Raid Issues...

[Dragon41673]

I just got done installing Vista Ultimate on a new system and this is the first time doing RAID every (doing RAID 0 since you'll need to know). Is it possible my system could be slower then the system in my sig??? My hard drive lite seems to ALWAYS be on and flickers all the time while on so SOMETHING is hogging!!!

New system is as stated...
E6600 (not OD'd yet)
Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme w/120mm Antec TriCool Fan
Asus Striker Extreme
2 Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4D 2GB (4gb total memory)
2 WD 500GB (WD5000AAKS) (on SATA ports 1 & 2)
2 LiteOn 20x DVD's (on SATA ports 3 & 4)
X-Fi Platinum
BFG 8800GTX OC2
Antec Nine Hundred Case
PC Power & Cooling 750 Silencer
Vista Ultimate 64bit (due to the 4gb of memory)

Bios is set for Raid on SATA 1&2, not RAID on 3&4, I'm using the NVRaid setup. System is only a few days old, and this is a FRESH install (i.e. no previous OS to install from) of Vista.

Any help would be appreciated

 

[corkyg]

Unlerss you are extremely limited in obtaining decent size HDDs, I know of no good reason to use RAID 0.

 

[ribbon13]

Striker Extreme?

Build a RAID6 on a hardware HBA moneybags

 

[Dragon41673]

Some actual help would be appreciated...thanks

 

[ribbon13]

Ditching NVRAID is the only thing that is going to help you. You want real performance, buy two more WD5000AAKS and an Areca ARC-1231ML

You haven't really described the problem in too much detail... it just seems like somethings constantly accessing the array? malware? how are the drivers?

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

sorry, but these all seem to be very strange replies.

1) RAID 0 will be faster in almost every case to a single drive or RAID 1, so speed would be an adequate reason to move to RAID 0.
2) NVRAID works just fine for me. I'm in XP, so I can't speak for the drivers in Vista, but I'm getting good burst and avg rates with 3 160GB SATA drives.
3) I generally like more drives in the array, like 3 or 4 if possible to gang together the speed...but there is a downside.
4) as you know if any drive in a RAID 0 fails you lose the set and all the data. I've had several drives start to fail, but I was able to catch them in time and replace them with no Data loss.
5) I can't see spending $800 on a RAID controller, unless you have lots and lots of free money laying around...in which case, you might want to think about donating some of the cash to the less fortunate (maybe a food bank in your town).

I will say again that I have no experience with Vista...so you might be having driver for IRQ type conflicts with your devices. i would check the event viewer first to make sure that you aren't having issues with you HDDs. Then move around some of your devices to clear up conflicts.

I think in general Vista will be slower than XP, so you will have to deal with that...and then there is some backgrond stuff that runs in vista that might be taking up CPU cycles. I think I remember some thread that talked about loading up vista fresh. they mentioned that right after you install the OS it runs some optimizations in the backgroud for a few days. I would equate it to running defrag in the background (but it's not defrag, something else). You might be seeing the results of that process effecting performance.

just my 2 cents.

 

[Dragon41673]

Thank you very much CrOnJ0b...I'm updating my orginal post to reflect this is a fresh install with clean never touched drives, system is currently only a few days old