Crapy Raid Performance?

[MaxxxRacer]

You do need antother temporary boot disk to accomplish this however.

Tell me more! From the looks of it i can change that with the aformentioned utility.

[Premmer]

Tell me more! From the looks of it i can change that with the aformentioned utility.

Using PM, you can easily change the block or cluster size to match the RAID stripe size without re-formatting your drives.

After you've made the change using PM, run Windows Disk Defragmenter. Once complete, select the report option. The report will list the cluster size which should match the RAID stripe size for best performance. 16K appears to be the best size for my use.

[Reinvented]

Brian, Ghosting a drive might not work so well with RAID. I'll show it to you a bit later.

[MaxxxRacer]

ok.. just send me a PM if u want to jump on AIM.

what i was thinking I might do is to load up a quick install of windows (nlite special) and then slap the ghost image on top of that giving me all my settings back.

Using PM, you can easily change the block or cluster size to match the RAID stripe size without re-formatting your drives.

After you've made the change using PM, run Windows Disk Defragmenter. Once complete, select the report option. The report will list the cluster size which should match the RAID stripe size for best performance. 16K appears to be the best size for my use.

thanks for the heads up Premmer. I will do that after the reformat and stripe size change..


EDIT: well it looks like Ghost is out of the picture. It keeps BSOD'ing whenever I run the bootable disk.. so I would have to isntal windows again and then run ghost to bring back my current install. .the question is will it be able to write over the windows folder while windows is running???

[Reinvented]

ok.. just send me a PM if u want to jump on AIM.

what i was thinking I might do is to load up a quick install of windows (nlite special) and then slap the ghost image on top of that giving me all my settings back.




thanks for the heads up Premmer. I will do that after the reformat and stripe size change..


EDIT: well it looks like Ghost is out of the picture. It keeps BSOD'ing whenever I run the bootable disk.. so I would have to isntal windows again and then run ghost to bring back my current install. .the question is will it be able to write over the windows folder while windows is running???

Yeah, that was the thing with RAID and ghosting drives mentioned in tech docs of the nvidia media shield/raid.

[Premmer]

and then run ghost to bring back my current install. .the question is will it be able to write over the windows folder while windows is running???

For your sake I hope I'm wrong but I suspect that there will be conflicts between current install Ghost or Acronis True Image load points and the new RAID stripe/block size.

If it does load, Ghost or Acronis True Image may default drive block/cluster size to a lower value but that would be easily correctable using PM.

Good Luck!

[Hassan]

with RAID Ghost does not work too well, but Acronis True Image works, you can download the 14 day demo and use it, that should be enough time to do whatever you have to accomplish

[MaxxxRacer]

Reinvented, the tech doc actually said that it will BSOD if u have raid? that is total bullocks. what kind of POS software is this.. well its exactly what i thought it would be.. lol.. leave it to symantic to create useless software.

thanks for the heads up hassan.. does it come with a bootable disc so that I can reload the OS without having to re-install windows?

[Trice]

Which Ghost are you using? I have Raid 0 as well and 64k size, but I have never tried using ghost to back it up as I dont have a floppy drive.

I guess I should try it since I bought the same program

[MaxxxRacer]

Ghost 10.05

[Hassan]

yes after you install it from windows you have the option to make a rescue disk if I remember correctly, moreso it has a clone disk option if you have a blank ide, it'll setup the boot to ide instead of raid and back and forth, I've used it many times when i upgrade my array, add a disk, remove a disk, what have you

[MaxxxRacer]

hmm.. So I can slap in my my spare 80gb IDE drive and have it dump the OS to there and then back again to the array after I fix it?

[Hassan]

exactly, thats what I do. clone to raid--->ide, switch boot priority, rebuild raid stripe whatever, then boot with ide switch ide--->raid, voila complete... and best of all you have a perfectly bootable functioning ide drive to boot up with incase of failure.

[Premmer]

hmm.. So I can slap in my my spare 80gb IDE drive and have it dump the OS to there and then back again to the array after I fix it?

If you install a spare 80G drive you don't need anything other that PM. Just boot on the floppies and copy your current OS to the spare drive. I do frequently as a backup routine and it works flawlessly. It's also extremely fast as compared to Ghost. No need to do any formatting as PM will copy from your saved OS.

After you have your OS on the spare drive, run the PM cluster resizing option and select 16K. Verify that copy is error-free.

Use the F10 option to delete/create a new 16K stripe/block size array. Boot to PM and copy your saved OS partition on your spare drive to your RAID array on the Raptors.

If you do encounter errors it's probably due to mismatchs in your saved file allocation tables vs the new RAID 16K size. The only fix that I'm awhere of is a total reload of all your SW.

[Hassan]

If you do encounter errors it's probably due to mismatchs in your saved file allocation tables vs the new RAID 16K size. The only fix that I'm awhere of is a total reload of all your SW.

That sounds like a huge risk... I would stick with Acronis True Image, remember when you boot with a floppy, can you still see your drive without raid drivers loaded, ntfs partitions? I don't own any floppy drives so all my techniques revolve around bootable cd's and usb drives.

[Haltech]

Check your PMs maxxxx. Youre setup

[MaxxxRacer]

I'll stick with Hassans idea.. safer I think.

[Premmer]

That sounds like a huge risk... I would stick with Acronis True Image, remember when you boot with a floppy, can you still see your drive without raid drivers loaded, ntfs partitions? I don't own any floppy drives so all my techniques revolve around bootable cd's and usb drives.

The risk of losing his current OS can be eliminated by coping (2) images to his spare 80G drive. One image would be reloaded after he resizes the RAID to 16K. The second copy would be used if he does encounter errors which I suspect is likely whether he uses Ghost, TI or PM for the reason previously noted.

[MaxxxRacer]

Why would I need two anyway? If I have one and I just keep it intact on the 80gb spare drive everything will be fine.

[Cooper]

Performance with different stripe sizes.
Hardware used:

DFI NF4-SLI
2x36GB Raptors
NVidia RAID controller

[MaxxxRacer]

for what its worth PC mark is a pretty freaking useless HDD benchmark.

Kinda funny how PCMark and the other program are at COMPLETE odds with eachother.. in PCMark 32k is the fastes while with the other 32k is the slowest.. by ALOT.

anyway, I just reformated the array and I am using a 16k stripe with 16k clusters. performance is where it should be.

The wierdest thing is that right now Im on the clone 30gb spare drive right now.. VERY wierd to do a straight copy.. it works fine, but I think it has some regisytry issues because Photoshop CS2 was complaining that it needed me to reactivate it.

Looking at a few other users like krampak I see that my setup still lacks a bit in performance. Not exactly sure why, but it probably has to do with the mobo.

[safan80]

well the 1st gen raptors are nothing compared to current gen sata2. you might want to consider upgrading your hard drives
here's 1st gen raptors vs 2nd gen raptors plus multiple drive raid0
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...aptor74&page=1

if you want to keep your 1st gen raptors get 2 more and use them in a 4x raid0 array.

[Premmer]

Why would I need two anyway? If I have one and I just keep it intact on the 80gb spare drive everything will be fine.

The first copy would have the cluster size set at 16K. The second copy would have the original cluster size.

Also if you do use the spare drive/PM method, it is imperative that the spare drive be disabled in the BIOS or the power connector removed before you boot into Windows. Failure to do so will cause Windows to register the drive as an additional non-bootable storage device which renders that image useless for future restore operations.

[MaxxxRacer]

The first copy would have the cluster size set at 16K. The second copy would have the original cluster size.

Also if you do use the spare drive/PM method, it is imperative that the spare drive be disabled in the BIOS or the power connector removed before you boot into Windows. Failure to do so will cause Windows to register the drive as an additional non-bootable storage device which renders that image useless for future restore operations.

Well its already done. I didnt disconnect it, but it isnt useless. I have a tool that will restore the MBR and make it bootable again.

well the 1st gen raptors are nothing compared to current gen sata2. you might want to consider upgrading your hard drives
here's 1st gen raptors vs 2nd gen raptors plus multiple drive raid0
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...aptor74&page=1

if you want to keep your 1st gen raptors get 2 more and use them in a 4x raid0 array.

SATA2 doesnt do jack for performance unless your running a server and the drive fully supports NCQ (and I havnt seen a good SATA2 implimentation of NCQ). The only use SATA 2 has for raw performance is with the RAM drives.

anyway, while I would love 2x150gb raptors or even the 74g's its not worth the money to me. (not that I have it currently)

[Premmer]

for what its worth PC mark is a pretty freaking useless HDD benchmark.

Kinda funny how PCMark and the other program are at COMPLETE odds with eachother.. in PCMark 32k is the fastes while with the other 32k is the slowest.. by ALOT.

anyway, I just reformated the array and I am using a 16k stripe with 16k clusters. performance is where it should be.

The wierdest thing is that right now Im on the clone 30gb spare drive right now.. VERY wierd to do a straight copy.. it works fine, but I think it has some regisytry issues because Photoshop CS2 was complaining that it needed me to reactivate it.

Looking at a few other users like krampak I see that my setup still lacks a bit in performance. Not exactly sure why, but it probably has to do with the mobo.

When I ran 36G Raptors RAID my average and burst values were quite close to yours. Don't expect to achieve 74G Raptor performance.

Did you use TI? Did you boot with the spare drive enabled?