# HD Tach Benchmarks



## disarmedmeteor (Mar 3, 2007)

OKAY EVERYONE!!!

This is the hard drive benchmarking thread. Post your screenies here!


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## mandelore (Mar 3, 2007)

Heres mine, not the greatest hard drive, does its job well enuff I guess..


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## Deleted member 24505 (Mar 4, 2007)

mine-
*XP*





*VISTA*






same discs


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## disarmedmeteor (Mar 4, 2007)

you guys have really high burst rates compared to mine.......maybe because my controller is crap and it's SATA1


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## DOM (Mar 4, 2007)

Is mine anygood ?

disarmedmeteor but look at your Avg. Read its higher then theres


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## disarmedmeteor (Mar 4, 2007)

DOM_ATI_X800XL_PCI-E said:


> Is mine anygood ?
> 
> disarmedmeteor but look at your Avg. Read its higher then theres



yeah, good point, and your's isn't bad, decent score....


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## Dano 00TA (Mar 5, 2007)

Hopefully this worked


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## Alec§taar (Mar 5, 2007)

*We did this here @ this forums already: I'll just post my OLD result!*

Last time we did this, for everyone's reference (additional) if needed, here:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=16252&highlight=Tach

*APK WD "Raptor 'X'" 10,000 rpm SATA 1 disks IN RAID 0 Array (via Promise Caching 128mb ECC RAM controller (SATA 1 RAID 0 - NOTE the 0% cpu utilization & 8ms seek/access time!)):*






*& for the heck of it? Here is the results from my CENATEK "RocketDrive" Solid-State 'disk' Ramdrive board (note the 0ns seek/access here):*








What you guys are going to note is a few things:

That RAID 0's setups do a BIT better than single disks, & that "perpendicular recording technology" utilizing disks like SEAGATE units, will kick butt on Avg. Read & Sustained/Burst Reads as well - an amazing technology, & one I would LOVE to see combined w/ 10,000rpm rates, for faster seeks/accesses-reaccesses of files on disk.

ALSO, that SATA2 disks on PRT will knock the chocolate out of SATA 1 setups like mine, cache controller driven or not, in the READ areas... but, on CPU usage (ramdisk here) & Seek/Access + CPU usage (I will have competition here though, but not much), my setup WILL take that area.

Writes are an area WE NEVER TESTED BEFORE, either, mind you (in the URL I post above)... keep this in mind.

Disks are a '4 dimensional test' & based on your needs? It matters to ask yourself WHICH, YOU need most... most folks gain off of READ SPEEDS (loading programs, files for data, etc.)... whereas somebody like myself does a LOT of "file generation" writing code, so writes & seek matter to me largely (CPU use is a nice 'side effect' though).

APK

P.S.=> Keep @ it, & post the KIND of disks you guys use, rather than making us 'dig' by going into your profiles & such (provided you even HAVE that data listed there, etc./et al)... apk


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## regan1985 (Mar 5, 2007)

for those who dont know burst speeds tend to be low if you compare 16mb cache to 8mb cache,but dont worry 16mb is better its just the way test r run,burst speeds mean nothing average read and seek times r wot counts


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## disarmedmeteor (Mar 5, 2007)

I have 2 x 250 GB Samsung Spinpoint SP2504C in a RAID 0 array with a stripe size of 32 K. Which I have been meaning to ask about. Would my sustained data transfer rate increase if I increased the stripe size to 64k or 16k? What is an optimal stripe size to get the most performance out of my hard drives?


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## regan1985 (Mar 5, 2007)

depends on the size of your average file, if you go to defragementer you can see in there, i use 32k


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## disarmedmeteor (Mar 5, 2007)

well it says my average file size is 4 mb. but i have a lot of movies and tv shows.....so what should my stripe size be?


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## Alec§taar (Mar 5, 2007)

regan1985 said:


> burst speeds mean nothing average read and seek times r wot counts



This MIGHT be another "exceptions area" though, per the closing of my last post above: If your needs are say, for transferring LARGE files/amounts of data? It may help...



* Like so much in this field? It all depends on what you need to do... & what the "ROI" is for your needs (a lot like how secondary CPU cache can help things like SETI, Folding@Home, Excel work, but do nearly 'diddly' for those concerned primarily w/ gaming (maybe what? 2-7% gains, TOPS??))

APK

P.S.=> You're "dead-on 110% correct" on the stripe size question though, by ALL means, & no 'exceptions noted', lol... apk


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## JUDAS3 (Mar 5, 2007)

we need a top scores list, can you do one please

classic - my new mobo has increased the transfer.

Raid - sata 2 next.


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## Alec§taar (Mar 5, 2007)

*TEMPLATE I CAN OFFER FOR CHARTING (designed by 'yours truly')*

You guys can use the ones from the first HD Tach test I put the URL up for above, if you like... just to save time designing a template @ least!



(To whomever wishes to maintain the chart, I can send you the FULLY edited one, w/ all the formatting & 'bolded' title areas, etc. via attachment, OR email (prefer the former)).

* I will attach it here in a zipfile, use it as you see fit, IF you wish, & this is how they look (broken up by category tested, lacking ONLY write tests, as I noted above, we did NOT perform them):

* *** DEMO TEMPLATE CHART, NOT FROM THIS TEST, BUT EARLIER DONE 09/2006 *** *

*=========================================
(ACCESS/SEEK DATA) "HDTACH 3 SCORE CHART" complete list 09-11-2006
=========================================*

*1. Alec§taar* =*8.8ms* - (2xWD "Raptor 'X'" RAID 0 (Promise Caching 128mb ECC RAM + onboard CPU Controller))

*2. randomperson21* =*12.6ms* - (2x160GB SATA I Seagate Barracudas in Raid0 (7200.7 and a 7200.9 set at sata150))

*3. giorgos th* =*12.8ms* - (Seagate barracuda 160gb sata II,set as sata I)

*4. tigger69* = *12.9ms* - (2x hitachi 80gb sataII raid 0(ich7r))

*4. steevo* =*12.9ms* - (2xMaxtor 300gb sataII raid 0 (raid0 silicon 3114 controller))

*5. dumuzi* =*13.1ms* - (4X 320GB Seagate RAID 0 - QuadDisk Stripe RAID 0 Array)

*6. munz778* =*13.2ms* - (2x320GB RAID-0 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA II (in SATA-150 mode))

*6. zekrahminator* = *13.2ms* - (WD 160GB sata hdd)

*6. _33* = * 13.2ms* - (WD 250GB 16M SATA2 X 2 in RAID0 + 80 GB WD)

*7. INSTG8R* = * 13.4ms* - (Seagate 7200.10)

*8. PVTCaboose1337* =*13.5ms* - (Western Digital 250 GB SATA (7200 RPM))

*9. psychomage343* =*13.6ms* - (2x200gig sata1 wester digitall model wd200, in raid0)

*9. YiK* = *13.6ms* -  (WD 80GB IDE)

*9. cdawall* =*13.6ms* - (Maxtor ATA133 EIDE)
-----------AVG SCORE DIVISION LINE-----------

*10. YiK* =*13.9ms* - (Maxtor 80GB IDE)

*11. mikelopez* =*14ms* - (250GB seagate barracuda 7200.10 sata2)

*12. Lt JWS* =*14.2ms* - (2xWD 80gig SATA2 RAID 0)

*13. regan1985* =*15.3ms* - (Maxtor Duel SATA2)

*14. pt* = *17.1ms* - (40GB IDE seagate barracuda)

*15. Wolverine* =*17.6ms* - (Hitachi 250GB SATA2)
**************************************************
*AVERAGE ALL SEEK/ACCESS DATA (20 members):* 13.63ms
**************************************************



*=========================================
(CPU USAGE DATA) "HDTACH 3 SCORE CHART" complete list 09-11-2006
=========================================*

*1. Alec§taar*=*0% * - (2xWD "Raptor 'X'" RAID 0 (Promise Caching 128mb ECC RAM + onboard CPU Controller))

*1. YiK* =*0%* - (WD 80GB IDE)

*1. Wolverine* =*0%* - (Hitachi 250GB SATA2)

*2. INSTG8R* = * 2%* - (Seagate 7200.10)

*2. mikelopez* =*2%* - (250GB seagate barracuda 7200.10 sata2)

*2. giorgos th* =*2%* - (Seagate barracuda 160gb sata II,set as sata I)

*2. regan1985* =*2%* - (Maxtor Duel SATA2)

*2. _33* = * 2%* - (WD 250GB 16M SATA2 X 2 in RAID0 + 80 GB WD)

*2. YiK* =*2%* - (Maxtor 80GB IDE)

*2. cdawall* =*2%* - (Maxtor ATA133 EIDE)

*3. dumuzi* =*3%* - (4X 320GB Seagate RAID 0 - QuadDisk Stripe RAID 0 Array)

*3. pt* = *3%* - (40GB IDE seagate barracuda)

*3. tigger69* = *3%* - (2x hitachi 80gb sataII raid 0(ich7r))
-----------AVG SCORE DIVISION LINE-----------

*4. steevo* =*4%* - (2xMaxtor 300gb sataII raid 0 (raid0 silicon 3114 controller))

*5. Lt JWS* =*5%* - (2xWD 80gig SATA2 RAID 0)

*5. munz778* =*5%* - (2x320GB RAID-0 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA II (in SATA-150 mode))

*6. randomperson21* =*6%* - (2x160GB SATA I Seagate Barracudas in Raid0 (7200.7 and a 7200.9 set at sata150))

*7. psychomage343* =*7%* - (2x200gig sata1 wester digitall model wd200, in raid0)

*7. PVTCaboose1337* =*7%* - (Western Digital 250 GB SATA (7200 RPM))

*8. zekrahminator* = *11%* - (WD 160GB sata hdd)
**************************************************
*AVERAGE ALL CPU USE DATA (20 members):* 3.40%
**************************************************



*=========================================
(READ DATA) "HDTACH 3 SCORE CHART" complete list 09-11-2006
=========================================*

*1. dumuzi* =*345mb/s* - (4X 320GB Seagate RAID 0 - QuadDisk Stripe RAID 0 Array)

*2. tigger69* = * 323.2mb/s* - (2x hitachi 80gb sataII raid 0(ich7r))

*3. _33* = *302.5mb/s* - (WD 250GB 16M SATA2 X 2 in RAID0 + 80 GB WD)

*4. Lt JWS* =*278.9mb/s* - (2xWD 80gig SATA2 RAID 0)

*5. mikelopez* =* 258.6mb/s* - (250GB seagate barracuda 7200.10 sata2)

*6. INSTG8R* = * 241.6mb/s* - (Seagate 7200.10)

*7. Wolverine* =*224.5mb/s* - (Hitachi 250GB SATA2)

*8. psychomage343* =*212.2mb/s* - (2x200gig sata1 wester digitall model wd200, in raid0)

*9. munz778* =*198.2mb/s* - (2x320GB RAID-0 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA II (in SATA-150 mode))

*10. randomperson21* =*193.8mb/s* - (2x160GB SATA I Seagate Barracudas in Raid0 (7200.7 and a 7200.9 set at sata150))
-----------AVG SCORE DIVISION LINE-----------

*11. PVTCaboose1337* =*171mb/s* - (Western Digital 250 GB SATA (7200 RPM))

*12. Alec§taar* =* 167.1mb/s* - (2xWD "Raptor 'X'" RAID 0 (Promise Caching 128mb ECC RAM + onboard CPU Controller))

*13. giorgos th* =* 133.8mb/s* - (Seagate barracuda 160gb sata II,set as sata I)

*14. regan1985* =*122.9mb/s* - (Maxtor Duel SATA2)

*15. steevo* =* 121.4mb/s* - (2xMaxtor 300gb sataII raid 0 (raid0 silicon 3114 controller))

*16. zekrahminator* =*110.7mb/s* - (WD 160GB sata hdd)

*17. YiK* =* 104.5mb/s* - (Maxtor 80GB IDE)

*18. YiK* = * 94.6mb/s* -  (WD 80GB IDE)

*19. cdawall* =* 91.8mb/s* - (Maxtor ATA133 EIDE)

*20. pt* = * 84.6mb/s* - (40GB IDE seagate barracuda)
**************************************************
*AVERAGE ALL READ DATA (20 members):* 189.05mb/s
**************************************************



*=========================================
 (AVG READ DATA) "HDTACH 3 SCORE CHART" complete list 09-11-2006
=========================================*

*1. dumuzi* =*176.8mb/s* - (4X 320GB Seagate RAID 0 - QuadDisk Stripe RAID 0 Array)

*2. munz778* =*121.8mb/s* - (2x320GB RAID-0 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA II (in SATA-150 mode))

*3. psychomage343* =*100.2mb/s* - (2x200gig sata1 wester digitall model wd200, in raid0)

*4. steevo* =*99.8mb/s* - (2xMaxtor 300gb sataII raid 0 (raid0 silicon 3114 controller))

*5. _33* = * 99.5ms/s* - (WD 250GB 16M SATA2 X 2 in RAID0 + 80 GB WD)

*6. tigger69* = *97.6mb/s* - (2x hitachi 80gb sataII raid 0(ich7r))

*7. Lt JWS* =*95.5mb/s* - (2xWD 80gig SATA2 RAID 0)

*8. randomperson21* =*92.3mb/s* - (2x160GB SATA I Seagate Barracudas in Raid0 (7200.7 and a 7200.9 set at sata150))
-----------AVG SCORE DIVISION LINE-----------

*9. Alec§taar* =*65.6mb/s* - (2xWD "Raptor 'X'" RAID 0 (Promise Caching 128mb ECC RAM + onboard CPU Controller))

*10. INSTG8R* = * 65.3mb/s* - (Seagate 7200.10)

*10. mikelopez* =*65.3mb/s* - (250GB seagate barracuda 7200.10 sata2)

*11. giorgos th* =*61.7mb/s* - (Seagate barracuda 160gb sata II,set as sata I)

*12. Wolverine* =*56mb/s* - (Hitachi 250GB SATA2)

*13. zekrahminator* = *55.2mb/s* - (WD 160GB sata hdd)

*14. PVTCaboose1337* =*52.5mb/s* - (Western Digital 250 GB SATA (7200 RPM))

*15. regan1985* =*52.2mb/s* - (Maxtor Duel SATA2)

*16. YiK* =*51.8mb/s* - (Maxtor 80GB IDE)

*17. pt* = *49.4mb/s* - (40GB IDE seagate barracuda)

*18. YiK* = *49ms/s* -  (WD 80GB IDE)

*19. cdawall* =*31.7mb/s* - (Maxtor ATA133 EIDE)
**************************************************
*AVERAGE ALL AVGREAD DATA (20 members):* 76.96mb/s
**************************************************



APK


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## Alec§taar (Mar 5, 2007)

*Zipfile Template Attached For Charting Purposes Of This Hdtach Test:*

See the attached zipped text file!

(2kb download, zipped NORMAL zip in WinRar MT 3.62 model, so if it complains if you use Windows native zip facility? Unzip it using WinRar!)



*  For whoever wishes to chart this, should you wish to... to save you time building a chart template to maintain.

APK


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## disarmedmeteor (Mar 7, 2007)

I unfortunately can't devote that much time to making a list, so sorry about this. But if anyone wants to, feel free!


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## Alec§taar (Mar 7, 2007)

disarmedmeteor said:


> I unfortunately can't devote that much time to making a list, so sorry about this. But if anyone wants to, feel free!



Been there, done it, on the ScienceMark 2.0 test, The AquaMark 3.0 test, & the HDTach 3.x test noted above... 

Trust me - I don't blame you man: IT'S WORK!



* You wouldn't think it, but it is... 

pt keeps the ScienceMark one going, & I wish he'd ditch that one & do the AquaMark 3 one instead, because imo? It is a more SOLID overall test of a systems' abilities, not just CPU & MEMORY as ScienceMark is... 

AquaMark gauges ALL 3 areas that matter to the most folks here, & that's CPU, Memory, AND Video... what gamers want, & most of these guys are avid gamers!

APK

P.S.=> BUT, the ScienceMark 2.0 test seems to have more of a 'crowd draw' so... there you go! apk


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## randomperson21 (Mar 7, 2007)

hmm.. yea we already have one of these. no reason to have two... thx alec for pointing this out. 

and nice chart as well, me like. and that rocketdrive of yours... wowzikesamazing. which is not a word. that uses.. pc133? nice all the same.


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## randomperson21 (Mar 7, 2007)

Alec§taar said:


> Been there, done it, on the ScienceMark 2.0 test, The AquaMark 3.0 test, & the HDTach 3.x test noted above...
> 
> Trust me - I don't blame you man: IT'S WORK!
> 
> ...



one thing i've noticed: we don't really have any 3dm threads here. like massive ones like hdtach and scimark, etc. interesting cuz we're all gamers and stuff... guess we don't really need it because futuremark has orb.



oh yea, @ disarmed.... 300 friday! you comin?


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## disarmedmeteor (Mar 7, 2007)

Alec§taar said:


> Been there, done it, on the ScienceMark 2.0 test, The AquaMark 3.0 test, & the HDTach 3.x test noted above...
> 
> Trust me - I don't blame you man: IT'S WORK!
> 
> ...



amen to that, i think we should maybe consider a pcmark05 thread or 3dmark06 like randomperson suggested.......those are comprehensive benchies

p.s. randomperson the 300, i'm there! so what time fri?


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## randomperson21 (Mar 7, 2007)

depends... 3dmark 06 tries to do some more comprehensive stuff (cpu, etc), but not a ton. 3dm05 only does gfx. idk about pcmark.

oh yea, there is a 3dm06 thread around somewhere, nobody really cares tho.


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## disarmedmeteor (Mar 7, 2007)

heh, good point, btw 3dmark also tests the cpu's graphics processing power....


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## Alec§taar (Mar 7, 2007)

disarmedmeteor said:


> heh, good point, btw 3dmark also tests the cpu's graphics processing power....



BUT, it has a drawback, & one that affects me, directly - it DEMANDS 1gb of RAM @ least, as a minimum... AquaMark 3, by the same token/by way of comparison?

Does not...



* I lean towards it for OBVIOUS reasons - I have 512mb of RAM & that's it...

APK


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## disarmedmeteor (Mar 8, 2007)

Alec§taar said:


> BUT, it has a drawback, & one that affects me, directly - it DEMANDS 1gb of RAM @ least, as a minimum... AquaMark 3, by the same token/by way of comparison?
> 
> Does not...
> 
> ...



you should invest in another 1.5 gb of ram, 512 is really subpar nowadays, and it makes a WORLD of difference in general responsiveness, i myself have only 1 gb but the jump from 512mb single channel to 1 gb dual channel was phenomenal!

just a suggestion!


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## Alec§taar (Mar 8, 2007)

disarmedmeteor said:


> you should invest in another 1.5 gb of ram, 512 is really subpar nowadays, and it makes a WORLD of difference in general responsiveness, i myself have only 1 gb but the jump from 512mb single channel to 1 gb dual channel was phenomenal!
> 
> just a suggestion!



NOTED... but, I have my ways around THAT... trust me!



* "WORD!", as young folks say, or USED to say...

APK

P.S.=> To be blunt about it also? For my needs I really do NOT need that RAM... not @ all... except for programs that have imo, SILLY installers that stall out if they do NOT detect that much RAM (they should be testing imo, rather, for FREE AVAILABLE RAM, not total amounts, in other words...)... apk


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## randomperson21 (Mar 9, 2007)

Alec§taar said:


> NOTED... but, I have my ways around THAT... trust me!





hehe like a gigantic ramdrive? I must admit, that thing is pretty sweet. 

And I agree with you on the 512mb point: you only really need it if you run apps that really need it. For example, i like me desktop widgets, and desktop widgets like ram..... so i need more ram. Also, if you really streamline your systems (which i know you do, alec), you really don't need that much just for OS specific tasks.


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## randomperson21 (Mar 9, 2007)

oooh my. i just saw your 7900gt is phase. hows that working out for you?


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## disarmedmeteor (Mar 9, 2007)

Alec§taar said:


> NOTED... but, I have my ways around THAT... trust me!
> 
> 
> 
> ...



good point, as randomperson said, if you stream-line your os, 512 is a good amount and heck, it can be zippy even with 256 mb of pc100 ram, WOOT!


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## Pinchy (Mar 13, 2007)

Check out specs on side for HDD specs


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## randomperson21 (Mar 13, 2007)

oh man pinchy, thats impressive as heck. 

i'm going to be rebuilding my raid array soon. any suggestions? like stripe size, etc? no new hardware for it tho, unfortunately.


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## Pinchy (Mar 13, 2007)

LOL thanks 

Im actally pretty new to raid, this being my first raid array (thanks to ALL the TPU guys that helped me, and Tigger for the advice ). My stripe size is set @ 128k. 

Ive got 9 partitions; 4x10GB (each family member), 1x 150GB (Games), 1x150GB (Downloads/ music/videos/application installers, etc), 1x5GB for the page file (page file using 4096Mb), 1x50GB for installed programs (office/adobe/etc) and the rest, 80GB, for Windows and drivers and stuff 

*Here is my latest result*:








Thats after ive installed all my stuff...the one in the previous post was freshly formatted 


BTW - I did the 'quick' bench (8mb zones)...if thats what was wanted


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## randomperson21 (Mar 13, 2007)

might try messin with my strip size next time i set up raid. i'm running a 7200.8/7200.9 combo, sataI, 2x160gb drives. and good idear with the partitioning. currently running 40gb windows, rest for apps/userdata, but i might try the seperate partition for pagefile. i need to reload to server03 anyways, i just can't afford to have my computer down for a day (school, bah!)


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## malware (Mar 13, 2007)

2x80GB Hitachi 7K80 SATAII RAID0


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## Pinchy (Mar 13, 2007)

For some reason, i have a high access time tho


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## regan1985 (Mar 13, 2007)




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## ntdouglas (Mar 14, 2007)

Hey guys.
I had a score of 240. That seems low with raid. I see people talking about stripe size. What is it and where can I find it. What would increase drive performance, higher or lower?


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## t_ski (Mar 14, 2007)

Here's mine.  I'm surprised no one here has more than 2 drives in raid posted yet...

And as a side note, I got about 20mb/s faster reads with four older 36GB raptors.


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## t_ski (Mar 15, 2007)

ntdouglas said:


> Hey guys.
> I had a score of 240. That seems low with raid. I see people talking about stripe size. What is it and where can I find it. What would increase drive performance, higher or lower?



To answer your Q's, stripe size is usually found in the Raid Controller Sertup program when creating the array.  And yes, it can have an effect on performance.  I had two older raptors that I played with, trying 16k, 32k, and 64k stripes.  I get the best performance (reads in HDTach) with a 16k stripe.  Please note that the default is usually higher (like 64k).  traditionally, the stripes are set low for drives filled with small files, and larger for drives with big files.  If you have it as an OS drive, I would suggest a 16k stripe.  If being used for a strage drive (not recommended with Raid 0 due to lack of fault tolerance) that has MP3's, movies, etc., then you should use a bigger stripe.

If you have the time, you could try building the array with difference size stripes and see what works best for you.  If not, I suggest going with a 16k stripe and forgettin about it...


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## Pinchy (Mar 15, 2007)

Im on 128k and its fine...my biggest file is 2.5GB (game installation) and after that its like 500mb (besides steam files)


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## disarmedmeteor (Mar 15, 2007)

I have a 32k stripe size and I think it's slowing me down because I have a 136.7 mb/s burst and 115.6 sequential, I think my raid controller (via pt800 pro/ultra) is partly the problem, but because I have so many movies, games, and tv shows, I think it would be better to go with a 128k stripe size or whatnot, am I right in my logical thinking?


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## t_ski (Mar 15, 2007)

Try this:  Go into the Device Manager and double click on the controller for your drives.  Make sure NCQ and read caching are turned off for the Primary and Secondary controllers for each drive you have connected to the array.  Click OK and reboot if necessary.  Run the test again and you should see an improvement.


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## Pinchy (Mar 15, 2007)

NCQ and read caching arent there


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## t_ski (Mar 15, 2007)

Here's a screen shot for you of my Device Manager.  Make sure you are looking under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers.  Under that you should find the controllers listed.  Double click (or right-click and chose properties) and go into the Primary Channel and Secondary Channel.  If your controller does not support NCQ, it will either not show up or be grayed out.  Read caching should be there no matter what IIRC.


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## Pinchy (Mar 15, 2007)

I went to IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and all that came up was:

Primary IDE channel
Secondary IDE channel and
Standard dual channel PCI IDE controller

Nothing like yours.

Before, i was in "SCSI and RAID controllers" where there was "Intel(R) ICH8R/DO/DH SATA RAID controller", but there was nothing there either


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## t_ski (Mar 15, 2007)

Do you have a SATA Controller showing up in the Device Manager?  It may be listed under a separate controller than the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.  I have the ones shown, as well as a Raid Controller.  It's not in there.  Post a screenshot of your Device Manger if you can't find it, but try to expand anything related to drives so I can see what's in them.


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## ntdouglas (Mar 16, 2007)

My device manager is the same as Pinchy's, I can't find it either. What do you guys use to post screenies? I use xnview and every time I try to post it says upload failed.


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## rizzo (Mar 16, 2007)

I get a crazy burst score. I've run it a couple times and it's consistent.


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## randomperson21 (Mar 16, 2007)

rizzo said:


> I get a crazy burst score. I've run it a couple times and it's consistent.



that can't be right... the bus couldn't even support that. ever.

might be hdtach tweaking out. idk.


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## t_ski (Mar 16, 2007)

ntdouglas said:


> My device manager is the same as Pinchy's, I can't find it either. What do you guys use to post screenies? I use xnview and every time I try to post it says upload failed.



Use Print Screen (or Alt + Print Screen) to capture the image, then post it in MS Paint.  Save it as a JPG file.  When you post here, go to Advanced (not the Quick Reply at the bottom of the page), scroll down to Additional Options (below the post text box), click on Manage Attachments, browse to the pic, and click Upload.  It will list the image in the current window when it done uploading, then you can close the window and submit your post.


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## t_ski (Mar 16, 2007)

rizzo said:


> I get a crazy burst score. I've run it a couple times and it's consistent.



You're using Vista, right?  I assume it's something to do with caching.  By any chance are you using the USB Stick swapfile thing (I can't remember what it's called ATM - something Boost)?  I wonder if that's throwing it off.


----------



## Pinchy (Mar 16, 2007)

On request:


----------



## ntdouglas (Mar 16, 2007)

t_ski said:


> Use Print Screen (or Alt + Print Screen) to capture the image, then post it in MS Paint.  Save it as a JPG file.  When you post here, go to Advanced (not the Quick Reply at the bottom of the page), scroll down to Additional Options (below the post text box), click on Manage Attachments, browse to the pic, and click Upload.  It will list the image in the current window when it done uploading, then you can close the window and submit your post.




Thanks. I will try. Yeah, my device manager looks identical to pinchy's.


----------



## t_ski (Mar 16, 2007)

OK, Pinchy, I've looked over your screenshot and can't figure it out.   Mine's an NF4 board, so what I gave you works for mine and probably most other NF4 boards.  If it's not in the Raid Controller check the Volumes (though I doubt it) or the drive labeled "RAID."  If it's still not there, keep looking around under all the tabs for each device's Properties.  As a last resort, you might try Googling it.


----------



## oily_17 (Mar 16, 2007)

@ Pinchy

You could look under Disk Drives / Raid / Properties / Policies ,it might show up there.

Here's what mine shows.


----------



## t_ski (Mar 16, 2007)

That's write caching though.  We're looking for read caching.


----------



## oily_17 (Mar 16, 2007)

Oooops!!     my fault,disregard that then.Didn't read properly.


----------



## t_ski (Mar 16, 2007)

That's OK.  Thanks for trying.  If anybody else has a clue where it might be in an Intel board, please help us out.


----------



## ntdouglas (Mar 16, 2007)

Guys. I've been reading up on caching. Maybe for this bench it would perform better. But otherwise its best to have read caching enabled if I understand it correctly. The computer will read the most  commonly used info from cache verses the hard drive. I've spent awhile looking all over windows for that option and can't find it. I'm not sure its even an option on some drives.


----------



## Pinchy (Mar 17, 2007)

Maybe its because in BIOS, ever since i set up my RAID, my HDD's dont show up. Unless thats normal

Weird problem eh?


----------



## rizzo (Mar 17, 2007)

t_ski said:


> You're using Vista, right?  I assume it's something to do with caching.  By any chance are you using the USB Stick swapfile thing (I can't remember what it's called ATM - something Boost)?  I wonder if that's throwing it off.



I'm running XPpro and no usb swap file. Guess it's some kinda glitch. I'm overclocked pretty high but stable so i doubt thats causing it.


----------



## t_ski (Mar 17, 2007)

I saw the desktop and thought it was Vista.  I'm using XPPro, too and I have a good 40% overclock.


----------



## Pinchy (Mar 17, 2007)

I got no overclock and mine seems pretty high


----------



## strick94u (Mar 18, 2007)




----------



## demonbrawn (Apr 2, 2007)

Is it normal to have HUGE jumps? I mean, mine goes from about 80 MB/s to 0 and right back up about 5 times in the long test. 

Also, how do you get a screen shot of your desktop?


----------



## t_ski (Apr 2, 2007)

A downward spike is usually caused by other drive activity that prevents the test from running.  Something like swapfile usage, other programs, etc can cause it to happen.  It's typical to see, but you should try to eliminate them if possible.

To get a screenshot is Windows, all you have to do is press the "Prt Scr" button on your keyboard (usually in the top right corner).  Then go into any picture program (or MS Paint) and paste it as a new image.  Save it as a jpg file and attach it to you post here.


----------



## demonbrawn (Apr 2, 2007)

Hm, whenever I press the Prt Scr button, nothing happens...


----------



## soterman (Apr 2, 2007)

That's mine!


----------



## BoOsTed SS (Apr 2, 2007)

I think I am near the top


----------



## Steevo (Apr 2, 2007)

Everyone knows that burst speed is meaningless on this test right? It is just there to show how fast data can be read out of the drives cache.


So.


It has no effect on actual read time for game level loads.
It has no effect on audio or video editing speed.
It has no effect on startup times.



It is only used for files that are small enough to cache, and only if they are frequently modified, or recently read or written. 

And seek time is good, but only useful if you have alot of small files that are badly fragmented or spread across the disk surface. Most large files are contingous if defragging is done occasionally.


----------



## BoOsTed SS (Apr 2, 2007)

Well my average is 113.5 MB/s.  Id say that is pretty good.  I know burst doesn't mean much, but Id say I got a pretty good set up.


----------



## t_ski (Apr 2, 2007)

demonbrawn said:


> Hm, whenever I press the Prt Scr button, nothing happens...



It doesn't seem like anything happens, but go into MS Paint and click Edit... Paste.  You should have your screenshot.  Just save it as a .jpg file so it's not huge (default is bmp).


----------



## t_ski (Apr 2, 2007)

BoOsTed SS said:


> Well my average is 113.5 MB/s.  Id say that is pretty good.  I know burst doesn't mean much, but Id say I got a pretty good set up.



Nobody has beaten me yet


----------



## Steevo (Apr 2, 2007)

Don't tempt me. I have been thinking about migrating our RAID 5 array to a PCI-Express controller to get the disk performance up higher.


----------



## FOXCONN1115 (Apr 3, 2007)

well heres my wonderful score    2x Seagate SATA 3GB/s 7200rpm 16MB Cache Perpendicular Recording Technology 320GB HDD's in RAID-0 on NForce 4 NVRAID socket 939


----------



## t_ski (Apr 3, 2007)

Steevo said:


> Don't tempt me. I have been thinking about migrating our RAID 5 array to a PCI-Express controller to get the disk performance up higher.



Hey, guess what I got in the mail yesterday?  Another raptor!  haven't had time to play with it, but when I pop that into the array it should bring things up to around 230MB/s 

But you do have me beat on the Raid 5.  I wish my controller supported that


----------



## Pinchy (Apr 3, 2007)

What is RAID 5?


----------



## FOXCONN1115 (Apr 3, 2007)

The ULTIMATE in RAID configurations, at least for desktop systems like ours...


----------



## t_ski (Apr 3, 2007)

To the best of my understanding, Raid 5 is similar to raid 0, except that it has redundancy built into it.  In raid 0, if one drive goes bad, you lose the entire array.  With raid 5, if one drive goes bad, there is an algorithm in place (again, IIRC) that can recreate the datafrom the bad drive.

Unfortunately, most motherboard manufacturers don't put raid 5 in their controllers, and a good raid 5 controller can cost a good chunk of change.  But it's definitely worth it.


----------



## FOXCONN1115 (Apr 3, 2007)

Get RAID 53


----------



## regan1985 (Apr 3, 2007)

stevo u should get a new sata controler that 3114 must suck, i had that and its not a good at all, what kind of results did u get?


----------



## JUDAS3 (Apr 5, 2007)

finally got my raid sorted and this is my result.


----------



## t_ski (Apr 5, 2007)

I've never seen a graph start low and climb like that - very weird?????


----------



## regan1985 (Apr 5, 2007)

plus the seek times are really high


----------



## JUDAS3 (Apr 17, 2007)

JUDAS3 said:


> finally got my raid sorted and this is my result.



after removing the jumper to enable sata2 this is the new result................doh...........


----------



## regan1985 (Apr 17, 2007)

have you got western digital drives? i didnt think u had a jumper to enable sat1 or sat2!!what drives have you got??


----------



## Pinchy (Apr 17, 2007)

t_ski said:


> To the best of my understanding, Raid 5 is similar to raid 0, except that it has redundancy built into it.  In raid 0, if one drive goes bad, you lose the entire array.  With raid 5, if one drive goes bad, there is an algorithm in place (again, IIRC) that can recreate the datafrom the bad drive.
> 
> Unfortunately, most motherboard manufacturers don't put raid 5 in their controllers, and a good raid 5 controller can cost a good chunk of change.  But it's definitely worth it.



So your telling me i should have used RAID 5 instead of RAID 0? (my mobo supports it)


----------



## t_ski (Apr 17, 2007)

If you have it and are worried at all about fault tolerance, yes you should use it.  I think there is only a minor (if that) performance hit as compared to Raid 0.

If you're worried about having to reinstall everything, there are ways to back up your array, reconfigure the drives, and restore all your files.


----------



## JUDAS3 (Apr 17, 2007)

regan1985 said:


> have you got western digital drives? i didnt think u had a jumper to enable sat1 or sat2!!what drives have you got??



now got two seagate barracuda's 2x 160gb - set @ Sata 2 (jumper removed).


----------



## theonetruewill (Apr 22, 2007)

Here's mine - Good or bad? Looks rubbish next to your RAID configurations.


----------



## t_ski (Apr 23, 2007)

Average read is very low.  I had a similar Hitachi drive before and got around 50mb/s.  Part of the problem may be how the graph is very erratic.  I's there other disk activity going on while you're running the test?


----------



## theonetruewill (Apr 23, 2007)

t_ski said:


> Average read is very low.  I had a similar Hitachi drive before and got around 50mb/s.  Part of the problem may be how the graph is very erratic.  I's there other disk activity going on while you're running the test?



Not that I know of...


----------



## JUDAS3 (Apr 23, 2007)

theonetruewill said:


> Not that I know of...



lol - beat you at cpumark and i beat you at this, thats funny.

only joking................


----------



## t_ski (Apr 23, 2007)

theonetruewill said:


> Not that I know of...



Check your drivers, your controller settings, etc and make sure nothing is unusual.  Post here if you're not sure...


----------



## Chewy (May 16, 2007)

humm 106 avg read.. not the greatest but Im still happy having raid 





 since the performance starts to drop around 490gb mark does that mean If I fill up my hd to 490gbs it will still perform good? 

 I have 400gbs partitioned off just for data storage and would like to be able to use as much as I can without affecting my performance.


----------



## pt (May 16, 2007)

shitty speed ever
(this is my old seagate 40gb hdd after being revived in the freezer)
should be dying again soon...


----------



## t_ski (May 16, 2007)

Chewy said:


> humm 106 avg read.. not the greatest but Im still happy having raid
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Performance over 490GB shouldn't matter.  Remember that if this was a single drive it, too would dip in performance toward the end of the drive.

However, what I would worry about is that you're using a raid 0 array for storage.  There is no fault tolerance for raid 0, so you will lose everything if one of the drives fail.


----------



## Chewy (May 16, 2007)

t_ski said:


> Performance over 490GB shouldn't matter.  Remember that if this was a single drive it, too would dip in performance toward the end of the drive.
> 
> However, what I would worry about is that you're using a raid 0 array for storage.  There is no fault tolerance for raid 0, so you will lose everything if one of the drives fail.



 thanks man

 damm thats the poorest hdtach ever PT.. lol Im in a rush so of to complete things.

 @ t-ski

the only fault that could happen would be one hd dieing aint it? I do back up most of my dls, I would just like to not have to dig trough all kinda of back-up dvds.. I want to have a big audio collection of like 100+ gigs lol  wont be hard at all.. I prob have that now on my dvds or more . my HD space turned out perfect for me than, I was contemplating on buying another hd 500gig one or 320 since they both have gotten cheaper where I shop, but wont need to now.

 thanks once again.

 also my drives are sata II drives wehy is my burst speed just @ sata one? 157mb when sataII is 300mb.


----------



## t_ski (May 16, 2007)

Yes, one or both drives dieing ruins all the data.  I assume you have 2 x 250GB drives.  You could run them in raid 1 and not have to worry about backups. How much do you actually have filled so far?  I have an 80GB iPod and with over 300 CD's on it I only have ~16GB filled.

As for your burst speed, you are over 150MB/s, so you are into SATA2 range.  I assume it's just because of your settings.  You could try disabling NCQ and read caching if you want to try to get the numbers up.  We discussed it earlier in this thread if you need tips on how to do that.


----------



## Chewy (May 16, 2007)

cool man Im ahappy with my speed, its steady speed that counts anyway.

 so far I have like 10gbs used in my OC partition lol and like maybe 1 @ most in my storage.. COH game is on my OS still I havent bother reinstalling yet. I have 2x320 seagate barracudas   I dont want any preformance loss at all lol so I think I will keep at least 160 gigs free.

 I got a 30gig ipod  I dont have all my music on it though I saved em to dvds about 25 dvds of albums/diskographys prob more.

 thanks man, you sorted me out


----------



## t_ski (May 16, 2007)

np


----------



## Garb3 (May 17, 2007)

heres my screenie


----------



## technicks (May 17, 2007)

How is this?

http://img.techpowerup.org/070517/Capture018.jpg


----------



## t_ski (May 17, 2007)

Are those last two screenies posted from single HDD's?


----------



## technicks (May 17, 2007)

Mine is.


----------



## crazyfinx (May 18, 2007)

*how is this?*

I have 3 300g 7.10s in a stripe, pretty awesome


----------



## crazyfinx (May 18, 2007)

sry forgot pic


----------



## t_ski (May 18, 2007)

I'd like to see it.  Hurry up and post it man - I'm bored


----------



## crazyfinx (May 18, 2007)

here you go


----------



## t_ski (May 18, 2007)

Looks great, but that burst speed is messed up.  That's the second one we've seen here that was like that.  Must be a glitch.


----------



## theonetruewill (May 24, 2007)

Here's mine. Shame about the 8MB buffer.


----------



## Chewy (May 24, 2007)

very nice crazyfish 200mb Avg :O I wan lol but I dont want to pay for a raid configurer.. max my mobo is 2 in raid.


----------



## pt (May 24, 2007)

it's a glitch chewy


----------



## crazyfinx (May 24, 2007)

it is not a glitch, the Seagate 7.10's have native command queing and I enabled volume write-back cache which increases performance


----------



## pt (May 24, 2007)

how did you do that, so i can try on mine

note to self: sys specs need to be update


----------



## crazyfinx (May 24, 2007)

Yes, you can go in the device manager and go into the properties for the volume or drive under "disks" and go to the policies tab, should be an option to enable the write-back cache if you drive supports it. If you have an Intel array you can use the intel storage manager to enable the write-back cache by right clicking on the volume and selecting that option


----------



## Chewy (May 24, 2007)

crazyfinx said:


> Yes, you can go in the device manager and go into the properties for the volume or drive under "disks" and go to the policies tab, should be an option to enable the write-back cache if you drive supports it. If you have an Intel array you can use the intel storage manager to enable the write-back cache by right clicking on the volume and selecting that option




cool man, it says a power failure can make me lose my data.. there was something like this in the Vista tweaks thread but I cant go cherck it out I must go to sleep.. I didnt think it could improve performace much.. what HD's are you using?

 Edit if your results are real (they prob not but what do I know) than you have the best avg read time on tpu by the looks of it...  heres # atm 1. dumuzi =176.8mb/s - (4X 320GB Seagate RAID 0 - QuadDisk Stripe RAID 0 Array).

 Edit #2

 I cant do it with my raid controller, I also heard that I wouldnt notice huge improvments when I was thinking about getting a back-up power supply just so I could enable it.


----------



## pt (May 24, 2007)

i have that thing turned on  






/\ seagate 250gb 7200.10 16mb cache

edit:
nvm, confused qa thing


----------



## crazyfinx (May 24, 2007)

pt said:


> i have that thing turned on
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Check out the reviews on newegg, as you can see some other people are having the same read speeds, and 64mb read speed is about right when you have a single drive, but its much faster when you have a stripe array
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148140


----------



## pt (May 24, 2007)

crazyfinx said:


> Check out the reviews on newegg, as you can see some other people are having the same read speeds, and 64mb read speed is about right when you have a single drive, but its much faster when you have a stripe array
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148140



do you have 3 of them in raid-0?

edit: can you do raid 0 with 3?


----------



## Chewy (May 24, 2007)

crazyfinx said:


> Check out the reviews on newegg, as you can see some other people are having the same read speeds, and 64mb read speed is about right when you have a single drive, but its much faster when you have a stripe array
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148140



 yeah I figured he would prob get about 50avg read if he disabled it, your read might not be a glitch :O to bad my raid controller wont let me enable it:shadedshu


----------



## crazyfinx (May 24, 2007)

Yes I have three of these in RAID 0


----------



## pt (May 24, 2007)

crazyfinx said:


> Yes I have three of these in RAID 0



     
you crazy man


----------



## JUDAS3 (May 24, 2007)

crazyfinx said:


> Yes, you can go in the device manager and go into the properties for the volume or drive under "disks" and go to the policies tab, should be an option to enable the write-back cache if you drive supports it. If you have an Intel array you can use the intel storage manager to enable the write-back cache by right clicking on the volume and selecting that option



many thanks for that one m8, look at the results of before and after:


----------



## crazyfinx (May 24, 2007)

awesome  , happy to help out


----------



## theonetruewill (Jun 9, 2007)

Who updates this list now???


----------



## DOM (Jun 9, 2007)

what list?? there isnt one


----------



## theonetruewill (Jun 9, 2007)

DOM_ATI_X800XL_PCI-E said:


> what list?? there isnt one



Well it WAS updated by APK (see 1st page). I'll e-mail him and see if he can send me the formatted list so I can update it if no one else wants to take charge.


----------



## DOM (Jun 9, 2007)

oh  its on post #17  

But I dont think this is a very popular test that ppl want to run as you cant oc your HD's and if you want to do it still, I think it would be better to start a new thread so the list well be in the 1st post


----------



## theonetruewill (Jun 9, 2007)

DOM_ATI_X800XL_PCI-E said:


> oh  its on post #17
> 
> But I dont think this is a very popular test that ppl want to run as you cant oc your HD's and if you want to do it still, I think it would be better to start a new thread so the list well be in the 1st post



Good idea.


----------



## JUDAS3 (Jun 9, 2007)

will - have you started a new one ?


----------



## Boneface (Jul 7, 2007)

Well heres miine using a 36gig raptor and a 74raptor in Raid0 which is alot better tehn when i was just using the 36raptor i was getting 126/60


----------



## theonetruewill (Jul 7, 2007)

JUDAS3 said:


> will - have you started a new one ?



Do you want me to start a new one? I will if you think it would be a good idea.


----------



## freaksavior (Jul 7, 2007)

^^32




^^8
there is mine.......i would like to buy another just like it and raid it but i don't have $60

anyway is that good?


----------



## t_ski (Jul 7, 2007)

Boneface said:


> Well heres miine using a 36gig raptor and a 74raptor in Raid0 which is alot better tehn when i was just using the 36raptor i was getting 126/60



Looks good.  What stripe size did you end up using, or did you just go with the default?


----------



## t_ski (Jul 7, 2007)

freaksavior said:


> ^^32
> 
> 
> 
> ...



FYI, those extreme dips in there are from disk activity, sometimes dumping the pagefiles, etc.  Try running the test after a fresh reboot and without any other programs running in the background.

If that's a single drive that's pretty darn good.


----------



## freaksavior (Jul 7, 2007)

yeah, thats a single drive, no raid......from what i've bee seeing, i wish i had $60 as i would go get another and raid them!

i'll run it again next time i reboot!


----------



## Syngensmyth (Jul 7, 2007)

This thread is probably dead but here is the saddest result ever.
[URL=http://img98.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hdtachmomentusdl9.jpg]
	
[/URL]
Seagate Momentus 5400.2 ST96812A 60GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive.

What do you suppose is wrong!


----------



## Wile E (Jul 7, 2007)

Syngensmyth said:


> This thread is probably dead but here is the saddest result ever.
> [URL=http://img98.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hdtachmomentusdl9.jpg]
> 
> [/URL]
> ...


I see another problem, besides the obvious speed problem, your cpu utilization is 100%. My first guess is that the drive is on the way out. My second would be that your computer is infected, and the heavy cpu utilization is slowing your HD access.

Either way, back up your data now. After you back up, try a fresh install of XP.

Oh, and give us your system specs. You can fill them in, in your User Control Panel for this site.


----------



## Syngensmyth (Jul 7, 2007)

Wile E said:


> Oh, and give us your system specs. You can fill them in, in your User Control Panel for this site.



Will do.

CPU is normally low, only on sequential read test did it rise to 90+.




HD is only a couple months old, doesn't mean it is not bad but ... I agree something is strange.


----------



## Boneface (Jul 7, 2007)

t_ski said:


> Looks good.  What stripe size did you end up using, or did you just go with the default?




Just default. Should i have done it a diff way ?


----------



## Aguiar (Jul 8, 2007)

My turttle


----------



## freaksavior (Jul 8, 2007)

Aguiar said:


> My turttle



ha ha, check this one out, and this is normal


----------



## t_ski (Jul 8, 2007)

Boneface said:


> Just default. Should i have done it a diff way ?



Not easy to say.  It really is supposed to be based on your average file size.  If you want great bench numbers it' ideal to use 16K stripes.


----------



## Pinchy (Jul 8, 2007)

My results are pretty decent, and im on 128k stripe .


----------



## thebeephaha (Jul 11, 2007)

Woo.

Oh almost forgot..


----------



## t_ski (Jul 11, 2007)

Was that the 2x80 in raid 0 or the 4 x 320 in raid 5?


----------



## thebeephaha (Jul 11, 2007)

Top is 4x320 in raid 5, bottom is 2x80 in raid 0 on my p5n32-e sli mobo.


----------



## JUDAS3 (Jul 11, 2007)

compare it to mine.


----------



## Wile E (Jul 11, 2007)

JUDAS3 said:


> compare it to mine.


Nice. Random Access seems a little on the high side, tho.


----------



## JUDAS3 (Jul 11, 2007)

Wile E said:


> Nice. Random Access seems a little on the high side, tho.



yep but cant do anything about it - only about half a second slower than two raided raptors loading up games.

so I'm happy.


----------



## freaksavior (Jul 19, 2007)

there is mine after i raid 0 them with 64kb strip size

btw, is there anyway to make them faster?


----------



## pt (Jul 19, 2007)

overclock it


----------



## Frogger (Jul 19, 2007)

no.... but you could build an array with 4 of them and old allow the '0' config to see the first 30 gig of each hdd with a stripe of 16 it might just be faster ...


----------



## t_ski (Jul 19, 2007)

The more drives you add the faster it gets.  I've still got the fastest benches in this thread with 3 x 36GB Raptors:


----------



## crazyfinx (Oct 6, 2007)

t_ski said:


> The more drives you add the faster it gets.  I've still got the fastest benches in this thread with 3 x 36GB Raptors:



Your wrong I have the fastest bench on this thread, sorry had to pull out my e - penis 

check it out 

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=340216&postcount=109


----------



## t_ski (Oct 7, 2007)

Sorry, I missed that one.  I musta been too focused on the messed up burst speed.

BTW, what setup do you have with those drives anyway?  You might want to add some system specs to your profile...


----------



## allen337 (Oct 7, 2007)

Hes using the intel matrix storage raid like here ~~          http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/5710/hdtachsq8.png


----------



## nflesher87 (Oct 17, 2007)

btw t, I think I may have you beat with my 3x 7200.10s in RAID 0 I'll post HDTach in a day or two I can't remember what I got offhand


----------



## regan1985 (Oct 17, 2007)

i still think the raptor will be faster, the only way to beat them is to have 4 7200 drives


----------



## Wile E (Oct 17, 2007)

regan1985 said:


> i still think the raptor will be faster, the only way to beat them is to have 4 7200 drives


Not true. If you look back thru this thread, my 7200.10 320GB Seagate is faster then the 36GB Raptors, and the same speed as the 8MB Cache 74GB Raptors.


EDIT: I apparently didn't post my results in this thread. Must have done it in one of the other HDTach threads.

EDIT2: Here's my Seagate vs a 74GB Raptor 8MB Cache.


----------



## regan1985 (Oct 17, 2007)

i mean in a raid-0 setup! 3 raptors against 3 seagates the raptors win not only because of the random access times but the average read from what ive seen in the past. raptors seem to perform even better in raid!! this is from some who hasnt ever had a raptor and loves his seagate!

but then again proove me wrong and i will eat my words


----------



## Wile E (Oct 17, 2007)

regan1985 said:


> i mean in a raid-0 setup! 3 raptors against 3 seagates the raptors win not only because of the random access times but the average read from what ive seen in the past. raptors seem to perform even better in raid!! this is from some who hasnt ever had a raptor and loves his seagate!
> 
> but then again proove me wrong and i will eat my words


Fair enough. Guess we'll have to wait for him to post.


----------



## regan1985 (Oct 17, 2007)

i would like to see how the Barracuda 7200.11 compare but i dont know anyone who has one!


----------



## freaksavior (Oct 17, 2007)

regan1985 said:


> i would like to see how the Barracuda 7200.11 compare but i dont know anyone who has one!



http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/desktops/barracuda_hard_drives/barracuda_7200.11/

hmm, there only 500, 750, and 1tb. i don't want a 500gb........ok maybe i do.

1tb http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148274&Tpk=7200.11


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## t_ski (Oct 17, 2007)

nflesher87 said:


> btw t, I think I may have you beat with my 3x 7200.10s in RAID 0 I'll post HDTach in a day or two I can't remember what I got offhand



Probably, crazyfinx beat me, too:

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=340216&postcount=109

When I set up my new mobo I decided to use raid 5 for the parity.  Lol I forgot about the parity loss!!!  (losing 36gb storage to parity)  I've got two 250gb seagates on their way (hopefully today) which I will be setting up in raid 1 for all my important data.  Then I will take my raptors and put them back in raid 0.  From what I've seen, the Intel ICH performs much better than the NF4 controller I was using, so when I get around to it I will have to run some tests and see what kind of difference it makes.

Oh, and BTW - 74GB raptors usually beat the 36GB ones.  However, if anyone had a 36gb raptor wd360gd-00flc0 I'd love to buy it and have four of them in raid 0


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## t_ski (Oct 17, 2007)

OK, I've got a problem, but in a good way   I got the Seagates today and I'm testing them out.  First one in tested OK and benched at 84.3 MB/s   If I have three of those in there, they'd beat my Raptors for sure.  Probably close to 250 mb/s for all three in raid 0 

Now I'm thinking I should just buy a third drive and sell my raptors


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## nflesher87 (Oct 18, 2007)

go for it bro, you'd actually get some cash back in the end

and HDTach is forthcoming by the end of the night


----------



## t_ski (Oct 18, 2007)

Second drive tested out around 81 MB/s.  I think I'm gonna put the two of them together on the EZ Backup ports on my Asus P5W DH Deluxe and see what they do together.  That will have to wait until at least after class tonight though


----------



## nflesher87 (Oct 18, 2007)

And there you go


----------



## ex_reven (Oct 18, 2007)

nflesher87 said:


> And there you go



Thats beautiful 

HD Tach doesnt work in Vista


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## nflesher87 (Oct 18, 2007)

thankee bro and yeah that sucks


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## t_ski (Oct 18, 2007)

OK, thanks nflesher87.  That's what I needed.  BTW, do you remember what size stripe you used to set it up?

I was able to test both drives, each by themselves on the JMicron controller.  I've attached the images below.

Drive 1 - 84.3 MB/s
Drive 2 - 81.6 MB/s

The next bench was with the two dives in Raid 0, but they had to be installed on the Silicon Image 4723 (EZBackup) Controller because the second port for the JMicron is an eSATA port, and I don't have a cable ATM that would work with it.

Both drives in raid 0 - 121.1 MB/s

Unfortunately the Silicon Image controller sux...   Notice how level the graph is?  I don't even get the option to adjust stripe size with this one (EZBackup = for noobs).


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## nflesher87 (Oct 18, 2007)

yeah that sucks bro, and I've even heard JMicron is garbage to begin with...
I'm going to reboot real quick and check for sure what stripe width I used I can't remember off hand, but in the mean time feast your eyes on this! (haha it's my iPod Classic 80GB)


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## nflesher87 (Oct 18, 2007)

just checked and I used a 32KB stripe as I suspected, it's the recommend RAID0 stripe width


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## ex_reven (Oct 18, 2007)

I wonder if the presence of the third disk contributes alot to performance...
I have 2 7200.10 with 128k stripe and I only ever reached about the 140mb mark max.


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## t_ski (Oct 18, 2007)

nflesher87 said:


> ...but in the mean time feast your eyes on this! (haha it's my iPod Classic 80GB)



That's pathetic 

I realized that I forgot to remove the jumper to enable SATA2.  That helped a little bit, as it brought the burst up about 50MB/s and the overall reads up about 6MB/s. 

Now, obviously I won't be using the JMicron or the Silicon Image controllers if I go to Raid three of these drives, as none of them support more than two drives.  My only option is the ICH7R or an add-in card.


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## t_ski (Oct 18, 2007)

ex_reven said:


> I wonder if the presence of the third disk contributes alot to performance...
> I have 2 7200.10 with 128k stripe and I only ever reached about the 140mb mark max.



If you have two drives giving you about 140 MB/s reads, then you would probably get about 200-210MB/s reads with three drives.  Four would get you 260-280MB/s reads...


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## nflesher87 (Oct 18, 2007)

yeah, performance is fairly linear when it comes to RAID0

t I hadn't even thought to mention taking those out haha that was the first thing I did to mine 
as for your controller that ICH7R should be all you need, an add-in is overkill and unnecessary IMO


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## Wile E (Oct 18, 2007)

nflesher87 said:


> as for your controller that ICH7R should be all you need, an add-in is overkill and unnecessary IMO


Unless you're like me, and constantly changing hardware (unwillingly. lol). Saves you from having to rebuild your array every time.


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## nflesher87 (Oct 18, 2007)

Wile E said:


> Unless you're like me, and constantly changing hardware (unwillingly. lol). Saves you from having to rebuild your array every time.



I suppose, though it's not that difficult, usually they transfer over with no problem between onboard intel controllers


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## t_ski (Oct 18, 2007)

Wile E said:


> Unless you're like me, and constantly changing hardware (unwillingly. lol). Saves you from having to rebuild your array every time.



That's what I was thinking.  Plus, the one I'm looking at (here) has:



> PCI Express x1 (x4, x8 and x16 slot compatible)
> SATA II and SATA I hard drive support
> Online Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration (OCE/ORLM)
> Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
> ...



SMART, SMTP, Staggered spin-up and a few others are just a few of those things that could be really useful that you don't get with built-in controllers.

I looked at my funds, and I would need to sell all three Raptors to buy the card and two more Seagates, and that only gets me a raid 0 or 5 array.  I would prefer a raid 0 array for the OS & games, and a raid 1 array for important data, pics, music, etc.

Anyone want to make me an offer on the three 36GB Raptors? lol


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## t_ski (Oct 18, 2007)

nflesher87 said:


> I suppose, though it's not that difficult, usually they transfer over with no problem between onboard intel controllers



But if you don't go from one Intel solution to another, you're screwed.  I went from a SiL 2112 to an NF 4 and almost lost everything.  Thanks the powers that be for Raid Reconstructor and Get Data Back.


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## nflesher87 (Oct 18, 2007)

to each his own, I'd never spend $100+ on something my motherboard already has


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## Wile E (Oct 18, 2007)

nflesher87 said:


> to each his own, I'd never spend $100+ on something my motherboard already has


I plan on it when funds allow a card and more drives. If you buy the right card, it completely offloads the cpu.


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## t_ski (Oct 18, 2007)

If it gave you better performance I think it would.  I think that's why you have 3 x 320 GB drives in raid 0, instead of two drives in raid 0 or just a single drive.  Same reason why you have a quad core instead of a dual core.

Besides, it's got a lot of things your mobo doesn't have...


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## nflesher87 (Oct 18, 2007)

I have 3 drives mainly because I was able to get good deals on the 320s and I assumed I'd need the space which I'm finding probably won't be so haha
and I got the quad for a few reasons, performance, folding, and OCing


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## ex_reven (Oct 18, 2007)

My mobo runs ICH8R and im pretty sure it supports almost every raid type possible.
From memory it does RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 3, 5 and 10


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## Deleted member 3 (Oct 18, 2007)

nflesher87 said:


> to each his own, I'd never spend $100+ on something my motherboard already has



Enjoy your onboard video.


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## ex_reven (Oct 18, 2007)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> Enjoy your onboard video.



 You never fail to make me lol


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## nflesher87 (Oct 18, 2007)

lol Dan I should've stated that more clearly, though I have to point out that my Abit IP35 Pro doesn't have onboard video so HAH


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## t_ski (Oct 18, 2007)

No, you wouldn't even consider an on-board video solution because you want something that provides real performance.  Same thing.

And if you only are using the three drives because you thought you'd need the space, why aren't you running them in JBOD?  Simple, because Raid 0 performs much better.  I'm not bashing you, but just trying to remind you that this is what we're all about here - performance.  There are guys out there that swear by and live only by add-in boards, because they know the difference.


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## nflesher87 (Oct 18, 2007)

I guess it's all personal preference,
regarding VGA, that's a completely different story and I should've stated that comment better before haha
as for the controller, all I'm saying is I wanted space and performance, my motherboard already has a decently performing RAID controller and I don't have to pay any more for what I believe would be a relatively negligible increase in performance
for those of you that also want it for the ease of transfer in addition to the other benefits I say more power to you if you have the money to spare
Personally I would rather put that $100+ into something such as video card, memory, cpu etc


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## t_ski (Oct 18, 2007)

That's true - everybody needs something different.

But take a look at it this way.  Say your three drives each give 66 MB/s reads, combined for a total of 200 MB/s.  What if an add-in board gave you 10-20MB/s *more per drive*?  So instead of 200 MB/s, you were getting 230-260 MB/s - would that make it worth more to you?  Granted, I saw a huge difference when going from one drive to two in Raid 0, and as you go up the performance increase gets lower.  But since the hard drive is the slowest component of a modern PC, any improvement you can make in the data transfer would be worthwhile, at least IMHO.  Of course, I'd spend $300-500 on a decent solution, maybe more, _if_ I had the money.


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## Steevo (Oct 18, 2007)

The Intel ICHR7 has more bandwidth than you can shake a stick at. It will not be the bottleneck. It may be a limiting factor in other ways that you may or may not notice, like minimal CPU useage, or ability to create advanced RAID arrays. 



I believe we need additional benchmarks for disk performance. Such as application load time. Something independant of other hardware used, something consistant. We have too many variables with this test.



A fresh restart and a video of a steam load.
A video of a few game level loads.
A video of a few applications loads.
A video of a file move.


Etc....




Any other ideas?


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## Dawgdoc (Oct 24, 2007)

I just found this thread 

4 X 320gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 in matrix RAID 0/5.

Here is the RAID 0 part....top that!


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## nflesher87 (Oct 24, 2007)

that doesn't make sense...refer to my 3x 320 7200.10s in RAID0 on page 7...


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## Dawgdoc (Oct 24, 2007)

nflesher87 said:


> that doesn't make sense...refer to my 3x 320 7200.10s in RAID0 on page 7...



Yes I see....much lower it looks like. Maybe its time for a defrag or rebuild the array?

As I said, Im running a Matrix Dual Array 0/5 with volume write-back caching enabled so maybe that is a factor. I have 4 drives to your 3, but that part should only be a very small difference......
EDIT: 64k stripe to your 32k too.
EDIT #2: HDtach DOES certainly work in Vista. You just need to run it as an administrator. Perhaps this one you need to disable driver signing as well  I cannot remember as I always disable driver signing when I reboot.

How do you have your array set up?

Here is another I just ran a moment ago.


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## nflesher87 (Oct 24, 2007)

I'm not familiar dual arrays off hand
Mine is a simple RAID 0 on the intel ICH9R integrated into my Abit IP35 Pro


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## Dawgdoc (Oct 24, 2007)

Intel Matrix Storage Technology

Great stuff. Worth looking at. Basically, you need 4HDs and you put 2 arrays across the 4 drives, instead of 2 in 1 array, and 2 in another.
EDIT: I think I mispoke here. You need 4 HD to do a 0/5, but you can do a 0/1 with only 2HDs.

This gives you the benefit of using the fastest part of each HD for your RAID 0, making your RAID 0 more efficient and quicker. Then the rest you use for your storage (RAID 1, 5, whatever) and it doesnt really matter if its all the slower parts because.....well its just storage.

Check out the link, and there is plenty of other stuff on the net regarding Matrix RAID stuff too. Damn good read here too.


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## t_ski (Oct 24, 2007)

OK, Dawgdoc, you have my interest peaked.  I have an ICH7R chipset, so I should be able to do this.  I have four 250 GB Seagate 7200.10s - how do I go about setting this up?


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## Deleted member 3 (Oct 24, 2007)

nflesher87 said:


> my motherboard already has a decently performing RAID controller and I don't have to pay any more for what I believe would be a relatively negligible increase in performance



Test your controller in an actual RAID level, as RAID0 isn't actually RAID. Try RAID 5 for example and don't just look at bandwidth and seek times but compare CPU load.


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## t_ski (Oct 24, 2007)

I did some more reading in the OCForums and found this link:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1733448,00.asp

Seems like it gets set up the same as a hardware raid array, but not all the space is utilized for the first array.  The remaining space then used for the second array.

Dawgdoc, is there a reason you went with a 64K stripe?  From what I was reading, they were recommending a 128K stripe for a dual array.


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## Dawgdoc (Oct 24, 2007)

T_ski : Click on the 2nd link I gave on my post about 4 or 5 posts ago. That link goes to a well written post on www.overclockers.com where everything is basically described.

In a nutshell though, download all necessary drivers for the Intel Matrix RAID. Rebuild your array and F6 install your drivers with the windows install. Download the Matrix RAID storage manager. Enable write-back cache on your RAID 0 array.

Ill 2ble check for 100% accuracy when I reboot, but I choose 64k for the RAID 0 array, and 128k for my RAID 5. These were the recommended defaults.

Also, to use HDtach in Vista, I believe you also need to run in XP compatability mode.

If you have ever built a RAID array before, I dont think it should be any more difficult to do the matrix, you just need to know what you want beforehand and have all of your drivers set and ready to roll. If you need more help/details feel free to post back again and ill search around and setup some more links.


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## t_ski (Oct 24, 2007)

Ok, I was checking that out this morning after I saw your post.  There's a lot of stuff to weed through there, but I think I was able to figure out the basics.  One question I have though is whether the drivers are the same for a standard raid array?  I currently have a Raid 5 array running off the ICH7R.  I would love to take my current data, image it to my spare 200 GB drive, build the new array, then image the data back to the new raid array.  I have done this before (first time I did raid I installed the raid drivers before the image) by using Norton Ghost to copy the data over and have not had any issues.  If the drivers are the same, I should be able to just do the image as described and go, without having to install any new drivers.


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## t_ski (Oct 24, 2007)

According to what I found, the drivers I need are here:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/fil...XP+Professional&lang=eng&strOSs=44&submit=Go!

And I checked: I already have these downloaded and installed (Device Manager says the raid driver is 7.6.0.1011).  Sounds like I should be good to go.

The only thing is that, in order to keep using my 200 GB drive for images, I'll need to keep the raid 0 array under 200 GB for Ghost to work.  The bad part is that, according to HD Tach, I can use the first 100-110 GB of each drive before performance really starts to decline.

So for parity loss, it will be ( where n = the number of drives):

[n x drive size] - (raid 0 array)
_________________________________________
n

So if I have four 250 GB drives and a 190 GB raid 0 array:

[4 x 250] - 190
_____________
4

Which gives me 202.5 GB for parity loss.  I should end up with a 190 GB raid 0 array and a 607.5 GB Raid 5 array for all my pictures, music and, um, "movies."

Dawgdoc, by any chance did you run HD Tach on an individual drive before you built the array?  I have not yet installed one of them in the ICH7R controller, just the JMicron controller.  Performance for each drive was over 81 MB/s for each drive, but I have a hard time your read comes from just the addition of each drives' max.  If adding all mine up the max would only be around 400 MB/s, and yours was 439-473 MB/s.


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## Dawgdoc (Oct 24, 2007)

I did not run any benchmarks on the hard drives individually, sorry.

I set up my RAID array prior to install of windows, and have only had this same Matrix 0/5 array since first building the computer.

Maybe thats not 100% true...I need to rebuild the array a few times that first evening to get everything the way I wanted.

Also make sure that you have your BIOS settings approrpriately set. This has nothing to do with Jmicron. Jmicron is a PATA enhacement I believe, and this is SATA. Disable anything Jmicron in your BIOS.

Let me know if I can help any further.


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## t_ski (Oct 24, 2007)

Actually, I have the JMicron controller for two SATA ports (one eSATA) and one PATA port.  I had been using the JMicron for the Maxtor drive in my siggy as the Asus P5W DH Deluxe only has one PATA port, which I was using to connect my DVD-RW drive.  I only used the JMicron to test the SATA drives, while still being able to use my WD Raptors in the Raid 5 array from the ICH7R.

Anyway, I have it all configured now and I'm typing from the new array.  I'm in the process of formatting the 600+ GB Raid 5 array, which looks like it will take about 4 or 5 hours. lol

A quick bench showed 430+ MB/s read on the raid 0 array.  Gotta tweak it a little to see if I can improve that.

Thanks for bringing this up Dawgdoc - I would have never nown about it otherwise


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## Dawgdoc (Oct 24, 2007)

Sweet! Nice bench 

CPU utilization is a tad high, but your burst and your average and your access times are all excellent!

Intel Matrix is definitely the way to go  Far exceeds other RAID setups at the current time...


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## t_ski (Oct 24, 2007)

Thanks.  Like I said, still need to tweak it.


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## Frogger (Oct 25, 2007)

t_ski said:


> Thanks for bringing this up Dawgdoc - I would have never nown about it otherwise



1st congrats T nice Times

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848
 I posted this link about 8 weeks ago in another raid thread  guess you were Having an 'Old Fart' moment


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## t_ski (Oct 25, 2007)

No, I just have tunnel vision sometimes.  If it's not not right in front of me waving wildly at me with both arms swinging wide, I don't see it...


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## ex_reven (Oct 25, 2007)

I think its time for me to buy more 7200.10's 
Shit maybe even 7200.11, those scores are off the charts...


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## t_ski (Oct 25, 2007)

Right now Newegg is shipping the 250 GB 7200.10's with 3.AAA or 3.AAC firmware.  I got two China 3.AAA's and two Thailand 3.AAC's  It seems others are getting the same too.  FWIW, the 3.AAK's are the one's people are complaining about.

I say sell your 320 GB and buy three 250 GB's.   I can't see any use for 4 x 750 GB raid myself, but that's just me....


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## Dawgdoc (Oct 25, 2007)

Heck I cant see any use for 4X320 gb like I have. Even with me slicing 100gb off of each HD thats 400gb RAID 0 for programs only.

Cant see how I will ever use all of this space.....


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## Deleted member 24505 (Oct 25, 2007)

Is it easy to set up the matrix raid setup? i have 2 250gb samsungs and fancy giving it a try on a matrix 0/1 setup.


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## t_ski (Oct 25, 2007)

Me either.  With my three 36 GB Raptors I only had two of them almost full, and that's with all my programs, downloads, music, pictures, etc.  But then again, I did a re-install a month or so ago when I switched to this board, so I didn't have everything I could have installed I suppose.

However, I've been using computers since they ran off floppies.  My first PC with a hard drive only had a 40 *MB* drive in it.  I remember how Win 3.1, Works, AfterDark, and all my games filled it up, and later I bought my 345 MB drive for a steal - only $289!  Man that was cheap when drives went beloe $1 a MB.  LOL now they run $.28 per GB!!!


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## t_ski (Oct 25, 2007)

tigger69 said:


> Is it easy to set up the matrix raid setup? i have 2 250gb samsungs and fancy giving it a try on a matrix 0/1 setup.



Very easy.


Back up all necessary files to another source.
Reboot the PC
When prompted, press Ctrl + I to enter the raid BIOS (make sure the ICH controller is configure in the mobo's BIOS to "Raid")
Select Create Raid
Select the drives
Select the raid type (start with 0)
Select the stripe size (default should be OK)
Select the size of the array (for your two drives I would keep it under 200 GB)
Select Build Array (or complete or whatever it's called)
Go back in and do it all again with the remainder of the array, but choose raid 1 this time (you have to use the remainder of the space available)

From there you can reinstall the OS with the raid drivers (in XP you need to press F6  when it starts up to load the drivers off a floppy), or do like I did and restore an image of the previous install (you need a special program like Norton Ghost and need to install the raid drivers before creating the image).


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## Deleted member 24505 (Oct 25, 2007)

My drives are currently in ide mode,i guess i need to go into the bios and set them as raid before rebooting and using ctrl-i to set it up? also i dont think i need to do the F6 driver thing on vista.

How do install the drivers before creating the image?


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## t_ski (Oct 25, 2007)

tigger69 said:


> My drives are currently in ide mode,i guess i need to go into the bios and set them as raid before rebooting and using ctrl-i to set it up?



Yes, that is correct.



> also i dont think i need to do the F6 driver thing on vista.



IDK for sure the exact process. but the readme file says that you can use a floppy, USB or CD/DVD.  It still lists that information under the section for "F6 Installation" though.



> How do install the drivers before creating the image?



For me, I already had a raid 5 array set up and had the drivers installed.  However, when I had a DFI NF2 Ultra Infinity, I took my current installation on an IDE drive and installed the drivers for the Silicon Image 3112 controller in Windows.  I then shut down the system, connected the two SATA drives to the SiL controller, rebooted and configured them in the BIOS.  Then I set them up in the Raid BIOS and rebooted.  Using a boot floppy with Norton Ghost on it, I imaged the contents of the IDE drive to the raid array.  One note about Norton Ghost: the version I have requires that the destination drive not be smaller than the source drive.  You may be able to use a different program that allows the image to work in different ways, but Ghost is the only one I'ver ever used and can comment on.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Oct 25, 2007)

So if i imaged the 40gb c: partition,it would be ok to restore on a c: partition the same size on the new array?


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## ntdouglas (Nov 16, 2007)

Guys, check this out. This is unbelievable. I didn't know about removing jumpers on Seagates. When I did that my burst speed went from 235 to 398. Then I enabled write cache back and got this insane score. I ran it 5 times with same results. Does anybody know about native command queing? And where to find it?


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## crazyfinx (Nov 16, 2007)

ntdouglas said:


> Guys, check this out. This is unbelievable. I didn't know about removing jumpers on Seagates. When I did that my burst speed went from 235 to 398. Then I enabled write cache back and got this insane score. I ran it 5 times with same results. Does anybody know about native command queing? And where to find it?



NCQ is automatically enabled if your HDD has the feature- you can check it in the intel matrix storage manager if you have installed!


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## ntdouglas (Nov 16, 2007)

crazyfinx said:


> NCQ is automatically enabled if your HDD has the feature- you can check it in the intel matrix storage manager if you have installed!



Thanks man.


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## ntdouglas (Nov 16, 2007)

This is with write caching disabled.


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## DHJudas (Dec 31, 2007)

going to share some results....

here are some 160gb (4x) maxtor 8mb cache sata 2 drives in raid 0 on ULi 1575 array...








later using the same raid controller.... upgraded to 4x 320gb 16mb cache 7200.10's from seagate...






I then moved to a ICH7R chipset which improved my burst speeds and slightly increased my results...

but then i got a board with the ICH9R and 6x 500gb Seagate 7200.11's (compared to the 320gb seagate on the same ich9r chipset) before tuning initial testing...






after a little tweaking of the system...

my basically solid final results..


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## cdawall (Dec 31, 2007)

good god 2.45*GB/s* thats insane!


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## DHJudas (Dec 31, 2007)

yeah that is insane.. i've seen bursts of over 3gb/s... however... but... bursts don't mean much.. it's the average speed that matters


this is using the 32mb test.. if i use the 8.. the burst hits almost 4gb occasionally.... and the average will read anywhere from 750-800mb/s.... lol it's very inaccurate...

that's why i stick with the 32mb test....


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## ntdouglas (Dec 31, 2007)

DHJudas said:


> going to share some results....
> 
> here are some 160gb (4x) maxtor 8mb cache sata 2 drives in raid 0 on ULi 1575 array...
> 
> ...



For your final results, what tweaking did you do? Excellent scores man


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## DHJudas (Dec 31, 2007)

just did a cleanup the drive..... adjusted my computers clocks so they were more stable...

disabled some of intels smart fan crap.. and auto throttling.. as it inpacks quite a bit of the results.. making them inaccurate.. (occasionally giving good results one second and then bad the next....)

the CPU usuage looks highly inaccurate..

i could likely hit 750mb/s average in the 32mb test.. but

i'm using 128kb stripe size... if i were to use 4kb/s stripe size.. the results would be likely over 1,000MB/s average read... due to this benchmark being biased towards the smaller stripe sizes... hdtach maker NEEDS to do a little work in making changes to how hdtach benchmarks....

ALL i know is that i can do copying @ over 250MB/s from within the same drive..... which is incredible when transfering 20-30gb HD-DVD/BR files


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## ntdouglas (Dec 31, 2007)

DHJudas said:


> just did a cleanup the drive..... adjusted my computers clocks so they were more stable...
> 
> disabled some of intels smart fan crap.. and auto throttling.. as it inpacks quite a bit of the results.. making them inaccurate.. (occasionally giving good results one second and then bad the next....)
> 
> ...



Nice. I'm at a 64k stripe. That increased performance. Speed really jumped when I removed the jumpers.


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## DHJudas (Dec 31, 2007)

I've got a slight advantage compared to most other machines mind you.


Considering that my rig consists of the following:

Coolermaster cosmos 1000
OCZ GamerXStream 700watt
Gigabyte GA-x38-DQ6
Intel Q6600
8gb of OCZ DDR2 PC6400 (2x(2x2gb kits)
2x HD3870's in crossfire
6x Seagate 500gb Barracuda 7200.11's
1x Sata Pioneer DVR-212
1x External USB 500gb Seagate Freeagent drive
Logitech Z-5500 using Coax Digital connect to onboard Realtek ALC889a (dts Connect)
Dell 3007WFP 30" 2560x1600 Monitor
Logitech G5/G9 mouse
Microsoft erganomic 4000 keyboard

Additional goodies.. all under windows vista x64 ultimate eddition...


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## ntdouglas (Dec 31, 2007)

DHJudas said:


> I've got a slight advantage compared to most other machines mind you.
> 
> 
> Considering that my rig consists of the following:
> ...



Wow! Very nice. I bet you enjoyed typing your specs in didn't you.
That would be too overkill for me. Impressive though.


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## t_ski (Mar 17, 2008)

For those of you running HD Tach on Vista, have you noticed an drop in benchmark numbers from XP?  My old XP raid array got over 400 MB/s read scores, but in Vista I'm seeing 129 MB/s reads.  However, the drive does not "feel" any slower.  Is there some kind of fix or setting I'm missing?


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## AlCapone (Nov 16, 2008)

Hi guys! I will introduce to myself first and tell you a bit about this system. My name is Juan Pablo Soto a.k.a. AlCapone at www.chw.net, the biggest hardware site in spanish in wich I'm one of the collaborators. Yesterday, for professional reasons me and yakko, another partner at CHW, are testing an interesting platform that i designed and he as Linux IT Specialist and System Manager pushed to the limits. We work together in businesses projects for a long time and we believe that we have achieved a great record now. 

So, now specs and screenshots!

Average Read: 988.9 MB/S
Country: Chile
Disk Model: 7 x Seagate 7200.11
BUS: SATA II 
Buffer: 32MB
RPM: 7200
Size: 3.5''
Array: RAID 0 (stripe) of 7 disks
Array Size: 7 TB
Controller: Areca ARC-1261 with 256MB RAM ECC DDR2 667 MHz
Block size : 64k
Motherboard: Tyan Toledo i3210w
Processor: Intel Xeon E3110 (Dual Core, 3 Ghz, 45 nm)
RAM: 2 x 2GB DDR2 800 Mhz ECC Kingston
Power: Antec TruePower Quattro 850W
Chassis: Norco 4U Rackmount Server Case w/20 Hot-Swappable SATA/SAS Drive Bays
OS: Windows Server 2008 Enterprise 

SS: 
















The most impressive thing is the controller. Areca's ARC-1261 can manage 16 Sata II hard drives + 4 SAS drives and all of the I/O are managed using it. We think that the results are amazing and we would like to get any possible feedback including get to now about WR for this test because maybe using more HDs in a bigger Raid 0 Array we can get close to it or even beat it... Why not to dream right? Hahahaha... 

Best regards fellows!


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## Wile E (Nov 16, 2008)

If you want to go after world recods, I'd look at grabbing the Intel SLC flash drives. (Providing you could afford them that is.


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## AlCapone (Nov 16, 2008)

In professional environment SSD aren't known yet. I haven't any request still involving SSD and the only people that i know that uses SSD drives are gamers. 
Thanks for the feedback!


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## Chris_Ramseyer (Nov 16, 2008)

You never had a chance!


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## DOM (Nov 16, 2008)

t_ski said:


> For those of you running HD Tach on Vista, have you noticed an drop in benchmark numbers from XP?  My old XP raid array got over 400 MB/s read scores, but in Vista I'm seeing 129 MB/s reads.  However, the drive does not "feel" any slower.  Is there some kind of fix or setting I'm missing?



how do you even get it to work in vista


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## Wile E (Nov 16, 2008)

HighEndToys said:


> You never had a chance!



I don't know if I'm missing something, but it seems to me his is faster.


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## Chris_Ramseyer (Nov 16, 2008)

That is from one drive.


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## Wile E (Nov 16, 2008)

HighEndToys said:


> That is from one drive.



Yeah, but isn't that on a PCIe interface? (Fuzion IO) Can you RAID them?


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## Chris_Ramseyer (Nov 16, 2008)

Yes, you can RAID them but I only had one.


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## chuck216 (Nov 16, 2008)

Here are my 2 drives (well actually 3) The first is my 200GB IDE WD, the second is my 2x WD 250 GB Raid 0 Array


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## Wile E (Nov 16, 2008)

HighEndToys said:


> Yes, you can RAID them but I only had one.



How does that work? That also assumes you have enough slots for them I imagine. (Genuine curiosity, btw)


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## Chris_Ramseyer (Nov 16, 2008)

Lets just say I really want to get my hands on the Asus board with 6 PCIe X16 slots.

The RAID will come in Windows and maybe a tied in hardware solution later. I really don't know other than some people are working on it. I get updates from time to time, nothing solid yet.

The company is planning a consumer version of the card that should see daylight next year. Booting off one of these cards would be off the hook.


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## Wile E (Nov 16, 2008)

HighEndToys said:


> Lets just say I really want to get my hands on the Asus board with 6 PCIe X16 slots.
> 
> The RAID will come in Windows and maybe a tied in hardware solution later. I really don't know other than some people are working on it. I get updates from time to time, nothing solid yet.
> 
> The company is planning a consumer version of the card that should see daylight next year. Booting off one of these cards would be off the hook.



Yeah, I like the looks of that Asus board as well. I just can't decide what to do about i7. lol. I still have a couple of months to decide anyway tho.


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## cdawall (Nov 16, 2008)

my current drives top one is a single 320GB seagate AAE drive bottom is a WD 36GB raptor


i will have 6x36GB raptors up by Xmas so keep tuned for that


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## Arctucas (Nov 16, 2008)

4 x 320GB Barracuda 7200.10 RAID 0+1:


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## djisas (Nov 16, 2008)

One single barracuda 320 7200.11 outperforms that, 2 of them twice that...
Got some troubles with them today and their not workin, see if i get them to run tomorow and run some new tests...


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## DRDNA (Jan 17, 2009)

not too shaby


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## kenkickr (Apr 8, 2009)

Here's mine:


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## t_ski (Apr 8, 2009)

kenkickr, where did you get your avatar?


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## kenkickr (Apr 8, 2009)

google.com.  Just do a search for "Cubs pictures".  This isn't your g/f is it!?


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## t_ski (Apr 8, 2009)

I wish.  Image search or standard?


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## kenkickr (Apr 8, 2009)

Image search.  You want this one?  I found something better!!!


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## t_ski (Apr 8, 2009)

Nah, I was just looking for more detail


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## t_ski (Apr 8, 2009)

kenkickr said:


> Image search.  You want this one?  I found something better!!!



Must be this one 






Edit: LOL IT IS!!!


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## kenkickr (Apr 8, 2009)

I LIKEY!!


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## _jM (Apr 8, 2009)

This is my 150gb velociraptor (OS Drive)  not sure how good it is.. im gettn another for raid 0


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## 3dsage (Apr 9, 2009)

Here's my 300GB Velociraptor, Random Access test Flies with this drive 10K FTW.






@_JM our graphs are pretty identical


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## _jM (Apr 16, 2009)

OK here's a test run with 2 WD 500AAKS in ASUS Speeding HDD mode




Not bad at all, and not only I am getting the same or better performance as a RAID config, but instead of combining the 2 as a 500gb drive (raid 0) they are combined into 1TB of storage! I may actually keep them set-up like this. ASUS really shines on this one, good job ASUS!


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## 3dsage (Apr 16, 2009)

Sustained speed is awesome.
Is your boot time faster with the V-raptor or this Raid setup?


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## _jM (Apr 16, 2009)

actually, Im using the VR as my boot drive and the 2 others for storage. I was going to install my OS on the 2 drives u see above but I was recommended that you need 3 drives to use the ASUS Speeding HDD, 1 for OS and the 2 for SPDHDD. So I figured what the hell might as well try it out. After loading 77GB of "crap" on the 2 drives and seeing the performace above, Im quite happy with it as is.


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## 3dsage (Apr 16, 2009)

_jM said:


> actually, Im using the VR as my boot drive and the 2 others for storage. I was going to install my OS on the 2 drives u see above but I was recommended that you need 3 drives to use the ASUS Speeding HDD, 1 for OS and the 2 for SPDHDD. So I figured what the hell might as well try it out. After loading 77GB of "crap" on the 2 drives and seeing the performace above, Im quite happy with it as is.



Thats a nice setup you have man.
The V-Raptor is quick as hell though, esp when booting up. No waiting at all


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## _jM (Apr 16, 2009)

3dsage said:


> Thats a nice setup you have man.
> The V-Raptor is quick as hell though, esp when booting up. No waiting at all



Thanks~  Your right about that (VR), that was one of my primary reasons behind using the ASUS Speeding HDD so that not only i can make a full 1TB storage device with the performance of a RAID 0 config, and have the boot time with the Velociraptor  

Now all I have on the VR is Vista,programs, and my games (like 3or4) This rig is quicker than hell now!


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## trickson (Jun 23, 2009)

Well time for an update on mine .











Got some speed on them drives now .


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## 3dsage (Jul 3, 2009)

Barracuda 7200.11 - Intel ICH9















Got me 7200.12 cuz my 7200.11 was dying after a week.










Miss my V-Raptors loading time though.


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## 3dsage (Nov 7, 2009)

Got me a new toy today Patriot Warp V2


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## department76 (Nov 7, 2009)

my two old seagate 7200.10's in raid0


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## t_ski (Nov 7, 2009)

I forgot about this thread.  What about these?






I have three OCZ Summits and they run quite nicely in Raid 0


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## 3dsage (Nov 8, 2009)

Some Ramdisk Action.


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