Western Digital WDC WD7501AALS Black dosen't get over 200mb speed in Raid 0 !

[dansobolanu]

Hello !

I have two WDC WD7501AALS in Raid 0 and no matter what i do set or change they don't ''want'' to go over 200mb/sec when i test them with Hd tune here i made i video with the results i get:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZbtOJ_2Ly0

I've seen others on youtube and they pass 200mb with no other modifications.... My configuration is : Asus Maximus Formula SE with ICH9R,4Gb Ram DDR 1066, E8500 cpu,  Win. 7 x64 OS......! Any advise for me ?  Can the Hard drives performe over 200mb ????   Thank You !

[ricochet · Accepted solution]

Greetings,

There are so many factors which contribute to or can effect maximum and sustained throughput in any given configuration.

-RAID BIOS version

-Rev of ICH9r chipset

-Drivers Version used on controller

-Stripe Size

-Firmware version of the disks

-How the MB manufacturer chose to implement bandwidth on the north and southbridge

-Type/amount of installed memory

You are certainly on the right track if looking at interleave size and enabling vs. disabling write caching.  Take a look at your controller poperties.  Do you see any options for NCQ?  If disabled, try enabling this, restart and retest.   

I think your numbers are respectable.   

[dansobolanu]

Thank you for the replay !

 They are all up to date,my stripe size is 128kb wich i think is the best for me,firmware of the disks i don't know it and how to update it to but it writes on them they are made in sep.2009..... !

 i think i will leave it like this until WD makes SSD drives with big capacity !

[Scott_T]

You shouldn't be using a Caviar black in a RAID. You need to get an enterprise level drive. WD's are called RE (Raid Edition) drives. The RE3s and RE4s are the current ones they are making.

[dansobolanu]

Thank you for the replay !

I've seen some reviews of the RE3 HDD's and i don't  think there is a diference in performance,as for the power consumation or noise i'm not really intrested in that ...my intrest is speed . I can't test my self the RE3 series from WD but from what i've read ....there is no diference in speed ! Check out my video if you want: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHtJtKSw2ws   i was a little angry when i've seen Seagate 7200.12 in raid 0 but i'm Ok now   until i will afford 2 Velociraptors 300Gb  or some big capacity SSD drives cose i'm sure SSD will be very Cheap some day !  What do you think of my speed ?  You think RE3 with 500Gb minimum will beat that ?

[ricochet]

Hi,

Don't be overly concerned with maximum burst speed.  You want smooth, even, sustained, performance.  This is the true metrics you should be basing your system performance on. 

Thanks