3TB RAID array

[Aussie Allan]

Cheers guys for all of the advice and again thanks Pierre for your help.
Until Intel support 3TB drives in their raid storage manager, I imagine updating the OROM version in the BIOS will have little effect. The drives are always seen as approximately 750 Gb each when trying to initiate the RAID, as the BIOS can not currently see the already GPT partitioned drives. How Asus got around that without Intel revising it's RAID controller, I'm not so sure??
There are a number of 5-bay solutions that I will look at which support 3TB drives, but the cost increases tenfold when you move to 6 drives and above!

Re the OCZ Revo X3, pretty awesome piece of kit.......... although getting the Revo X2 to work with this board was enough of a headache!!! What has suprisingly worked well for me is the combination of this and 4Gb of my 12Gb RAM used as a temp drive (RAMdisk) and Virtual Memory switched down to zero. System is blazingly fast.  

 I have the version 2 of this board and yes..... with lots of other kit inside including the RR640 .... was a bitch at times.

 Tell me!.... I'm running 24 gig of memory, so have turned off paging entirely and not bothered to allocate a scratch for photoshop and things seem to be dandy.......can you say if there would be any advantage for me to go down the ramdisc path with some spare memory  as I too am running a Revox2 and 2TBs of photo storage at about 530Mb/s raid0 ??

  P.S  5 bay NAS for about 280.... http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?hl=en&q=5+bay+nas+enclosure&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1067&bih=581&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=4695736190493816901&sa=X&ei=JmAtTrjfOMqnhAfZ3byqCw&ved=0CGEQ8wIwAw

  that will do RAID ( Serial ATA-300 ) - RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD, 5 hot spare, 0 hot-swap, ect,ect

 Aussie Allan

[F5BJR]

*
Possible solution if the 3 TO disks are detected in AHCI mode

Use after Microsoft Diskmanager for mount RAID ( i think that you can with Windows Seven 64 PRO / Ultimate )

Pierre


** --> http://www.servethehome.com/fix-746gb-3tb-hard-drive-issue/

[Myasinax]

I have the version 2 of this board and yes..... with lots of other kit inside including the RR640 .... was a bitch at times.

 Tell me!.... I'm running 24 gig of memory, so have turned off paging entirely and not bothered to allocate a scratch for photoshop and things seem to be dandy.......can you say if there would be any advantage for me to go down the ramdisc path with some spare memory  as I too am running a Revox2 and 2TBs of photo storage at about 530Mb/s raid0 ??

  P.S  5 bay NAS for about 280.... http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?hl=en&q=5+bay+nas+enclosure&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1067&bih=581&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=4695736190493816901&sa=X&ei=JmAtTrjfOMqnhAfZ3byqCw&ved=0CGEQ8wIwAw

  that will do RAID ( Serial ATA-300 ) - RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD, 5 hot spare, 0 hot-swap, ect,ect

 Aussie Allan

Hi Allan

You certainly won't be using 24Gb of RAM in any situation to be honest and I would definately allocate 4Gb of RAM with RAMdisk as Temp storage. This is the max allowed using the free app from RAMdisk but the paid version allows the use of more RAM and formatting in NTFS. To be honest, as a TEMP cache for Windows 4Gb is more than enough and I believe nothing is faster. The only time I have seen issues with turning Virtual memory/Page file off completely, are there are some games which require a virtual memory (i.e. they wont start unless they can see one), but don't actually need it. Depends if you game alot I guess.

Re the raid enclosures, there are many and as I said before, when you move up to six, the price doubles from 5! Also, getting official confirmation that 3TB drives are supported in the RAID is hard to come by at the moment.

Cheers

Yas

[Myasinax]

*
Possible solution if the 3 TO disks are detected in AHCI mode

Use after Microsoft Diskmanager for mount RAID ( i think that you can with Windows Seven 64 PRO / Ultimate )

Pierre


** --> http://www.servethehome.com/fix-746gb-3tb-hard-drive-issue/

Hi Pierre

That solution only applies to a single 3TB drive connected in AHCI mode. There is no problem connecting the discs this way, as by creating a GPT partition Windows sees the full 3TB drive. The problem is with the Intel chipset drivers which do not see the GPT partitioned discs in RAID mode....they can only see 750Gb (approx) i.e. anything above 2.2TB gets ignored. This is a software fix which I am amazed Intel hasn't managed to implement even though it was promised at the beginning of the year as a future update......pretty poor support. If you speak to Intel, they will just throw you back to the motherboard manufacturer, even though it is their chipset and software which controls the RAID!! Gigabyte BIOS needs to be updated to reflect the new OROM from Intel which should include support for >2.2TB drives. I am just surprised Asus has found a work around.

Rgds

Yas

PS I am using Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and Windows alows nothing but conversion to GPT with 3TB disks.

[/quote]

[F5BJR]

*
No if in AHCI mode can find all disks with 3 To

With Windows you can mount software RAID ( not with Intel RAID Manager )

Pierre

[Myasinax]

*
No if in AHCI mode can find all disks with 3 To

With Windows you can mount software RAID ( not with Intel RAID Manager )

Pierre

Hi Pierre, on initial installation of 3TB drive in Win7 64, the disks initialize as a GPT partition. Windows shows 750Gb and an unallocated partition of 2.2TB. Once you GPT the drive, Windows disk manager does NOT allow any form of RAID whether it be RAID 0, 1 or 5....they are all greyed out (see image)

Rgds

Yas

[Aussie Allan]

 

 Hi Allan

You certainly won't be using 24Gb of RAM in any situation to be honest and I would definately allocate 4Gb of RAM with RAMdisk as Temp storage. This is the max allowed using the free app from RAMdisk but the paid version allows the use of more RAM and formatting in NTFS. To be honest, as a TEMP cache for Windows 4Gb is more than enough and I believe nothing is faster. The only time I have seen issues with turning Virtual memory/Page file off completely, are there are some games which require a virtual memory (i.e. they wont start unless they can see one), but don't actually need it. Depends if you game alot I guess.

Re the raid enclosures, there are many and as I said before, when you move up to six, the price doubles from 5! Also, getting official confirmation that 3TB drives are supported in the RAID is hard to come by at the moment.

   Hi ya Yas.........99 times out of 100......I'd have to agree with you........"But"........ my needs are shall we say........."Unusual"....

 The last time I gamed was when "Hidden and Dangerous" was the big thing....crap! I feel old!.......What floats my boat now is rather high end photography, ... specifically HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography.

  5, 7 or even 9 RAW Images with either 14.6 or 24MP combined through PhotoMatix Pro.......then bumped onto CS5 Extended for between 2 to 6 layers with no flattening......even before I get to tweaking ( NIK Sharpener, Vivenza or some fun with "OnOne"plugins) Ive got a single image up to 10 to 12 GB.....toss  in 4 or 5 history states.....so you see , a lot of memory can be utilized.

 So here is the question!.........I was under the impression, if you have truck loads of memory, scratch disc and paging becomes redundant!.... you think other wise.........what i need is fast storage and the fastest workspace I can get my hands on .

 So I have 24GB mem, RevoDrive X2 for "C" Drive (625 to 840 Mb/s) and 4x500 spinpoints-F3-502HJ in raid0 for 525Mb/s for photo storage!

 How will RAMdisc improve my current performance and how exactly do I implement it ...... and 4 gig or 8

 P.S........Yas ...Ive been waiting months for someone with RAMdisc knowledge to come along you lucky boy you ..... any help very much appreciated.

 Aussie Allan

   "UPDATE".... Yas!....did a little light reading (Dataram, and 12 different  benchmarks) Dataram is way ahead......and $14 US seem cheap!

  Hears the question though!...... if 10 gig of memory was allocated to RAMdisc, can you partition it into 4 gig for page file and 6 gig for photo-shop scratch disc ??

[Myasinax]

No problem Allan (unusual spelling of Alan)

At a push, like yourself, you can use up about 12Gb of RAM, I have very, very occasionallly whilst transcoding HD video files. With 24Gb, you have more than plenty. I would use 4Gb of your RAM as a temp folder for Windows. Remember that downloaded files, transferred files don't go directly from folder to folder....they are infact placed and queued temporarily in the TEMP folder in your C drive. If you go to the advanced tab under your system properties, there is an option for 'Environment variables'. The values of the 'TEMP' and 'TMP' folders can be changed here so that they access the partition created on your RAMdisk and allow the fastest throughput available.
A better explanation can be found here:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_disk.
By transferring files through the memory, your C drive can be read, without storing the files in it's temp folder and write to whichever drive straightaway.
The implementation is fairly straightforward, so have a good read and follow the guide step by step and you shouldn't have any problems.
http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk
If you do have any problems/questions let me know.

In regards to your storage, I wouldn't like to be in your shoes if a drive fails! Do you back up all of the 2TB of data?

Rgds

Yas

[F5BJR]

*
OK disks are in basic mode , normal ( greyed )

program in dynamic and mount RAID ( change to left for modify basic to dynamic  , clic right ... )

as this :

http://www.overclockers.com/setting-up-os-raid-with-windows-7-ultimate/

Pierre
 

[Myasinax]

*
OK disks are in basic mode , normal ( greyed )

program in dynamic and mount RAID ( change to left for modify basic to dynamic  , clic right ... )

as this :

http://www.overclockers.com/setting-up-os-raid-with-windows-7-ultimate/

Pierre
 

Hi Pierre

Tried that already, same thing, but just for you see below!

Rgds

Yas

[Aussie Allan]

No problem Allan (unusual spelling of Alan)

At a push, like yourself, you can use up about 12Gb of RAM, I have very, very occasionallly whilst transcoding HD video files. With 24Gb, you have more than plenty. I would use 4Gb of your RAM as a temp folder for Windows. Remember that downloaded files, transferred files don't go directly from folder to folder....they are infact placed and queued temporarily in the TEMP folder in your C drive. If you go to the advanced tab under your system properties, there is an option for 'Environment variables'. The values of the 'TEMP' and 'TMP' folders can be changed here so that they access the partition created on your RAMdisk and allow the fastest throughput available.
A better explanation can be found here:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_disk.
By transferring files through the memory, your C drive can be read, without storing the files in it's temp folder and write to whichever drive straightaway.
The implementation is fairly straightforward, so have a good read and follow the guide step by step and you shouldn't have any problems.
http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk
If you do have any problems/questions let me know.

In regards to your storage, I wouldn't like to be in your shoes if a drive fails! Do you back up all of the 2TB of data?

Rgds

Yas

 Learnt the hard way several years ago,....I now have a quarterly copy at the inlaws place and use Acronis 2011 home with the plus pack in a continues cloning loop for "C" ... "P" (storage)  and "Z" (extra programs and review Doc storage) plus a 20min UPS and E-Sata Dual Dock for portable backups.....should be OK ... have been trouble free for several years now with this practice

 Will implement RAMdisc after a week of reading..........Measure twice, cut once!... your strong in an area I'm weak ... thanks for the leg up.

 Ive also been reading some major improvement can be had with manipulation Tile cache size in shop ?   ... know anything here ?

 Alan against Allan.....mmmmmmmmm I've been told one "L" in Alan is centered around Israel (Jewish) and two "Ls" more English, European (Scottish,English) ........Who knows.........it was my Mums fault  

 Aussie Allan

[Myasinax]

Hi Allan,

Learn something new almost every day!
Let us know how you get on with the RAMdisk and give me a shout if any problem. You can see from the wiki of the test results...pretty staggering and all that from a FAT32 partition on your memory!
Not a big user of shop, so unable to help you with Tile cache size, but I imagine there is an optimal size to benefit transfers. Best thing to do is adjust and transfer he same file and record speeds.

Rgds

Yas

[Aussie Allan]

 Cool! ... and the advantage of NTFS (paid for) against the freebie FAT 32 ?.....AA

[Myasinax]

According to the benchmarks little to negative!

[Aussie Allan]

According to the benchmarks little to negative!

  "Holy Rap Batman" ... I have some issues which I'm working through which unbelievably will improve these figures..... many thanks Yas!

  Stick around Yas!......we've got some work for you! hahahahahahahahahahh

  Hay DM and Absic!..... lookie here! ... this is even a great diagnostic tool for memory stability and through put.... "Read em and weep numbers"

 Now all I have to get is a flatline....

  Aussie Allan