

[Talonman]

I love the rig Buckeye...

It's just so Xtreme...