2x 2TB WD20EARS in RAID 1, low transfer rate + solution

Problem:
Low transfer rate of around 22-23 MB/s. Should be faster.

Solution:
Install latest Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers

Details:
Newegg had their 2TB WD20EARS drives on sale a few days ago for $99.99 each. Figured my (1) 1TB WD drive was nearing 70% full with no end in sight owing to my project of ripping our entire DVD library sometime before the Mayan calendar runs out. Plus the single drive for all my data scares the heck out of me. Needed RAID 1 badly. Boot drives with OS & applications are mirrored and not the data drive....not planned so well.

Bought the drives, hit <ctl-i> to enter the motherboard's RAID utility (MSI X58-Pro). Found the drives and built the volume. Entered Vista 64....seems it mentioned something about new hardware.... Right clicked My Computer --> Manage --> Storage --> Disk Management....no new drives. Slept. Awoke. Fired up system, back to Disk Management and wallah, they were there. "Initialized" the drives. Formatted. Went to work. Did stuffs....Home... Ok, got a new 2TB RAID1 drive. :)

Time to copy everything over to the new RAID1 array. Copy, paste.....waiting......wtf? :( Why is it hovering at around 22-23MB/s? This isn't 3Gbps....It's even slower than my 20GB 7200 IDE/66 drive from ten years ago....

Read up on Intel's site: needed to use the latest Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers (v 9.6):

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sear...27&FamilyId=40

So now it's bouncing between 40-59MB/zs for the past 30 minutes. MUCH better. Just 5 hours 20 minutes, er, make that 3 hours 50 minutes until transfer is complete. Posted for posterity.



Core i7 920
MSI X58-Pro
(3) 2GB DDR3-1600 Corsair XMS
(2) 320 Seagate SATA somethingorothers in RAID-1 (OS, applications)
(1) WD10EACS-00Z (formerly housed in a crummy My Book World NAS....died just under a year into it) (relocating drive)
(2) WD20EARS in RAID-1 (data storage)
Vista Home Premium 64
Radeon 5850 1GB big *** video card (no, really -- it barely fits in my case)
other stuff...

Well, Vista is notorious for slow transfer speeds, so you can't judge copying and pasting. Secondly, RAID1 is no faster than a single drive and may indeed be a bit slower.

Have you tried using a hard drive performance utility like HDTach?

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public...request=HdTach

That will give you a better idea of real HD performance.

Like bill said (Vista is notorious for slow transfer speeds) I saw this before switching over to Win 7, copying from one drive to the next was a nightmare even copying to a thum drive was bad. When I upgraded to Win 7 the problem I had went away.

I'd say that Raid 1 is slower then a single drive cause you're basically make two copies of everything.