KT3ULTRA ARU RAID performance in PCmark2002

I have configured a new RAID array : 2 Maxtor 30GB ATA133 disks in striping on IDE3 and IDE4. I also have a Seagate 20GB ATA-66 on IDE1. In PC Mark 2002 my harddisk score used to be 450 with my old array (2 Quantum lct10 10GB ATA-66 disks). Now I get exactly the same scores with my new disks.
My guess is that PCmark2002 only tests the Seagate disk on IDE1. Is there a way to change the settings of PCMark2002 so that it actually tests the RAID array?
Does anyone have a better benchmark to measure harddisk performance?
Greetz,
Z
http://users.pandora.be/zwendel

hi,
u can try this guide.

Similar Messages

Very poor RAID performance

Hi all
Sorry about this...I know this subject has come up a lot of times on the forum already but I've been unable to find anything that might explain the problem I'm currently having.
The board is a KT3 Ultra ARU. I'm using BIOS 5.6, a fresh install of Win XP, RAID drivers supplied with the motherboard and 2 Maxtor D740X 40GB 2MB Cache ATA 133 Harddrives.
First of all I connected each harddrive to it's own raid socket, made sure both were set to master, set up a RAID0 array and then followed the guide to RAID setup for this board that is posted by Mr. Steveo on the AMDMB forums. I installed the raid drivers when the prompt to press F6 came up for mass storage devices and then set them as a single 75GB NTFS. I then installed the O/S without any apparent problems. Once I'd installed all the other necessary drivers I installed SiSoft Sandra 2002 and benchmarked the new RAID0 setup. The new benchmark was 21089, almost 3500pts slower than a single D740X 40GB harddrive had benchmarked at (24460).
I began hunting around for ideas. I tried installing the raid performance patch and the pci latency patch. A tiny bit better. I decided I must have doen something wrong in the original installation and so redid everything from scratch...deleted the array, reformatted, fresh install etc.
After completing the 2nd fresh install and changing the memory usage to cache from programs I managed to get the benchmark up to just over 26000, still nowhere near what I was expecting to see. Is this all I can realistically expect to see in terms of performance gains or does anyone here think I've missed someting in the initial installation/setup. As you can see in my sig I'm currently running my cpu unlocked at 166MHz. Although this motherboard has a 1/5 divider which should ensure the pci, agp and ide slots all run at their correct speeds when the FSB is turned up to 166MHz I never the less took the precaution of setting the FSB to 133MHz before starting out.
I'm at a loss as to what to do. I've got hold of a copy of the Kunibert modded BIOS for full raid plus the drivers for it but don't see any point in using it if there's something more serious at fault
Hope someone can help

Thanks for the advice. I've now tried setting the PCI latency to 64 and 96. When I set it to 64 the HDD benchmark rose to 28967, a 3000pt gain. When I set it to 96 the score dropped to 28003. I've not tried running at 128 yet, since I assumed the score would drop again.
Are the scores shown as comparisons in SiSoft Sandra anywhere near achievable in "real life" situations. Any idea if there's a place I can check my HDD's against ones of the same spec? I tried running PC Mark 2002 and the HDD performance was rated at 1092 if I recall correctly.
The tests were run on a HDD's that were formatted and had just a fresh install of Win XP, fuzzy logic and SiSoft Sandra on them.
Whilst the new score is better than the score I was getting when using just 1 40GB HDD on the normal IDE channels it was actually scoring the same until I changed the PCI latency setting, which means the old single drive set up would probably still score the same as the "faster" RAID setup

MSI - KT3 Ultra-ARU Raid + XP

Hi,
I have just built a new system using the MSI - KT3 Ultra-ARU motherboard and am having issues instaling Windows XP professional.
The system has been set with 2 Maxtor HD on Raid 0 Stipping.
On installing Windows XP and Raid Driver 2.0 that comes with the board, XP continues to load the files needed for setup, while in this process it will have a read/copy error. As much as you retry it will not read. This happens on different files each time I try to install and is not a bad CD.
Any suggestions ?

You can have a look at my hardware below...
Chassis: Antec 1080B (300w PSU / 180w COMBINED)
Mainboard: MSI KT3 Ultra ARU
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1800+
Display: ABIT Siluro GF4 Ti4200 AGP 4X
DVD/CD-RW Combo: HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4120B
Floppy: Panasonic 1.44MB
HD: Quantum Fireball Plus/AS 30.0GB UDMA 100
Keyboard: Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro
Monitor: KDS Visual Sensations VS-190
Mouse: Microsoft USB Wheel Mouse Optical
NICs: 3Com 3C900B / DLink DFE-530TX
RAM: Micron DDR 266MHz (2x256MB DIMMs)
Sound: Avance AC'97 Audio
I've had similar problems where my system becomes very unstable at higher bus speeds. Installing Windows XP simply didn't work very good. However, I have ordered a new PSU today as a solution to this problem. Basically, CPUs and video cards are much more demanding and the more devices you have in your computer the more power you're going to need. I recommend purchasing the Enermax EG465P-VE (FCA) 450W ATX PS. It has a higher amperage rating and will most likely solve your problem.
Check your PSU and your bus speed settings...

Raid Performance and Rebuild Issues

Rebuilding a Raid array
What happens when you have a Raid array and one (or more) disk(s) fail?
First let's consider the work-flow impact of using a Raid array or not. You may want to refresh your memory about Raids, by reading Adobe Forums: To RAID or not to RAID, that is the... again.
Sustained transfer rates are a major factor in determining how 'snappy' your editing experience will be when editing multiple tracks. For single track editing most modern disks are fast enough, but when editing complex codecs like AVCHD, DSLR, RED or EPIC, when using uncompressed or AVC-Intra 100 Mbps codecs, or using multi-cam or multiple tracks the sustained transfer speed can quickly become a bottleneck and limit the 'snappy' feeling during editing.
For that reason many use raid arrays to remove that bottleneck from their systems, but this also raises the question:
What happens when one of more of my disks fail?
Actually, it is simple. Single disks or single level striped arrays will lose all data. And that means that you have to replace the failed disk and then restore the lost data from a backup before you can continue your editing. This situation can become extremely bothersome if you consider the following scenario:
At 09:00 you start editing and you finish editing by 17:00 and have a planned backup scheduled at 21:00, like you do every day. At 18:30 one of your disks fails, before your backup has been made. All your work from that day is lost, including your auto-save files, so a complete day of editing is irretrievably lost. You only have the backup from the previous day to restore your data, but that can not be done before you have installed a new disk.
This kind of scenario is not unheard of and even worse, this usually happens at the most inconvenient time, like on Saturday afternoon before a long weekend and you can only buy a new disk on Tuesday...(sigh).
That is the reason many opt for a mirrored or parity array, despite the much higher cost (dedicated raid controller, extra disks and lower performance than a striped array). They buy safety, peace-of-mind and a more efficient work-flow.
Consider the same scenario as above and again one disk fails. No worry, be happy!! No data lost at all and you could continue editing, making the last changes of the day. Your planned backup will proceed as scheduled and the next morning you can continue editing, after having the failed disk replaced. All your auto-save files are intact as well.
The chances of two disks failing simultaneously are extremely slim, but if cost is no object and safety is everything, some consider using a raid6 array to cover that eventuality. See the article quoted at the top.
Rebuilding data after a disk failure
In the case of a single disk or striped arrays, you have to use your backup to rebuild your data. If the backup is not current, you lose everything you did after your last backup.
In the case of a mirrored array, the raid controller will write all data on the mirror to the newly installed disk. Consider it a disk copy from the mirror to the new disk. This is a fast way to get back to full speed. No need to get out your (possibly older) backup and restore the data. Since the controller does this in the background, you can continue working on your time-line.
In the case of parity raids (3/5/6) one has to make a distinction between distributed parity raids (5/6) and dedicated parity raid (3).
Dedicated parity, raid3
If a disk fails, the data can be rebuild by reading all remaining disks (all but the failed one) and writing the rebuilt data only to the newly replaced disk. So writing to a single disk is enough to rebuild the array. There are actually two possibilities that can impact the rebuild of a degraded array. If the dedicated parity drive failed, the rebuilding process is a matter of recalculating the parity info (relatively easy) by reading all remaining data and writing the parity to the new dedicated disk. If a data disk failed, then the data need to be rebuild, based on the remaining data and the parity and this is the most time-consuming part of rebuilding a degraded array.
Distributed parity, raid5 or raid6
If a disk fails, the data can be rebuild by reading all remaining disks (all but the failed one), rebuilding the data and recalculating the parity information and writing the data and parity information to the failed disk. This is always time-consuming.
The impact of 'hot-spares' and other considerations
When an array is protected by a hot spare, if a disk drive in that array fails the hot spare is automatically incorporated into the array and takes over for the failed drive. When an array is not protected by a hot spare, if a disk drive in that array fails, remove and replace the failed disk drive. The controller detects the new disk drive and begins to rebuild the array.
If you have hot-swappable drive bays, you do not need to shut down the PC, you can simply slide out the failed drive and replace it with a new disk. Remember, when a drive has failed and the raid is running in 'degraded' mode, there is no further protection against data loss, so it is imperative that you replace the failed disk at the earliest moment and rebuild the array to a 'healthy' state.
Rebuilding a 'degraded' array can be done automatically or manually, depending on the controller in use and often you can set the priority of the rebuilding process higher or lower, depending on the need to continue regular work versus the speed required to repair the array to its 'healthy' status.
What are the performance gains to be expected from a raid and how long will a rebuild take?
The most important column in the table below is the sustained transfer rate. It is indicative and no guarantee that your raid will achieve exactly the same results. That depends on the controller, the on-board cache and the disks in use. The more tracks you use in your editing, the higher the resolution you use, the more complex your codec, the more you will need a high sustained transfer rate and that means more disks in the array.
Sidebar: While testing a new time-line for the PPBM6 benchmark, using a large variety of source material, including RED and EPIC 4K, 4:2:2 MXF, XDCAM HD and the like, the required sustained transfer rate for simple playback of a pre-rendered time-line was already over 300 MB/s, even with 1/4 resolution playback, because of the 4 4 4 4 full quality deBayering of the 4K material.
Final thoughts
With the increasing popularity of file based formats, the importance of backups of your media can not be stressed enough. In the past one always had the original tape if disaster stroke, but no longer. You need regular backups of your media and projects. With single disks and (R)aid0 you take risks of complete data loss, because of the lack of redundancy. Backups cost extra disks and extra time to create and restore in case of disk failure.
The need for backups in case of mirrored raids is far less, since there is complete redundancy. Sure, mirrored raids require double the number of disks but you save on the number of backup disks and you save time to create and restore backups.
In the case of parity raids, the need for backups is more than with mirrored arrays, but less than with single disks or striped arrays and in the case of 'hot-spares' the need for backups is further reduced. Initially, a parity array may look like a costly endeavor. The raid controller and the number of disks make it expensive, but if you consider what you get, more speed, more storage space, easier administration, less backups required, less time for those backups, continued working in case of a drive failure, even though somewhat sluggish, the cost is often worth more with the peace-of-mind it brings, than continuing with single disks or striped arrays.

Raid3 is better suited for video editing work, because it is more efficient when using large files, as clips usually are. Raid5 is better suited in high I/O environments, where lots of small files need to be accessed all the time, like news sites, webshops and the like. Raid3 will usually have a better rebuild time than raid5.
But, and there is always a but, raid3 requires an Areca controller. LSI and other controller brands do not support raid3. And Areca is not exactly cheap...
Keep in mind that a single disk shows declining performance when the fill rate increases. See the example below:
A Raid3 or Raid30 will not show that behavior. The performance remains nearly constant even if fill rates go up:
Note that both charts were created with Samsung Spinpoint F1 disks, an older and slower generation of disks and with an older generation Areca ARC-1680iX-12.

RAID performance is poor on the K8N NEO NF4 SLi mobo...why?

I reccently downloaded and purchased pcmark05 to keep tabs on my system performance, I have 2 wd800jb/se ide in raid'0', isn't there supposed to be a performance gain with using raid?, is it a hardware or software version of raid that is used with my motherboard?, reason I ask is because I took a 50% performance hit configuring these 2 hd in raid as opposed to just using them straight up without raid, is it the nvidia raid controller or raid/ide drivers screwing up and making this so?, hell I don't know, I spent a couple of hours trying to find some specific information on this, I have to admit my knoweldge is very limited in the hd aspect, I don't really know the differences between sata, and ide other then they use different apetures, and sata is a newer more current technology, I know how to oc, set up ram or configure a system, but like I said I honestly don't know much about hard drives or what is fater or how to optimally set them up, I still manage to score 4400 on pcmark05 which is pretty good when the only lagging aspect is the hard drive performance, people who are scoring half of what I'am still are getting twice as high marks in the hard drive test.
In fact I failed to find one score out of a couple of hundred that I came anywhere close to their marks, it is a shame cause otherwise I have a very tight system, just so you know I'am being realistic here, I don't exspect to get better performane the a w740 raptor, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions.....if not where would be a good site on the subject...Thanks
none raid bench result with one wd800jb http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcm05=198218
raid'o' 2 wd800jb bench result http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcm05=196491 note there is an 800 point difference, I hought raid was supposed to enhance performance somewhat

Well, I need to update my sig, I have only one 7800gt, sli hasn't always lived up to it's potential, so I would think I'am within the power requirements now/then, 460 should be more then enough, as far as my overclock goes other then some random crashes when I was FIRST setting up the oc, which btw is normal when you are finding the acceptable limits of the cpu/memory and then backing down into a good stable oc, would a 45% overclock really cause this poor performance in RAID?, cause honestly, my system is rock solid stable at it's current settings, cpu is 33 at idle and 40-42 under load, the ram is beyond specs but like I said it has been put thru every stress test I could get my hands on here are some everest reports if it helps to give you an idea......

Raid performance. What do you get?

Hi All,
I'm setting up an XSan using 4 14*500Gigs XRaids + 1 XRaid for the metadata. Before installing XSan I'm testing the speed of the system when it's striped as a raid 0. We're using atto dual 4Gigabyte cards in the computers, together with a QLogic switch. Using 4 Raid5 slices, and striping them togethere as raid 0, I get speeds of about 250 Mbyte/s read, 300 Mbyte/s write using Decklinks speeddisk utility. What speeds do you get?
I've also posted this in the XSan forum, I guess it belongs in both.

Hi Wout,
I have a 180x14 xserve raid with 512mb of cache. I have a PCI-X card and I seem to max out at 185mb/s write and around 235mb's read. This is on a Dual 2ghz G5. BTW performance seems pretty flat going from PCI to PCI-X and upgrading the caches from 128mb. Seems like the speed of the disks and controllers is the determining factor.
I'm experimenting with a 2nd xserve raid and I'll report the performance soon.
Cheers,
Sam

Aarrrgh!!!!!!!!!!!! Kt3 Aru Raid Bother!!

Hi all, ok here goes. I have just installed a new 120gb Western Digital Caviar 8mb cache HDD into my system to match the one I already have. The idea was to configure a security array with the new drive on my KT3 Ultra ARU Mobo. I read all the instructions that came with the board regarding RAID, and made sure that installed the ATA133 Raid Driver onto my origional drive before connecting it to IDE3. With my new identical drive connected to IDE4 and Raid enabled in bios, I continued to follow the instructions and set up a MIRROR array. All went according to plan, and after the drive had been cloned on to the new one i restarted the system as instructed. Now, according to what I have read that should have been the end of it? yes/no? Because my system wouldnt boot, and if I went into the Fastbuild Utility neither of the drives in the array had a * infront of their listing, so in effect I had no bootable drive. So, I adjusted the jumper on my origional drive on IDE3 to Master, leaving the other on CS - as neither drive would get recognised on anything other than CS - thinking that maybe it would use that drive as the bootable one, but since then it says the drive is unplugged and or failed, even if i return the jumper to cs to match its partner.That particular drive fully operational, as I have for the time being returned it to IDE1, and all is fine. OK, so as you can tell, I have got a bit lost here, all was going as per, up until the point of restarting after the initial file copying stage of the operation. Any pointers would be very greatfully recieved. Thanks in advance.
System specs....
KT3 ARU MS 6380E Mobo
550 Watt PSU
Wnidows XP Pro (Fully up to date)

Ok, so I have rechecked all my connections etc, but when I start the system it says that my origional drive (IDE3) is faulty or not connected. I have rechecked all connections and the drive runs perfectly. Is it possible that my IDE3 connector on my mobo has gone down? I tried to rebuild the array, but the only drive that it shows operational is the one on IDE3??? Why am I being told at one point that the drive is not connected/faulty, and yet it seems that the fastbuild utility IS seeing it? Anyway, what do I need to do to start afresh, format my additional drive and then begin again? At the moment I cant get any further than the system telling me that there is a problem with a drive that doesn't have a problem. !!!!! Don't you just love PC's

Raid performance deteriorates, looses drive, but no messages in event log

We have a PATA XServer Raid running, which was fine until a few weeks ago. Suddenly performance tanked, writing a 70 MB file via a 100 Mbps network would take an hour.
The Raid volume, a 6 drive 250 GB raid with one hotspare, had 100 GB left.
First we thought it was the network, there was a loose DHCP server, but nothing was available that could really explain the performance deterioration. The only thing that was noticed was that with Helios Lan test the first write to the raid would take more time as the subsequent writes. So we decided to upgrade the firmware and do a volume test, with diskutility. That gave a interleaf problem.
After upgrading the network (which was planned anyway) to 1 GBps, we rebooted the Xserve and the Raid. Now, the 6th drive had an orange status in Raid Admin, a warning, saying it was part of an Unknown Array. The 7th drive, the hot-swap, was now part of the Raid.
The strange thing is that in the event log there are no messages what so ever about a failed drive, nor any other messages relating to this. All I get is Coprocessor offline/Online, Raid Controller Restarted and Riad Controller 1 Fibre LIP, and Firmwareupdate
I also noticed that the time was off to local time, so I synchronized both to time.euro.apple.com.
Shouldn't we be getting messages something is very wrong in the event log?
XServe G5 Xserve Raid Mac OS X (10.3.9)

We updated the firmware to 1.5.1. After that, the network switch was replaced by a 1Gbps switch, and the XServe and the XServe raid were rebooted. After that one of the people discovered that disk 6 had an orange led burning.
XServe G5, XServe Raid Mac OS X Server (10.3.9) Raid Firmware 1.5.1

Hows my raid performance?

im using 2 wd800jb drives (80 gigs) in a raid 0
im using the lite raid which only allows 64kb blocks
a kt3 ultra2 board
a 2000+ running at 166 and 10.5 multiplier
512 corsair xms3200c2 ram (default hidden settings and 2-2-5-2-4-4 1t enabled normal)
pci latency is at 64
winxp sp1
my sandra benchmarks are around 44000
pcmark 2002 hd bench is : 1545
should i use the modded bios and change the block size?
i tried latency patches and all slowed down benches
any other recommendations for improving performance?
thanks

Hi!
I looked pretty much on that and 16 cluster and 16 stripe sizemis the best fo your drives.....
I don't know if you can choose that with the lite bios but because I have the modded bios and it works great...
You'll have to reformat if you change stripe size....
hope it helps!

Ultra 3 Aru Raid Problems

i've been havin loads of hassle with my new Ultra 3 Aru board, mostly to do with the raid and winxp. Firstly i couldn't even set xp up as it wouldn't write to the array, this was cured by disabling the bios shadow for some reason! Also i cannot fully format the array in ntfs as xp says there is a problem with the drives, yet it quick formats them fine. Had it runnin 4 a couple of months and it started blue screening, which in turn seems to have damaged one of the disks on my 2 disk (40GB Seagate Barracuda' s IV) Stripe array. So i try to run chkdsk and various other utilities to repair the disk, no joy, it just crashes and says 'unrecoverable disk error'. So i reformat the drives individually, bad sectors identified, nice! place them back together in the raid and same , no beable to full format so not able to identify bad sectors in new partition. Runs ok for while but soon as it attempts to write to unidentified bad sectors again i'll be stuck again. I've installed the latest bios (5.50) and drivers but still no luck, any ideas?
I am running an Athalon 2000xp/Grforce4 440/512 333DDR ram (which i have to run at 266 for stability) Audigy and WinXP.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Cheers
Les

thanks for replying, memory checks out ok, and the moment both drives are set to master, will the raid still work if i change it to cable select?

K7N2 Delta SATA Raid Performance

I just installed this motherboard and was wondering what kind of performance improvement I might see using sata converters on my almost new WD 80 GB ATA 100 HDDs? Taking advantage on board of the serial ata raid controler. The converters are only $20 and 2 new sata HDDs would be $260. Also if I use the Serial ata for my HDD wich IDE plug do I use for my optical drives? Any Help would be apperciated.

what they say as regards a single drive is true,but you would still see the benefits of running in raid and they are quite high,im still using my highpoint controlller on my wd drives,but i would not go back to single drives from raid 0 now ,it just makes the pc more snappy,some of the adaptors like the abit ones have got a bad reputation though,seems they are prone to falling out
as i recall on a clean install my c in sandra was benching around 54000

RAID PERFORMANCE

I'm running a 4x2.5GHz PowerPC G5, with 4GB DDR2 SDRAM. I have a Black Magic card in the back, and a 5.5TB Fibre Channel RAID attached. However despite the predicted speed and power of this combination I am getting dropped frames either about every minute or at every edit point or transition. This is making life very difficult, as I can't playback any edits in full for clients. Can anyone please advise.

As mentioned above, make sure the 'Allow Host Cache Flushing' option is turned off for both RAIDs. Also there's a bug in the 1.5 firmwware, where this setting does not survive a re-boot, so each time you power cycle a RAID, you'll probably have to go back in and re-set it.
I'm running a 4x2.5GHz PowerPC G5, with 4GB DDR2
SDRAM. I have a Black Magic card in the back, and a
5.5TB Fibre Channel RAID attached. However despite
the predicted speed and power of this combination I
am getting dropped frames either about every minute
or at every edit point or transition. This is making
life very difficult, as I can't playback any edits in
full for clients. Can anyone please advise.
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Dell PERC H710P and Samsung SSD 840 Pro RAID performance

Hi. I have some questions about Dell PERC H710P.
I have a Dell PERC H710P RAID controller and 8 Samsung SSD 840 Pros.
I created virtual drive on 8x256GB Samsung SSD 840 Pro in RAID10.
And tried DD test (bs=512kb, count=20000) in CentOS 6.3.
But I had just around 370MB/sec.
Is there any problem of my test?
Please reply.
Thanks.

ive also had trouble with the Samsung 840 pro (256 GB) and my Dell Perc card. i have the smaller one the H310 though.
sent the drive back to samsung (their tech sup is horrid) and got it back. still an issue.
i think that it just a Dell mobo issue. we are waiting on ours to be replaced.

P35 Neo2/FR raid performance ?

I'm trying to find some benchmarks of a 2 drive raid setup vs a single drive on this motherboard.
Can anybody point me in the right direction. Also does anybody know if it's actually worth doing raid on the board with 2 drives?
Thanks

The operating system has to switch the driver when you change the controllers operating mode. The Generic Drivers that come with Vista are not the best. The Intel ICH9R RAID Drivers cannot be installed until the controller is switched to RAID mode as until then there is nothing they can work with.
The Best and cleanest way to solve this problem is to reinstall Vista when the controller is already operating in RAID mode and integrate the Intel ICH9R SATA RAID Drivers during the Vista Setup Routine. You can also try a Vista Repair Installation.

External SATA raid performance

Can anybody tell me what a good average transfer/write speed should be from a Win 7 64 PC to an eSATA RAID0 device that shows 185 MB/S write speed in Blackmagic's speed test.
When I transfer 130 GB of XDcam data across to a 1TB G-Raid device that has no previous data on it, the speed stars out at about 120 MB/s and gradually slows until it maintains 20-24 MB/s for the majority of the transfer.
Should I be expecting higher transfer rates than that?
Thanks.

Jon, that is lousy, I do not know your RAID configuration, but one good internal drive would do much better than that 20-24 MB/sec! Here are my Read and Write benchmarks on a single SATA3 Seagate 7200.14 2 TB drive with HD Tune Pro (all with my Areca 1880). Sorry I do not have the Blackmagic test while a good end to end test it does not tell you if it is a read or write problem
Here are four of them in SATA3 RAID 10

KT3ULTRA ARU RAID performance in PCmark2002

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