Official GIGABYTE Forum
Questions about GIGABYTE products => Motherboards with Intel processors => Topic started by: Wigpo on October 14, 2011, 06:29:51 am
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Hello
I have somewhat strange problem, I have 2 OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs in RAID0 as system disk and 4x WD 1TB in RAID0 for storage. My problem is that when the 4 1TB drives are connected the loading time of windows is increased with atleast 1 minute.
While in Windows everything works great, fantastic speeds with both RAID arrays! :)
Any input on this phenomenon would be appreciated :)
Windows 7 Professional 64bit
MB: Gigabyte z68x-ud7-b3
SSDs connected to Intel Sata3 ports and WD 1TB connected to Intel Sata2 ports, 2 marvell ports unused.
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Hi and welcome.
I don't think there is much that you can do to help decrease the time it takes for the RAID to prepare but obviously you can make sure that everything else is as fast as possible. Do all the usual things like enabling fast boot, disabling the floppy drive search, boot direct from the hard drive not the optical, etc. All the usual time saving tweaks.
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Wigpo
This is the price you pay to enjoy your present system spec ..... you BIOS and OS has rather a lot to do getting all your toys up and running
This also the time people say to them selves....."Ooooo I know ....I'll try out Hibernate" ..... Don't go there! ...... If you want kick ass performance and rock solid stability.......take the one minute hit and make a cup of coffee
I have a Raid card that pushes up my raid0 4 disc array substantially.......it adds 1 minute by it self :o
I'd rather have turbo-charged V8 that takes a bit longer to warm up then a 1800cc motor-bike
My next build will probably have 4 vertex 3s in raid0 for OS.........what sort of performance are you getting out of 2 ? and what ports are you running them off ?
Aussie Allan
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Thanks for all replies!
The extra minute is only from windows loading(from the moment the starting windows appears and the windows logo begins to assemble until I reach the desktop....), not detecting hardware and stuff like that, btw the SSDs are the primary boot device :)
The performance out of two are mindblowing...I'm running them of the Intel SATA3 ports on the motherboard.
I have the ATTO Benchmark results but I don't know how to share them with you at the moment. Do you have any suggestions on how to share them?
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Easies way is to put them on your desk top or a thumb drive....where ever you're used too.....at the bottom left of the box I'm typing into right now you will see
+ Additional Options... ....Brouse... ...attach..... .... post and your done!
Hit that and follow the prompts ..... I'm guessing about ... what 800Mb/s read and 650Mb/s write for the two ?
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Oh, its that easy :o
Well, lets see
I've tried different stripesizes on the RAID0 array with different results
Here are for 16KB and 32KB stripesize
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I haven't done the 64KB yet but I will do it soon :)
Atleast I have 128KB aswell
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Mad!...... the 64 bit strip might well be the sweet spot but we'll see.....keep em coming!
My new X79 build (Jan -Feb start) is going to have 4 of these OCZ puppy's ..... performance is better then I hoped for!
Aussie Allan
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Wigpo .... just though I'd add ....don't bench the living daylights out of them ....SSD just don't like too much ....they just can't handle benching 24/7 like magnetic drives do!
Aussie Allan
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Yes, the only trouble with SSDs...they don't like being used! That is why it isn't a good idea to run defragmentation programs, well that and the fact that SSDs don't care where the data is stored.
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Thanks for your notifications and that's the reason that I only bench one time with each stripesize, which means a total of 4 benchmarks and that shouldn't kill em:)
Defrag is a BIG no no on SSDs..
Any further input on why windows would need another minute to load with 4x 1TB RAID0? The system is still using the same drivers since it's running of of another RAID0 array..
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I'm not running a 68 so really hard to say personally.....these are the sort of things you learn about when owning and using a given board....
How did the 64bit stripesize turn out ?.....very interested in the missing puzzle piece!
And here's some light reading for you....Tee Hee! ( the first one is a living GEM) .....Enjoy and send money later ;D or Karmas!
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?63273-*-Windows-7-Ultimate-Tweaks-amp-Utilities-*
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx
Aussie Allan
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Haven't done the 64KB stripesize yet but will do tomorrow :)
Hehe, new most of the stuff already but still some fun reading:) the best part was for sure the GodMode folder :P Never heard of that one before and seems to be quite useful in some scenarios!
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I have just been having a read through myself and found some new info which was interesting. The God Mode folder is a new one to me and I reckon could be very useful and timesaving. Thanks Allan.
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"GOD MODE.........SUCH POWER" :D
Aussie Allan
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It certainly could save a fair bit of time and effort I reckon. ;)
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It's certainly something one isn't used to have :P
However, I had to dig a little bit deeper when I found out about the GodMode folder and found more of those nice shortcuts:)
http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-10426627-285/windows-7-has-lots-of-godmodes-exclusive/ (http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-10426627-285/windows-7-has-lots-of-godmodes-exclusive/)
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As promised, here is the 64KB stripesize
However, I'm not certain how to choose which one is the better...
128KB stripesize reaches higher speeds on bigger files but 64KB has better write and read speeds on files ranging from 8KB to 64KB which probably are more used on a system disk compared to the larger files. The small difference at files larger than 1MB and writespeeds above 900MB/s is still mindblowing!
I'm going to try the 64KB stripesize from now on and se how that works. The performance difference between the different stripesizes should make a noticeable difference in real situations anyway :P
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Wigpo .... thanks for remembering mate!
You're probably right at 64KB stripesize (32KB was interesting too) but if you want to get into the finer points (which I'm sure you do ) your usage and what you do most on the PC can play into the final decision as to strip-size
Having big read write numbers down low ...... 0.5KB to 32KB will have the biggest impact on general OS ......but what do you do ......Gaming, Photo-editing ....... Folding ......Video transcoding.......a little or a lot...... All will use the resources a tad differently .......
Something I like doing to get a better feel / idea is add up up all 15 in a given vertical field and divide by the total inputs (15 in this case) to get the mean average .......you can take this even further by dividing them up into 2 fields (0.5 to 64 and 64 to 8192)
In general .......Bigger numbers in the lower field will generally help the OS ......in the high field will help things like editing/encoding .....it'll come down to a combination of the two and what you do on the machine ..... have fun on the calculator ;)
Aussie Allan
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Personally I would go for the smaller stripe size as you mention this is most often used in a real world everyday use. You are right to suggest working the actual figures out but I must admit that I couldn't be bothered to. ;)
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I'll probably spend most time gaming but all the other stuff that you mentioned will happen once in a while...
Although it can be quite fun to do some calculations I wont even bother this time :P
Thanks for all your help :)
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Wipo
32 or 64 then it is......thanks for the performance updates then.......people don't realize what a goldmine they are to have this type of information posted up on the forum....again many thanks
Aussie Allan
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I would like to second that sentiment as this type of data is invaluable for people to be able to check up on. Saves individuals all the work that you have done even though different hardware must be taken into consideration obviously. Very useful! 8)