How do I know if my RAID 0 is working

[Mr_Threepwood]

Ok so I just redid windows with raid 0 on my two 36gb raptors and now I want to know if there is a speed difference, so far I cant tell if its any better or worse. The size of the drives displayed in windows is correct. Is there any way to test and see if my raid 0 is working well?

I used some hard drive speed testing program but I question its accuracy because it said my non raided 250gb maxtor was going about as fast as my raided raptors.

 

[idiotec]

Download Sandra benchmark utility and test it there.

 

[turboFX55]

ok plan and simple the raptors have a better burst speed and total bandwidth over all, which when you have to 36gb 10k raptors together it ups the speed of both drives to 300mbs between the both of them. and to see if raid o is working well plan and simple it is working and you are not getting errors, by the way whatr kind of mobo do you have and is it nvidia raid? also for future raid, if you get any more drives and you want to put them in raid zero you want to make them simple dynamic partion, what that does if you ever lose windows you don't lose the data on the raid controler on those extra hdd's, NOW if that is the case if you lose windows or you want to reformat, DO NOT CHANGE OUT THOSE DRIVE ON THE SLOTS THERE ON IN THAT SETUP or the raid controler will lose the memory and you just lost all your data! IF you have any questions pm me, I have the same setup as you 2 raptors in raid 0 and 4 250 gb in raid 0 as well!

 

[Mr_Threepwood]

I used sandra and it said I had a test transfer rate of 77mb/s, is that good? My motherboard uses promise fastrak raid controller.

 

[turboFX55]

no not at all, let me DL and run that benchmark, in when i x-fer stuff between i get at least 225 mb/s

 

[turboFX55]

OK, I downloaded that benchmark program and ran it, My raptors 2 of them in raid 0 i got 102 MB/s so i think it is that raid controller you have. does your MOBO have onboard raid?

 

[HAVOC]

There is a serious misconception about the performance increase for RAID 0. There was an excellent article that I read about 6 months ago that tested several different RAID 0 arrays. There were different Motherboard, Chipsets, RAID controllers and HDD types. What they found was performance varied a lot. The biggest factor seemed to be based on the Chipset. Overall their tests showed that RAID 0 isn't a performance increasing array. (Their benchmarks showed a slight increase in numerical value, but nothing for the human eye to see.)

Redundant Arrray of Inexpensive Disks. - This is the true meaning of RAID 0.

Buy (2) 250G HDD's for just over a $100 USD each, Configure them in RAID 0 for almost 500GIG for A bit over $200 USD. This is a much better solution price/total storage vs. buying a 500GIG HDD for over $330 USD.

People who put (2) 74G raptors in RAID 0 are seriously wasting their money... $300 USD for 150GIG is an absolute sin. I'd much rather have a 250GIG HDD with NCQ & 16mb Cache.

lol - WD is also coming out with a Gamer Version of the new 150G Raptor 10K. It's called the Raptor X. IT sports all the same features, but will have a see-though window to show off it's platters and arm.
Can't wait to see the price tag on this sucker..

 

[Lonewolf5460]

lol - WD is also coming out with a Gamer Version of the new 150G Raptor 10K. It's called the Raptor X. IT sports all the same features, but will have a see-though window to show off it's platters and arm.
Can't wait to see the price tag on this sucker..

it a $50 more than the regular raptors from what i have read

 

[turboFX55]

People who put (2) 74G raptors in RAID 0 are seriously wasting their money... $300 USD for 150GIG is an absolute sin. I'd much rather have a 250GIG HDD with NCQ & 16mb Cache.

lol - WD is also coming out with a Gamer Version of the new 150G Raptor 10K. It's called the Raptor X. IT sports all the same features, but will have a see-though window to show off it's platters and arm.
Can't wait to see the price tag on this sucker..

not really dude, when i have one raptor hooked up on the sata link, i get a whoping 53 MB/s x-fer rate, raid 0 has it goods and bads, but it is a great performance. and no if you have 2 250 gig sata they still dont do as well as raptors as an example i am going to post how good x-fer rates are.

#1 2 wd360 raptors in raid 0

#2 1 wd360 raptor

as you can see raid 0 does make a difference, mainly for read times which is what all gamers and performance users want. and from what i am reading the new raptor will be $380 usd, i say **** no, i love my wd360s which I can get for $100 and make them faster

 

[HAVOC]

I said, "They are seriously wasting their money because, although there might be a noticable difference in a graph chart and numerically, you won't see or feel that difference in performance."

HDD's are the number (1) bottleneck in PC hardware today. Regardless of how fast you think they are, they are still slower then almost all other components. So spending $300 for a 150GiG RAID 0 array is absolutely pointless because it will not change the fact that it's still the slowest component in a PC. Far slower then almost everything else. The CPU & Memory are still going to have to wait around for the HDD to access the needed data. CPU & MEMORY operate in nanoseconds, HDD's are still operating at what? under 9 milliseconds? That's super fast to you and I in a real world application, but for the CPU and RAM... It's like forever...

The smart thing to do would be focus on (RAID 0 for creating an array of large capacity for much less the price of a single large capacity drive.) Hence (2) 250G for $210 vs. (1) 500G for $330