Raid 0 test for real speed!

[sss]

Ok... today my new HDD's arrived they are

Seagate 320GB 16meg, SATA 2 drives, 7200rpm version 10

Im running a gigbyte board with NVRAID.

Tonight i will install a single drive with windows xp pro... install the nvidia ide drivers and then install bf2 and sisoft sandra.

I'll do a bench with sisoft... and then see how long bf2 takes to load a 64 player map single player

Then i'll reinstall now with both drives in a raid config 0 and do the same test!

If there are any other tools out there i should bench with .. say so here so i can download them now!

Also gotta work out how to actually install raid and xp at the same time!

[Ruslan74]

to be honest i think BF2 will load under 10 seconds as per other benchmarks done at other sites... with dual raptors that drops to 6 secs flat... EINA!

[stoke]

Install RAID + XP ... make sure you've got a working stiffy drive and WORKING STIFFY.
Put the RAID drivers on there and make dead sure the damn stiffy disk is okay before you RAID the drives.
You're going to have to : "Press F9 [i think] to install 3rd party drivers now" !
I wasted 3 hours cos of a faulty stiffy that seem't to work okay but was loading the drivers corrupted - damn winxp install was like: "yea ... dem driver files were read from disk okay", meanwhile ... actually ... no ... the driver files were not being read okay at all.
Grrrrrr.

[Ruslan74]

Its F6 Stoke and yeah, a stiffy still has its uses afterall! :D

@SSS - do you mind providing us with steps you took in the whole RAID 0 thingie? thinking of doing that soon too. ;)

[sss]

bugger.. i dont have a stiffy drive nor do i have a stiffy.. how about a mem stick? ... i wonder!!!

[Bass]

Hmmm - think you HAVE to use a stiffy !! :(

When creating / destroying a RAID set you lose all the data on the drives (obviously).

[sss]

maybe i can boot off my ide drive and then do something!!!
hmm... lemme go read documentation

[sss]

man this looks like a schlep!!!

[Ruslan74]

sadly a windows XP installation REQUIRES the stiffy drive. no workaround that yet.

[Bass]

Nope - you need to set this up just after post normally ... there is a raid utility you need to get into.

[sss]

documentation is about as straightforward as donut crumbs!

[sss]

well i found a stiffy disk from 1997 .. but it works!

[stoke]

See now .. that's exatly what happend to me ... I used a prehistoric stiffy and it seem'd to work ...

[sss]

gawd damn stiffy/drive failed me!!!

[sss]

and we are cooking again.. just formated to 610 gigs

[sss]

rating 64mb s
buff 211mb
seq 76
random 49
buff write 173mb
seq w 75mbs
rand write 40mb
access time 7ms
zatar wetlands
52seconds

VS

rating 117mb s
buff read 494
seq read 148
rand read 73
buffered write 348
seq write 145
random write 61mb s
acces 7ms
zatar 42s

[Ruslan74]

mmmm... nice reads... not much in cutting down BF2's loading time but was this after you had the game preload first and defraged the drive?

[Alluvium]

sadly a windows XP installation REQUIRES the stiffy drive. no workaround that yet.

no there is a workaround you can get a bootable disk on CD, ive done it for ages. also i think a flash memory boot disk is poosable now, not sure on that tho

[TG]

Yes - BOOT - but if you boot off the XP CD to install 'doze, then it REQUIRES the stiffy - there's no way to emulate.

[Ruslan74]

sorry, i meant the need for a stiffy drive in order to load the RAID drivers. didnt mean it as a new XP install. ;)

[gus]

Note, that if either drive fails in raid 0, then everything is gone. And your probability of failure is double what it is for a single drive. So, just make extra sure you back up everything you like.

[sss]

well it really depends on how u look at it..... if i buy 1 x hard drive.. and any part if it fails.. i'm screwed..


now i bought 2 x hard drives... but run them as 1 logical device... so if any part of that 1 logical device fails.. i'm screwed anyway.. same difference end of day! but it is very very fast

[Ruslan74]

so you did have to use the stiffy to load the RAID drivers?

[sss]

yes maam.. and i didnt see any option to select a different source either!

[sss]

End of day

Single Drive VS 2 disk raid 0 stripping

Rating 64 MB/s 117 MB/s
Bufferend R 211 MB/s 494 MB/s
Sequential R 76 MB/s 148 MB/s
Random R 49 MB/s 73 MB/s
Buffered W 173 MB/s 348 MB/s
Sequential W 75 MB/s 145 MB/s
Random W 40 MB/s 61 MB/s
Access Time 7 ms 7 ms
zatar wetlands 52s 42s

[sss]

the install wasnt so bad... after i made the stiffy and it worked it was better.. the good thing was since i was installing windows xp with no service pack it wouldnt recognise a partition bigger than 128gigs... but with the raid drivers installed it let me see the full 640 gigs... formated it comes to 600 proper gigs.

once the drivers are installed the rest is normal... my motherboard cd did detect the raid and it installed some other utility to show the drives and status... now when i boot up there is also some bios option that pops up after post which is a bit annoying but its ok

[Ruslan74]

cool. thanks for the info SSS. will take RAID 0 into consideration soon soon. :)

[stoke]

MIRROR ... FTW [and 50% capacity loss] :p
Franks SSS :).

[sss]

just for the record

My setup 2 x 320gb seagate 16mb sata2 = 117MB/s
Gigbabyte iRAM(4gigs) =132MB/s
SCSI 2 x 73GB 15krpm 8mb cache maxtor atlas IV=115MB/s
SATA 2 x 36GB 10krpm 8mb WD Raptor=95MB/s

[sss]

ADVANTAGES of RAID

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/2869/screen0256yi.jpg

[sss]

http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/1294/screen0267og.jpg

[stoke]

KE ? You're saying you were playing when 18 others were playing and then later there were the full 23 ?
i.e. You loaded reel fasht.

[sss]

????? that was 2 seperate FIRST rounds!

IE i'm in the game first

[Brawler]

but i still beat you to the plane :p

[stoke]

Oh .. the list is in arrived order ... I never knew that.

[sss]

**beats** stoke... no man.. as you can i'm alive and have spawned alreayd and run a bit and taken a screen shot... the others havent spawned yet cause they are still loading

[stoke]

Light dawns on marble head ... Franks SSS.
What res you running at and what detail level + How much RAM ? Hu Hu Hu ?

[sss]

2 gigs ram.. 1024... and some mix match details

[Bass]

Also interested in how much RAM you have SSS - 2 GB if I'm not mistaken - my new rig normally gets me in between 2nd and 4th ...

Edit: Darn ! too fast for me ... :)

[sss]

see that raid kicks in everywhere... even on the forum

[stoke]

LOL ... SSS won the post race !
/me must go up to 2GB and do a test ...
Now ... where can I get 2 GB DDR2 for free ?