RAID0 - slower with correct drivers? can anyone explain this??

[mousepotato2]

This seems wierd to me, my uncached speed on drive C & E (raid0) benchmarks about 5x faster when they are in "MSDOS compatibilty mode" (ie: before I loaded the correct drivers)..
Can anyone explain this and whether I am losing any performance somewhere I can't see while it says "msdos mode"?
...this is bugging me!!!!!

Thanks in advance!!!


...Benckmarks:

raid0(updated drivers):

Description Drive C Drive D Drive E
Partition format FAT32 FAT32 FAT32
Cluster size 16 KB 8 KB 32 KB
Drive label 75G1 13GBKUP 75G2
Size 20494 MB 12953 MB 55813 MB
Free space 15751 MB (77%) 2031 MB (16%) 52507 MB (94%)
Data fragmentation 3% Not tested Not tested
File fragmentation 2% Not tested Not tested
Last defrag Unknown Unknown Unknown
Junk files 82 MB (0%) 0 MB (0%) 0 MB (0%)
Cached speed 216.66 MB/s 214.83 MB/s 222.49 MB/s
Uncached speed 6.37 MB/s 2.31 MB/s 6.88 MB/s

2nd test (ms dos mode compatibilty)

Description Drive C Drive D Drive E
Partition format FAT32 FAT32 FAT32
Cluster size 16 KB 8 KB 32 KB
Drive label 75G1 13GBKUP 75G2
Size 20494 MB 12953 MB 55813 MB
Free space 15874 MB (77%) 2033 MB (16%) 52512 MB (94%)
Data fragmentation 2% Not tested Not tested
File fragmentation 1% Not tested Not tested
Last defrag Unknown Unknown Unknown
Junk files 80 MB (0%) 0 MB (0%) 0 MB (0%)
Cached speed 216.51 MB/s 211.51 MB/s 220.15 MB/s
Uncached speed 33.32 MB/s 2.29 MB/s 31.25 MB/s


Marks:

Subsystem Status Description
System AMD Athlon or Duron Model 6, 1607MHz (XP1600)
Memory 512MB RAM
Disk Drives C, D, E
Video Rage Fury (English)
Internet MSIE 6.0; Win 9x 4.90
Windows Windows Me
(C & E are on the raid controler, D is OS backup drive)
C & E = WD 40G/7200, D = 13.6 WD/5400)

Thank you in advance!!!!!!!!!!

[rmanet]

what mobo?

C and E are your RAID drives (no difference on your D drive right?) - you sure you've configured your cables, jumpers and BIOS and/or RAID utility properly?

[mousepotato2]

...yes they are properly setup, D is the same either way (non raid).. the only thing different on the setup is that the drivers are different and the "incorrect" drivers report in windows that C & E are "using MS DOS Compatibility" yet benchmark much higher...

(asus kt133a / a7v133 mobo)

[Philip1952]

Your Raid setup is not right. You should not be able to see that E drive if it was setup properly. You would only show C: drive even though it is two drives. Raid O will only show it as one.

Did you build the area in the Raid boot bios?

Your showing ME as your OS so I know you are not using software Raid on Windows 2K or XP.

[mousepotato2]

...it's partitioned...C: is 20gigs & E is 54.5gigs (2 WD "40gig" drives)...thought it was easy enough to see that from the partition sizes (sorry I didn't mention it).

It says functional in every way.

Please note the uncached speeds - drive D is a single/normal drive and reports speeds as such - C & E are faster in both cases,
...my question is why would DOS compatiblty mode report a 5 fold faster uncached speed & is there a performance loss in that mode that I'm not aware of???

also...RAID is part of my BIOS...the drivers on my MOBO disk are not the newest ones and therefore reported the drives as "MS DOS compatability mode"...the new drivers for ME were downloaded from ASUS website and installed.
as far as I know I could not have a 20gig & 54.5 gig partition from two 40 gig drives unless RAID was setup correctly.

[Philip1952]

thought it was easy enough to see that from the partition sizes (sorry I didn't mention it).

Yes it was. When someone lists a seperate letter when talking Raid 0. I think seperate drive.

Where are you finding the drive in ms dos mode compatibilty. Is this in Windows device manager? Or is the bench marking program telling you this.

What bench mark program are you using also. If the bench marking program is showing you the ms-dos mode. I think it is reading backwards. You Raid for those drives should run around 35 meg per second with correct drivers. In ms-dos mode it should be around 10 meg or less.

[mousepotato2]

those marks are from pcpitstop....if you know where/what else will give me drive speeds let me know please.

drives are reported as MSDOS mode in windows system under performance and device manager has the famous ! next to the SCSI controler.

[Philip1952]

Don't worry about any HDD test from PCPitstop. I have never had a HDD pass one of their test. :D

Use HDTach to test with.

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

Or some people use SISoftSandra. This one used to have problems with Raid. I don't know if they still do or not.


http://www.sisoftware.net/

That yellow ? mark means the correct drivers have not been loaded. Try the two programs above. Then install the drivers and run benchmarks agin.

[Thundershaft]

I don't know what u are doing
Raid 0 three drives.. with three partitions?
if that is true.. it just means that the one of the drive is super slow...

are u using identical drives??
from the label.. two IBMs and one something else..

[Philip1952]

I was confused also. He has Raid 0 set with two drive. It has a partation on it. That is the D: drive he is showing.

E: is a seprate drive by itself.

[mousepotato2]

Drive C is a 20gig partition on the raid0 setup....drive D is on a normal IDE cable as a backup (13gig WD drive)....drive E: is the 2nd partition of the raid0 setup and shows up after the D drive...
...the Raid0 setup is a Partitioned array...
....didn't think it was TOO hard to figure out,,,....sorry

[mousepotato2]

Philip...HD tack just wouldn't work....found another that showed 33megs/sec on the RAID with the correct drivers...so all seems cool. Thanks for the advice and help. I'm sorry I wasn't real clear with the drives ect...I often swap drives around and can run as many as 8 IDE drives so I do "drift" a bit explaining what I have in at any given time...at that time I had 2 40g WD 7200rpm drives on the RAID channel partitioned at 20gig(p1) and 54.5 remaining on p2, a 13.6gig WD as master on IDE2 so drive 1 was 20g/p1 RAID0, drive 2 was single 13.6 normal IDE & drive 3 was 54.5gig/p2 RAID0...now to start adding back some more of my drives and OS's....
....if only my wife understood how long it takes to set up a multi drive/boot system with backup drives so her and the kids have systems they can ...uh...use(abuse) and leave myself with a way to "fix it now!!" and still keep from going bonkers!!!!!!!...LOL

...anyway thanks again all of you!!!!!!!!!!!

[mousepotato2]

P.S. formating a free "dead" 20g right now.....nothing wrong with it except some "soft" bad clusters....I love it when people give me "dead" computer parts!!!!!

[Philip1952]

Glad to hear everything is checking out fine now.

Other people have had problems with HDTach on testing a Raid setup also.

Just don't use the Pcpitstop tests anymore. I have never had a HDD that would pass one of their test. It even told me that my Cheetah 15k SCSI drive was under it rated speeds by a long ways. Where every other test I ran put it at what it was rated for.

[mousepotato2]

lesson learned!!!!

***posting from the "dead" drive right now....lol***
...funny thing...I ran WD dig tools from my floppy for this drive {checked out fine} then when I tried to fdisk it the floppy drive died....lol....thought the HD was realy dead for a minute!!!!!....

thanks again!!!!!