[18th Anniversary] Asus Black Pearl - P5k-Premium Testing Report

[ReverendMaynard]

damn thats crazy burst rate, i did want to enable it in the device manager, but figured out i couldnt do it there....hehe. i am very new to raid...
just have a few more questions: after plug both 6400aaks, i hit ctrl+i into raid setting, i first create raid 0 with 16k strip, then raid 1(is this the right order?). after that, just normal windows installation, followed by intel matrix storage console. does this mean i am already using intel matrix raid?
also, i have done alot of research on the net about the strip size for raid0, but different people has different ideas about it. theres no "most common" or "best" stripe size?

You have to install the Intel Storage Manager, then you can enable write back. http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Prod...ProductID=2101

You are using matrix RAID 0/1. I tend to use a larger stripe on drives that have larger programs and files, like games. I think 64k is considered the norm.

[haoster]

new result with write back cache enabled:


how come i have such a high cpu usage...

[sesdave]

new result with write back cache enabled:

how come i have such a high cpu usage...

Your Raid0 is way too big. Best performance is achieved by using a thin slice at the beginning of the drive platter - set it up with about 80-100GB. If you havent read this thread already do so - http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848 you will be able to glean all the info you need to setup your drives in RAID 0/1 -or 5 or 10 if you have 4 to get the best out of them. The latter end of the thread is mainly around using 640's in raid0/1 - 5 -10 setup where they are getting silly performance.

[ReverendMaynard]

new result with write back cache enabled:


how come i have such a high cpu usage...

one of the disadvantages of having a dual core.

[haoster]

after installed some applications, max, min, average transfer rate in hd tune decreased about 20-40mb/s...
also, i found sometimes its laggy when reading from or writing to both volumes...

[ReverendMaynard]

after installed some applications, max, min, average transfer rate in hd tune decreased about 20-40mb/s...
also, i found sometimes its laggy when reading from or writing to both volumes...

That has allot to do with the size of your RAID0 volume as sesdave mentioned earlier. You want a short stroke for maximum performance.

[haoster]

That has allot to do with the size of your RAID0 volume as sesdave mentioned earlier. You want a short stroke for maximum performance.

ya, i know, 400g is too big for raid0.....
but...100G raid0 and 550g ish raid1 wont be enough for my docs,video, and music etc.... thats why i put 400g into raid0....

[sesdave]

ya, i know, 400g is too big for raid0.....
but...100G raid0 and 550g ish raid1 wont be enough for my docs,video, and music etc.... thats why i put 400g into raid0....

Your missing the max performance benefits of RAID0/1 on 2 HDs with that setup and exposing yourself to data loss. Small RAID0 for max performance .e.g operating system but no resilience - uses stripping so total loss in the event of failure so you dont want data files in there. RAID 1 or better for mirroring but slower performance - e.g data file,music etc. FULL auto data recovery in the event of a disk fail. Whatever you setup you still neeed a further backup of your critical files to cover you from multiple disk fails - low risk but it happens and you cant retake digital photos. A nice large USB, SATA_E drive ,NAS server etc. This can also be used for an image backup of your RAID0 so you can recover operating system from BOOTCD with backup software - saves the reinstall from scratch.