• My RAID5 array is far slower than the HDDs that comprise it
    13 replies, posted
My specs: 3x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB Rampage 3 Extreme mobo i7 950, A few days ago I set up this RAID5 array, it's my first experience with RAID and I understand with RAID5 I should theoretically be getting doubled read speeds and I think slightly slower write speeds I was watching a video and noticed it was stuttering so I ran CrystalDiskMark and got this [img]http://i.imgur.com/VGv5R.png[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/Jna8X.png[/img] That seemed pretty poor so I looked up what an F3 gets outside of RAID, found these (separate benchmarks, separate sites) [img]http://i.imgur.com/7KGJf.jpg[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/7XScM.png[/img] Any idea what the fuck I have done??? Potentially important: One of the F3s I bought in March 2011 and have used since then, the other two are brand new, I bought them for this RAID
The drive mismatch could be a potential issue. I have never tried doing a RAID with multiple models of drives.
The drive mismatch is (or should be) irrelevant, I grabbed 4 drives off my shelf to try them out in RAID0 and they were a mix in the 500GB-1TB range, and while of course the space beyond 500GB on the larger drives was wasted, I still got about 350 MB/s sequential IO using the Intel P55 integrated raid controller, but it didn't really do a damn thing for real world performance and I was just testing anyways so I disassembled it. What RAID controller are you using?
Run a smart check on the drives. Or check your utility. Usually it's a sign one went bad with parity RAID's. Though I would guess it should be much slower.
I did a smart check or whatever and it all looks pretty good EXCEPT the old drive has older firmware J'accuse! Edit: Plot thickens - it's actually one of the new drives that has a different firmware version I believe I have found a firmware update thing but I will run it tomorrow, because I didn't sleep last night and I don't want to do something stupid and fuck it up
[QUOTE=mblunk;36268687]The drive mismatch is (or should be) irrelevant, I grabbed 4 drives off my shelf to try them out in RAID0 and they were a mix in the 500GB-1TB range, and while of course the space beyond 500GB on the larger drives was wasted, I still got about 350 MB/s sequential IO using the Intel P55 integrated raid controller, but it didn't really do a damn thing for real world performance and I was just testing anyways so I disassembled it. What RAID controller are you using?[/QUOTE] RAID0 =! RAID5. RAID of any level will always be slower with garbage integrated RAID controllers. The primary reason is thay hand all of the data processing off to the host CPU, and the secondary reason is there is no dedicated cache RAM. RAID5 has it especially bad because of the extra pairity calculations that would otherwise be done by a DSP.
Dudewat My HDD's write faster than this without RAID...Maybe your HDD's don't agree with RAID
[QUOTE=bohb;36270976]RAID0 =! RAID5. RAID of any level will always be slower with garbage integrated RAID controllers. The primary reason is thay hand all of the data processing off to the host CPU, and the secondary reason is there is no dedicated cache RAM. RAID5 has it especially bad because of the extra pairity calculations that would otherwise be done by a DSP.[/QUOTE] I know, hence why I asked what RAID controller he's using, which is still my main suspicion.
I'm just using the [url=http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1366/Rampage_III_Extreme/#specifications]motherboard[/url]'s RAID thingy
What version BIOS are you running? You can check with CPU-Z. In the download section, the latest update 1502 says "Supports over 2.2TB huge HDDs and RAID. Please install Intel RST 10.5.0.1026 when using this Bios version." Maybe it's unstable/slow in RAID5 before this version? Version 1208 also "updates intel RAID option rom", and many older updates before that claim to "improve system stability", any of which might solve your problem - I'd update the BIOS if I were you, just make sure you do it correctly.
[QUOTE=mblunk;36281656]What version BIOS are you running? You can check with CPU-Z. In the download section, the latest update 1502 says "Supports over 2.2TB huge HDDs and RAID. Please install Intel RST 10.5.0.1026 when using this Bios version." Maybe it's unstable/slow in RAID5 before this version? Version 1208 also "updates intel RAID option rom", and many older updates before that claim to "improve system stability", any of which might solve your problem - I'd update the BIOS if I were you, just make sure you do it correctly.[/QUOTE] Thanks mate, my BIOS was way out of date. I updated to 1502 and now I get this [img]http://i.imgur.com/7yZwt.png[/img] The sequential and 4K QD32 read speeds are much better, but I dunno about the rest of the results, can someone who knows their shit tell me if they're still a problem? I dunno what I should expect
[QUOTE=smurfy;36282436]Thanks mate, my BIOS was way out of date. I updated to 1502 and now I get this [img]http://i.imgur.com/7yZwt.png[/img] The sequential and 4K QD32 read speeds are much better, but I dunno about the rest of the results, can someone who knows their shit tell me if they're still a problem? I dunno what I should expect[/QUOTE] Hmm, their suggested RST version is kinda old by now, newer versions might help even more and I know they can make a big difference with SSDs from personal experience. Here's the latest RST (just download the top one, the bottom one is the multilanguage one): [url]http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=20624&ProdId=2101&lang=eng&OSVersion=Windows%207%20(64-bit)*&DownloadType=[/url]
[QUOTE=mblunk;36282708]Hmm, their suggested RST version is kinda old by now, newer versions might help even more and I know they can make a big difference with SSDs from personal experience. Here's the latest RST (just download the top one, the bottom one is the multilanguage one): [url]http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=20624&ProdId=2101&lang=eng&OSVersion=Windows%207%20(64-bit)*&DownloadType=[/url][/QUOTE] There's really no benefit in just updating your RST driver within windows, as the OROM on the motherboard is still going to be old. That being said, run Linux, I was getting over 300MB/s reads and 160MB/s writes during a sync, on RAID-6 6x2TB Samsung F4's
[QUOTE=pure.Joseph;36414956]There's really no benefit in just updating your RST driver within windows, as the OROM on the motherboard is still going to be old. That being said, run Linux, I was getting over 300MB/s reads and 160MB/s writes during a sync, on RAID-6 6x2TB Samsung F4's[/QUOTE] I figured it'd be worth a shot, since it had a huge impact when I was playing with my SSD.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.