HD, Raid, Capture, Speed...

[vigi_lante]

Hi,

I have a Maxtor 120gb 7200rpm 8mb ATA133 Hard Drive, with two partitions, one for capture and the other for Windows and Programs. I'm very pleased with my capture results (no dropped frames at all). But right now I need to buy a new HD, since I need more space for captures.

My motherboard have RAID function, so I thinking to use this option right now. But I would like to ask a few question first...

My buy options are very limited. I can't buy another HD from the same model. So, I'm going with...

Maxtor 80gb 7200rpm ATA133 2mb of buffer
or
Seagate 80gb 7200rpm ATA100 8mb of buffer

The main difference between Maxtor and Seagate is that Maxtor is ATA133 and Seagate ATA100. But, Seagate have 8mb of buffer, against Maxtor's 2mb.

In this case, which one would be better for captures ?

One more thing, since I want to use this new HD with my Maxtor 120gb through Raid, I would like to know if it's possible to leave my Maxtor with 2 partitions: 1- 40gb 2- 80gb , and use this second partition with the new 80gb HD using Raid. It's possible ? Would it affect the good performace that I already have since this new HD will be more slower than 120gb Maxtor ?

Thanks!

[guada]

Vigi_lante,

You must have 2 HD maxtor to make a Raid and, only the size is important for the capture.

[TotalChaos]

The ATA133 vs ATA100 isn't that big of a difference. This only describes the transfer rate between the IDE controller and the HDD's interface. The actaul speed that the HDD's head can read/write data to/from the platters is much slower then even the ATA100's 100MB/s transfer rate. The 2MB vs 8MB cache difference has much more impact on HDD performance. I would suggest without question going with a drive with 8MB cache reguardless of the interface ultraATA100/ultraATA133/SATA150!! I'm sorry vigi_lante the only array support you would want to consider from a RAID card using two drives with a large capacity difference (80GB vs 120GB) is JOBD. Any other RAID configuration is going to use your 120GB drive as an 80GB drive to match the other 80GB drive. The mode offers no performance and no redundancy. It just puts all the drives in an array with the total capacity equal to the size of all drives added together. You could partition that array if you want though. Personaly I would suggest leaving the drives in seperate RAIDs as single drives.

@guada
The part about having to use more then one HDD to create RAID is partialy true. To create a Redundant Array of Idepentant Disks you would of course require more drives to support redundancy or to increase performance. Most RAID controllers I've worked with will allow a single drive to be labeled as a RAID. A four disk RAID card can have four HDDs as different RAIDs. Of course these RAIDs won't realy have any performance enhancments or redundancy. In fact I'm running a setup just like this. I have 2 10,000RPM SATA drives in RAID 0 and a single 7,200RPM IDE drive in another RAID 0. Both are fully accessable and there are no errors from either array.

My whole point is vigi_lante will probably be able to add a single HDD to his RAID controller's IDE port and assign this drive to an array alone and enjoy the easy life modern motherboards offer these days.

[vigi_lante]

JOBD would be fine too.

Personaly I would suggest leaving the drives in seperate RAIDs as single drives.

What do you mean ? Which kind of Raid Level would be that ?

Thanks!

[TotalChaos]

The controller would call a single drive RAID as a RAID 0 or stripped array. Instead of "strips" being interlaced across multiple discs they will only be on a single drive.

I just reread your original post and realized what you were asking in your last sentence. You want to leave your 40GB/80GB partitions on your 120GB drive and add a single 80GB partition of another 80GB drive to create an array. I'm sorry, but to my knowledge this cannot be done. When you add a drive to any RAID it will reformat the drive to fit whatever RAID scheme your adding the drive too. (look around on microsoft's site. Maybe the windows software RAID options will allow you to do what your talking about. Only win XP, win 2000, or above will even think of supporting this function though.)

I suggest leaving the drives as seperate.... either in two single-drive-arrays OR leaving the one you have on the IDE port that it's on right now and adding the one you purchase to the RAID controller as a single-drive-array. I think this will give you the best performance with the least amount of hassle. Least hassle because you will not have to format or even touch your current drive.

Using these very different drives in the same array will result in some kind of compromise.

(120GB + 80GB)RAID 0 = one 160GB RAID
Con: probably less performance then using two matched drives.
Con: loss of 40GB storage space.
Pro: more performance then either single drive.

(120GB + 80GB)RAID 1 = one 80GB RAID
Con: perhaps worse performance then either single drive by itsself
Con: loss of 120GB storage space.
Pro: Data redundancy.... one drive fails you'll have a free backup

(120GB + 80GB) JBOD = one 200GB
Con: no redundancy
Con/Pro: performance depending on where the data is being stored (IE which drive)
Con: loss of the ability to perform and cross drive proccessing.
Pro: full use of all drive space

120GB(40GB partition + 80GB partition) as is + 80GB single driveRAID 0
Con: no data protection
Pro: full use of drive space
Pro: performance increase cause windows and applications use one drive while proccessing of video can be done on the other drive
Pro: video proccessing that is more disc I/O intensive the CPU intensive will get a large boost in performance when used across two drives. (reading video data from one drive while writing proccessed video data on the other)

[vigi_lante]

120GB(40GB partition + 80GB partition) as is + 80GB single driveRAID 0

I see...so only the 80gb HD will be on RAID. But I thought that you could only use RAID 0 with at least 2 disks.

Anyway...

I found a 120gb Seagate ATA100 7200rpm 8mb. So, I will buy this one.

In this new case, I think that the best option would be RAID 0, isn't it ? BUT, I still have to reformat my first drive. Well, I think that a massive backup will be only the solution...

TotalChaos, how this RAID 0 would work ? I mean...I will have two different drives letters on Windows (example: C and D) ? But, the difference between 2 disks RAID 0 usage and non-RAID 2 disks usage would be that transfering files from C: to D: on a RAID setup will be as fast as transfering files from a C: folder to another C: folder on a non-raid setup (instantaneously) ?

The overall Hard Drive performance using this Raid setup, disk space aside, would be better than using only the single Maxtor 120gb 8mb drive ?

Thanks again!

[TotalChaos]

The ideal combination for any RAID setup is to have matching drives so that access times and transfers speed are equal from all drives in the array, but I think using both the new seagate 120GB drive and your older maxtor 120GB drive on a RAID 0 will yeild pretty good performance numbers. Better then either drive by themselves anyways. You must remember one important thing, that if just ONE of your HDD fails, while part of this RAID level 0, everything stored on the entire array will be lost.

RAID = Redundant Array of Independant Disks
When your computer addresses this ARRAY it will only see it as one drive. You will only see one drive letter and only be allowed transfers to this array not to individual discs.

Your message was hard to decrypt, but I think you want to know how transfer performance would be when tranfering files bewtween:
A. RAID to RAID.. IE copying data from one place to another on the same RAID
B. Single Drive to Single Drive.... IE copying data from one drive to another
First I'll try to explain what is going on in a RAID 0. In a RAID 0 pieces of file data are stored alternately: from one drive, then the next, then the next, and finaly back to the first. each drive in the RAID 0 will have different pieces of your files' data. The performance is gained because you are using multiple drives to access information instead of a single drive. The reason all data is lost when one drives fails on a RAID 0 is becuase you will loose a fraction of EVERY file stored on this ARRAY. For most I/O operation there will be a performance increase using RAID 0, but I do not think that: transfering data from the RAID, proccessing this data, and writing the proccessed data back to the same RAID will yeild the performance you will have when performing that same opertaion using a seperate source and destination: RAID to RAID, RAID to single drive, single drive to single drive.

In your case there are many options. I stand by my previous suggestion. (using the drives seperately) I only say this cause it will save you ALOT of headache, not as much worry from drive failure, and you will not have to touch the original drive's configuration you enjoy right now. On the other hand A format and RAID 0 config using both drives will lower your boot time and access time to your data.

lol.... I hope I answered all of your questions. And people say my rambling have no place.

[vigi_lante]

Best explanation ever... :D

But it's still not clear what do you mean when you say to use the Maxtor as is and the Seagate as Raid 0.

How I could use only the Seagate as Raid 0 if you need at least 2 disks to use Raid 0 ?

[TotalChaos]

Trying not to sound arrogant, but I did mention that you could use ONE HDD on the RAID controller and that the controller should allow you to assign the single drive as a RAID 0. Thing is there is the possibility that your RAID controller wouldn't let you do that. I bet it does though. All of the five RAID controllers I have allow this. The funny thing is you wouldn't realy have an array at that point cause it's only ONE drive.

well I guess I should ask how many IDE ports does your motherboard have. I assume it has the traditional primary and secondary. Most likely you have one or more optical disc drives and you say you have the maxtor 120GB HDD. With this setup I would assume that your primary master IDE connection was used for the 120GB HDD, the secondary master and perhaps secondary slave IDE connection(s) is/are used for the optical drive(s). You mentioned that you want to use the RAID function. I assumed you wanted to mount at least one HDD drive on the RAID IDE port(s).

Since you wouldn't want to mix optical drives and HDD on the same IDE cable (for performance reasons...optical will slow access to the HDD while it is using the IDE's bus) your options are to mount the new HDD as the slave on the same IDE cable as your maxtor OR even better put you new drive on it's own IDE port using your RAID IDE port.

Check it out! Buy your new HDD, plug it into one of the RAID IDE ports, during the boot up hit whatever it says to enter RAID setup. If your RAID controller's BIOS auto assigns the drive to a RAID your set. If not select the new drive and add it to an array. without having selected any more then one drive your options for RAID level should be RAID 0. Select RAID 0, and after a simple restart and format of the new drive you will enjoy 120GB of cold hard SPAAAACCCEEE!!!!

What do ya think???

[vigi_lante]

My Motherboard, besides IDE1 and 2, have IDE3 and 4. So I guess that using the first HD on IDE1, leaving the second IDE for CD/DVD, and using the IDE3 for the new HD will do the trick.

About this RAID on a single drive, I guess that's possible, but what would be the point of using RAID like this ? I could not find any place that talks about this method.

[TotalChaos]

Your not realy using the drive as part of an ARRAY. It's only one drive so by definition it can't be an array. Your simply useing the RAID controllers IDE port to add a HDD. It's better then using both HDDs on the same IDE cable cause only one drive is allowed to transfer at a time on an IDE cable. If you've got it in your head that, "Hey, I have a RAID controller. I want to use it." Then by purchasing only one new drive you'll need: to backup your data, add the maxtor too IDE 3 or 4 and the seagate to the other RAID IDE. Then during boot add both drives to a RAID 1 or 0. That is the only way your going to get a true array. (Unless you buy two smaller drives.)

Perhaps you should look into buying two 80GB drives and use them on RAID 0 for some pretty good performance. You'll be able to do all of the things you want and all that I suggested.

[vigi_lante]

Hi TotalChaos, it's me again.

Well, I bought and installed that 120gb Seagate, and I made a RAID 0 with the Maxtor. The problem is that I didn't notice any improved performance, and I think it's even more slower, mainly cause my video's post processing time are slower too.

What do you think it's causing this problem ? Different HD model ?

And deleting the RAID will format both HD ?

Thanks.

[TotalChaos]

Interesting!?!?!? You have Maxtor 120GB 8MB cache and seagate 120GB 8MB cache, right? They are different, but they shouldn't be so different that they perform slower then each by itsself. I know that in some cases windows would boot slower from a drive on add in controller card then a drive on the standard IDE controllers on the motherboard. In this thread http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=77803 AlfaStation noticed just this problem when booting from the add in controller card. On second thought, different drive manufacturers seem to emphasize different drive stats. For instance, I notice the IBM desktop drives are usualy big on I/Os per second. They usualy shine compared to drives from Maxtor, Western Digital, Seagate in the same class when it comes to I/O performance. Seagate seems to preffer to make their drives the quietest in the class. Maybe the Maxtor's and the Seagate's I/Os and sustained transfer rates are so different that, when working on the data chunks your reading/writing to/from the drives, that one drive is slowing the other drive down. It seems the RAID controller wouldn't allow any drive to read/write faster then the slowest drive in the array. Either way, it should be still faster then a single drive! How large a differnce in speed are we talking about here???? Oh yeah.... unless you have special software driving the RAID controller your gonna loose all data on the array (all drives in it) when/if you remove the drive(s) from the array. Let me know how this go when you change your RAID config. I'd like to study this and learn about this performance issue your having.

[vigi_lante]

I did some tests with this software...

http://www.wam77.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/RaptorTest.rar

http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/v253/vigi_lante/hd.jpg

:scared:

Take a look at the write speed! I did this same test 4 times, I restarted my PC and the values are almost the same.

I don't really know what is causing this, I will try examine more...this can't happen.

[TotalChaos]

Two things I see that might be impacting your performance:

Update win 2000 to latest service pack.... service pack 4 I think.

Also the PCI latency timer is set pretty high.

If I'm reading the info correct it would seem that 248 is how long the system allows PCI devices to hold the PCI buss. If there are another PCI devices holding it that long then there would be signifigant waits before the IDE/RAID controller could get the PCI buss for itsself. If that program is reading correct then go into BIOS and try to turn it down to somthing like 32 or 64... 32 seems to be the standard for most motherboards, but I like to use 64 to give devices just a little more time per turn to use the buss.

This is a long shot (me guessing) for now; hopefuly it helps.

[vigi_lante]

In fact, I'm using Windows XP, but this program recognize it as Windows 2000.

Anyway, I give up from this RAID thing. I tried everything possible (cables, bios, software etc), and nothing worked. So, I will keep with the old setup. It sux. But there is nothing that I can do, I will have to live with it.

Thanks so much TotalChaos for everything.

[TotalChaos]

Stupid Computers!!!!!