# Kursah's Raid 0 Log



## Kursah (Apr 4, 2009)

Figured I'd start a log, I've been patiently finding good deals on 6400aaks drives for a raid 0 project. My initial plan is to have 2 in raid 0, and one just connected for backup. Currently my 6400aaks is a game/program drive with 2 older wd400 40gb drives in raid 0. These wd400's were great as my first raid 0 project, but they barely keep up with the single 6400aaks. I will be using my onboard ich10r controller.

Here are single drive results (screens coming soon)

*WD6400AAKS-007AB0 (Caviar SE16 purchased 5/2008)*

HDTach - 







HDTune - 






*WD6400AAKS-75A7B0 (Caviar SE16 purchased 3/2009)*

HDTach - 






HDTune - 






*WD6400AAKS-22A7B0 (Caviar Blue purchased 2/2009)*

HDTach - 






HDTune - 






*WD400 40GB x2 In Raid 0 Results (  )* -

HDTach - 






HDTune - 






The WD400's have proven reliable, quiet and cool running, definately great drives. I don't know what I'll do with them now...just storage for now, maybe load them into a family member's PC or something.

Now from what I've learned the 75a7b0 and 22a7b0 are oem drives while the 00a7b0 is a retail drive part. As I continue this log feel free to give me suggestions and opinions. The reason I'm not planning to do all 3 drives in raid is purely because I'm not completely confident in maintaining all my data on a raid array this being my 2nd raid setup. That and I have all my info already backed up on my original 6400aaks atm...I'd have to copy it to a very slow seagate 500gb 7200.9 if I went with 3 drive raid...it'd take forever! Having a drive not in raid for backup use will provide me a sense of security in that respect. Thanks for looking!


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## Kursah (Apr 4, 2009)

Notes - 

Well the OE 75a7b0 seems to have a little higher read average and peak, but has a 3ms disadvantage to my original SE16. This will probably end up being the backup drive.

The Caviar Blue seems to be the best of the bunch really, higher average and peak, slightly better seek, but still slower than my G/F's 6400AAKS Blue 00a7b0 drive, I'm thinking I might copy her stuff to one of my SE16's and raid the blue's together and use the other SE16 as a backup drive. Here's her drive results:


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## Kursah (Apr 5, 2009)

I decided to raid the first and third drives together (007ab0 se16 and 227ab0 blue), these are the results. Stripe set at Intel default 128k (max on intel chipset raid), I'm content for now.












I am considering adding a 3rd 6400 to the raid now...we'll see..with the 900 I don't want more than one drive bay utilized. Is that decent for a couple 6400aaks drives? I'm sure they don't compare to the black series of drives, but on a budget I'm pretty content.


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## mlee49 (Apr 5, 2009)

Very Nice numbers there! I love how my 320AAKS's raid.  Almost as nice as yours:





I think a drive may be failing so I'm gonna look into reformatting or possibly replacing through WD.


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## Kursah (Apr 5, 2009)

Thanks man, that is pretty solid results from those 3200's for sure. Your burst indicates you don't have write back cache enabled...can I ask why? I did on my wd400 raid and had no issues, I know some don't as a precaution so I'm still learning a little raid-wise. Why do you feel your WD's are failing?


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## mlee49 (Apr 5, 2009)

After benching the volume for longer than 5min I get locked up and have to restart.  My Raid setup flags one of the drives as an error but then will boot after.

How do I enable write back cache?  In the Raid Bios or in Window's Intel Raidmax setup?


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## Kursah (Apr 5, 2009)

I enable in Intel Matrix Storage manager, right click the raid drive under Volumes, enable volume write-back cache. 

Then under device manager, select your volume, properties, policies and enable advanced performance. Some recommend against doing this, but I've never had an issue from it.

Odd that you get a lockup like that..have you ran a scandisk to see if there are errors? Or ran the error checker in hdtune?


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## mlee49 (Apr 5, 2009)

Thanks for the details, I've got them enabled.  

I'm going to check it out more, I'll be formatting them for a new install soon anyways.  775's gotta go, I've got a pretty new i7 920 sitting under my desk.


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## Kursah (Apr 5, 2009)

Nice man, I plan to go i7 sometime in the future but I'm in no rush. If anything I'll replace the q6600 with a 45nm quad, since gaming is priority, I don't feel I'll need more then that for a while...or till I feel the need to oc on a new platform!


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## renozi (Apr 5, 2009)

Just though I'd drop in with some wd7500aaks raid 0 benchies. They're old but still kickin'


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## Kursah (Apr 5, 2009)

Nice results renozi. So far I'm pretty happy with the results, I know it's nothing crazy, hell one OCZ Vertex stomps it, but for the cost of one OCZ vertex I have over one TB of storage in raid0...for me it's worth it!


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## renozi (Apr 5, 2009)

Yeah, I know what you mean but I'm a speed addict. I have enough storage space with 4TB total so I was just looking for the fastest, cheapest, do-able thing to get.


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## Kursah (Apr 5, 2009)

Don't blame ya! I almost bit on those Vertexes when they were around $100. I think I'll wait for the larger ones to get cheaper though tbh. But seeing 2-3 of those in raid is just insanity! If I had more money to waste I'd have a couple in my rig right now!


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## renozi (Apr 6, 2009)

I hear ya, bro! It was an itch I couldn't help but scratch!


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## mlee49 (Apr 6, 2009)

With Write Back:


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## Kursah (Apr 6, 2009)

Very nice burst speed, but the rest of it is all over the place...wow! Still a nice average on that!


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## mlee49 (Apr 6, 2009)

Just for grins I have a pair of laptop drives I'm got in raid 0, their formatting now but I'll throw up some benchmarks after thats done.


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## Kursah (Apr 6, 2009)

That actually sounds really interesting, I wonder how they'll hold up to our AAKS drives and my old WD400's. Those would definately be a budget Raid 0 setup!


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## mlee49 (Apr 6, 2009)

Check it, I threw on 13GB of stuff and benched:









Not bad for 5.4k drives.


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## Kursah (Apr 6, 2009)

That burst is really impressive! That is better than I would've expected from 5.4k lappy drives, nice run there mlee49! Very interesting results!


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## Fitseries3 (Apr 8, 2009)

hey bud... here is that 640 aaks i got a few months back...

what you think?






keep in mind i havent defraged at all and its 60% full


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## Fitseries3 (Apr 8, 2009)

new 1tb drive...


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## alexp999 (Apr 8, 2009)

Seeing this thread makes me want a second 640 aaks even more!


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## Kursah (Apr 9, 2009)

Fitseries3 said:


> hey bud... here is that 640 aaks i got a few months back...
> 
> what you think?
> 
> ...



That one performs like my backup drive, the most recent one I purchased also a 75a7b0...that is an OEM drive, odds are it was a pull from a pre-built. Still performs decently, but your 1TB is definately impressive. I'm looking forward to the next step in mechanical drives...though if SSD's can come closer to a fair price I may consider that next.

I'm definately happy with my 6400aaks raid...though i'm still considering using my backup drive as a 3rd for raid0...though I don't really need it tbh. I'd like to see the results.

alexp999, 6400aaks raid is pretty good, I've been slowly getting up to this point...but if you can definately try to get a caviar blue 22a7b0 or 00a7b0, they seem to be a little better in performance and seek. Unless you go with the aaks black series!


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## alexp999 (Apr 9, 2009)

How can I tell which one Im getting though. This is the product page:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/640-...aviar-Blue-SATA-300-7200-rpm-16MB-Cache-89-ms


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## Kursah (Apr 10, 2009)

You could ask them to check for you and hopefully they'd be nice enough to do so...hard saying tho, but afiak 007abo is retail.  Though 22a7bo could be OEM and retail..75ab70 though seems many get from system pulls. But it really doesn't matter once you raid them up, and with a blue drive, both blue drives I have purchased have been the better of the 6400aaks drives I've purchased so you should be ok none-the-less!


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## mlee49 (Apr 10, 2009)

mlee49 said:


> With Write Back:



Here's a better run after the new i7 install:


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