# Latest Intel Matrix Storage console Findings



## 3dsage (Jan 24, 2009)

I'd thought I share this with you guys, After updating to vers 8.7 (previous ver 7.5).

My Cpu utilization while running HDTACH Bench went down to 0% from 2%. This was on 3 runs before and after. 
Also my Average Read went up a tad.
With Drive Perf enabled, the numbers jump, but Cpu Utilization goes up to 7-10%.
With 7.5 I couldnt enable Drive Perf.

8.7






With Advanced performance enabled





32mb Run





Everest Disk Bench





7.5


----------



## Kursah (Jan 25, 2009)

Interesting, I'll have to give it a shot on my budget Raid0 setup. I average about 108MB/s with my WD400 SATA2 drives in HDTach, around 3% CPU usage, burst was insane...3000-something iirc. That was with version 8.0. Installing 8.7 now.


----------



## 3dsage (Jan 26, 2009)

Are those the drives I sold you? I think your Read speeds should be faster than  mine, I have the same drives except those have more cache than mine.
 Although your burst eclipses mine.

Its crazy seeing those burst speeds, My pcmark05 score went up as well.


----------



## Kursah (Jan 27, 2009)

Yep those WD400's I bought from ya! They're doing pretty good, great for a first RAID setup. They are a little faster than the 640 AAKS WD single drive, their seek is slower but they are doing a good job! I'm thinking of getting some other drives or maybe another one of these for a faster raid! 

My WD400's in Raid0, 128k stripes got 104.4MB/s, 18.7ms random access, and a burst spead of 3418MB/s..pretty insane! That is with Volume Write Back Cache enabled, I found no enable drive performance feature aside from that. My WD 640AAKS attained an average 94.1MB/s, 12.6ms randome access and a burst of 236MB/s. So far I'm pretty happy...though I'm kinda interested what else I can attain for a better raid setup on a budget in the future, for now I'm good!


----------



## 3dsage (Jan 27, 2009)

Good to here man, i'm positive your numbers will go up. Raid0 scales up with the more drives you have. Those Burst speed numbers are Crazy man.

BTW I have 64K stripes, on my Setup. 

EDIT:
Oh yeah its called Advanced Performance, not Drive performance. Sorry Bout That.


----------



## AsRock (Jan 27, 2009)

Need some tests going from 8.5.  Did not think some one be still using 7.5 their kinda stone age.


----------



## OnBoard (Jan 27, 2009)

Hmm, wonder what it would do for my ACHI drives. Think it's 8.0 from motherboard inf drivers that I have now. Have to give it a try later. Less CPU utilization and more performance sounds great, not that I have problem with either currently


----------



## 3dsage (Jan 27, 2009)

AsRock said:


> Need some tests going from 8.5.  Did not think some one be still using 7.5 their kinda stone age.



Lol, 7.5 was on my Mobo driver disk. 

I'll search around for 8.5 though I doubt there will be much difference, maybe with ver 8.


----------



## Kursah (Jan 27, 2009)

Could you take a screeny of where the Advanced Performance option is located? As I could not find it, all I could find and enable was Write-Back Cache which gives me that insane Burst speed...don't know if it's good for anything or just read wrong in the synthetic tests...even HDTune reads a super high burst speed, not quite as high, but none-the-less about 10X what it reads with write-back disabled. I'll have to see if I can snag a 3rd WD400 40GB SataII drive somewhere.


----------



## 3dsage (Jan 27, 2009)

Here you go man,


----------



## {JNT}Raptor (Jan 27, 2009)

Not a safe setting without backup power though.....even a reboot that doesn't close all handles can cause corruption.

I have got to get me a backup PS.


----------



## Kursah (Jan 27, 2009)

Ahh..yeah I found that advanced checkbox..I thought there was a new setting within IMSM for a different type of advanced settings. I've ran it and yet to have an issue, though now with RAID0 I am running it now, but I am kind of concerned if a power outage does happen. I never had data corruption on single drives even under ACHI mode with advanced and write-back cache enabled, but I'll see what happens, I backup all the important stuff anyways so I should be ok.


----------



## AsRock (Jan 28, 2009)

Kursah said:


> Ahh..yeah I found that advanced checkbox..I thought there was a new setting within IMSM for a different type of advanced settings. I've ran it and yet to have an issue, though now with RAID0 I am running it now, but I am kind of concerned if a power outage does happen. I never had data corruption on single drives even under ACHI mode with advanced and write-back cache enabled, but I'll see what happens, I backup all the important stuff anyways so I should be ok.



One thing you could try if you get a failed raid is to put a OS on another drive boot up of it and   repair it from there.  As long as the drives that are in raid are working ok it should fix the raid setup hopefully.

I messed my raid 5 when i striped the computer and plugged 2 of them in the wrong sata ports and i did the above and saved the raid 5 at the time. If it would work with raid 0 i don't know and is why i have 7 HDDs as one is used if this happens again.

Once you open IMSC and go into advanced mode right click were it says raid 0 ( Raid 5 in my case that will show you some options.


----------

