Areca 1880i + 2 x C300 initial setup

[hlonipha]

I'm making this thread to seek assistance on improve results with this new card. I have 0 experience with a raid card. I know there is a thread that talks about the card but I do not want in some way to hijack his thread. Compu feel free to help on this one as well.

Now this is what I got so far with initial setup.



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Do I need to setup the card differently to increase performace ?
I did a quick volume raid setup, install win 7 64bit, video, chipset and sound drivers.

Any help will be appreciated

hlo

[SteveRo]

experiment - areca/SSDs are usually faster with smaller strips.
also experiment with controller settings - controller read ahead, controller write cache enable, NCQ, ...

[hlonipha]

I tried with smaller sizes and biger and worst performance than 64k.

Which brings me to the question of I had to install win 7 a few times. Now when windows reboots it shows all 5 installations for me to pick which I would like to boot to.

I broke the array partition drives and nothing. starting to think it is the areca card that some how is holding that previous information in memory. is it a way to delete that ?

thanks

update: I was deleting the raid but not the volume. I deleted the volume first then the raid and the multiple installations are gone.

[DeViTTo]

Strange that you have had so many problems. the controller will remember the old settings especially if you keep recreating the same array you should be able to force an initalization which should erase all data. Although I think here the card is set to do this automatically after every creation by default. You could try breaking the array and just create pass through drives i.e I think seperating them into individual ones then go back in after reboot and recreate your preferred array.

I may be wrong here so Steve please correct me if I am. Another way would be to boot of another drive and then mess with arch http and recreate and delete your array there I find it slightly easier to navigate than the bios in the card. You are I think just creating the default array each time. It may be easier off another hard drive for you to see all the options available to you. Just a thought.

[hlonipha]

Strange that you have had so many problems. the controller will remember the old settings especially if you keep recreating the same array you should be able to force an initalization which should erase all data. Although I think here the card is set to do this automatically after every creation by default. You could try breaking the array and just create pass through drives i.e I think seperating them into individual ones then go back in after reboot and recreate your preferred array.

I may be wrong here so Steve please correct me if I am. Another way would be to boot of another drive and then mess with arch http and recreate and delete your array there I find it slightly easier to navigate than the bios in the card. You are I think just creating the default array each time. It may be easier off another hard drive for you to see all the options available to you. Just a thought.

is all good. I figured it out.
Now will test some settings to see if I can improve performance. Any sugestion on settings please do share.

[Computurd]

read ahead aggressive
disk write cache enabled
Tagged Command Queuing enabled
sata ncq enabled
disk read cache enabled
hdd qeue depth 32

start there and post some screenies!

ALSO: update to new firmware!
http://www.areca.com.tw/support/main.htm

[hlonipha]

read ahead aggressive
disk write cache enabled
Tagged Command Queuing enabled
sata ncq enabled
disk read cache enabled
hdd qeue depth 32

start there and post some screenies!

ALSO: update to new firmware!
http://www.areca.com.tw/support/main.htm

Thank you Comp, I've been waiting for you here
Will post some later tonight when I get home from school.

[hlonipha]

How do I flash this? I can seem to figure it out.

[hlonipha]

read ahead aggressive
disk write cache enabled
Tagged Command Queuing enabled
sata ncq enabled
disk read cache enabled
hdd qeue depth 32

start there and post some screenies!

ALSO: update to new firmware!
http://www.areca.com.tw/support/main.htm

New screenies with all above mentioned done.
Some improvement



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[SteveRo]

Good morning,
Best way to flash your controller is through the archttp application - you can download and install from the areca website.
When I say that small stripe is best, what i mean is that most folks seem to have found that small stripe sizes yield the fastest pcmv suite scores.

[hlonipha]

Good morning,
Best way to flash your controller is through the archttp application - you can download and install from the areca website.
When I say that small stripe is best, what i mean is that most folks seem to have found that small stripe sizes yield the fastest pcmv suite scores.

Good morning,
I took me a bit of reading but I flashed it late last night.

I wonder if even though, AS SSD Bench and Crystal hdd mark scores were worst with smaller stripe sizes, pcmv will be better ?

At 64k stripe size with mild cpu overclock




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[SteveRo]

Good morning again Mr. Hlonipha,
Wow - very nice - 29250 is a great score -

I think it would be the #8 highest hall of fame score on the orb -

http://service.futuremark.com/search...esolution=-100

Well you certainly must be doing something right!
Tell us the rest of your config - is this really with only two c300/256 drives on the 1880? Excellent work!
Mr Anvil - If Hlon moves to 4k stripe shouldn't he see a nice increase?

[hlonipha]

Good morning again Mr. Hlonipha,
Wow - very nice - 29250 is a great score -

I think it would be the #8 highest hall of fame score on the orb -

http://service.futuremark.com/search...esolution=-100

Well you certainly must be doing something right!
Tell us the rest of your config - is this really with only two c300/256 drives on the 1880? Excellent work!
Mr Anvil - If Hlon moves to 4k stripe shouldn't he see a nice increase?

Jejejeje, yes sir. I took the settings that Comp, posted yesterday and that's it. I have 0 experience with this cards. This was with 64k stripe size. Other than that cpu @ 4.4ghz memory 1700.

What I dont understand is:

1. why would going to a smaller stripe size the performance will increase with only two drives?

2.the performance increase did not show on the 2 other benchmark tools.

3. which one is more similar to real world use?

4. Will I benefit if I buy 2 more C300's? <------ update: ordered 2 more C300 256 drives overnight. Hope the egg ship tonight .

[SteveRo]

1. why would going to a smaller stripe size the performance will increase with only two drives? - well with only 2 drives I'm not sure but based on what others have seen with 4 drives smaller strip is usually faster - did Mr CT recommmend 64K stripe?

2.the performance increase did not show on the 2 other benchmark tools. - I think this might of happened to me also.

3. which one is more similar to real world use? well I would think pcmv should be a better indicator of overall system performance, see - http://www.futuremark.com/pressroom/...aper_v1.0_(PDF)

4. Will I benefit if I buy 2 more C300's? - Yes, your system will definately measure out faster - pcmv, AS SSD and CDM should all properly measure your system to be faster. Will you notice it in day to day usage? - I would think unlikely since you already have such an uber system already. Do you also have the 4GB cache?

[dinos22]

nice work so far

what sort of cache do you run on your controller?

[Computurd]

yeah wow amazing work Hlnophia! you can't have the 4g cache. that is straight power there. the cache on that card is only 512mb. not able to upgrade!
4k is best btw

[Williambra]

I expect there could be a few quick updates from Areca, this being a new controller.
Nizzen is about to test a load of Intels.

[Computurd]

does he have the cache yet?

[hlonipha]

1. why would going to a smaller stripe size the performance will increase with only two drives? - well with only 2 drives I'm not sure but based on what others have seen with 4 drives smaller strip is usually faster - did Mr CT recommmend 64K stripe?

2.the performance increase did not show on the 2 other benchmark tools. - I think this might of happened to me also.

3. which one is more similar to real world use? well I would think pcmv should be a better indicator of overall system performance, see - http://www.futuremark.com/pressroom/...aper_v1.0_(PDF)

4. Will I benefit if I buy 2 more C300's? - Yes, your system will definately measure out faster - pcmv, AS SSD and CDM should all properly measure your system to be faster. Will you notice it in day to day usage? - I would think unlikely since you already have such an uber system already. Do you also have the 4GB cache?

I have the 512 memory 1880i. Will reconfigure for 4k size tonight and retry again.


2 more C300 coming my way but egg did not ship tonight. newegg

[hlonipha]

yeah wow amazing work Hlnophia! you can't have the 4g cache. that is straight power there. the cache on that card is only 512mb. not able to upgrade!
4k is best btw

yeap

will do
thanks

[dinos22]

oh wow this is pretty good then for stock cache indeed

i thought these cards also had upgrades available.

[SteveRo]

@ Mr dinos - yes, Areca is offering some models with 512mb and some with dimms, same as previous - http://www.areca.com.tw/products/1880.htm


@ Mr hlon - wow, 512mb cache and only 2 drives - that is a great score!

[hlonipha]

@ Mr dinos - yes, Areca is offering some models with 512mb and some with dimms, same as previous - http://www.areca.com.tw/products/1880.htm


@ Mr hlon - wow, 512mb cache and only 2 drives - that is a great score!

You got me motivated to try for better. so i bought 2 more drives.

Calling the egg this morning to see if they can ship today with saturday delivery, since they did not ship yesterday after I place my order before their cutoff time .

Thanks

[Levish]

Pretty crazy scores for two drives.

[hlonipha]

Pretty crazy scores for two drives.

Thank you, I did not realized that I had good numbers. I'm kind of clueless about the HDD/SSD playfield.

Hopefully when I get my 2 new C300 256 monday (EGG can not ship for saturday) they will scale good and I can pull better scores.

Hlo