RAID Problems and questions

[Mixmaster5]

Hi there, 

 

I've had a RAID 0 over my motherboard for 2 1/2 years without a problem (of course everything is backuped). As a video editor I need the space and speed (12 TB SSD would be way more expensive). In the beginning I got around 400 MB read / write. Now I checked again with AJA and Blackmagic disk tools. There seems to be an anomaly: It starts pretty fast but then constantly keeps dropping. When I benched with my OS and Scratch SSD that was not the case; the speeds remained +- constant over the 4 & 16 GB Benchfiles. With the RAID 0 write ends up aroun 200, read under 100 MB (sometimes as low as 60 MB!) which seems very slow even if theres data on the RAID (4 x 3 TB WD RED, non pro)

 

Questions: 

 

- does this mean one of drives starts to die? 

- can I check every singel drive without deleting the RAID 0? 

- should I switch to software RAID?

- would a hardware controller give me increased speeds? I thought about the Adaptec 6405 with 512 MB cache and 4 ports. I don't need anything other than RAID 0

 

Thanks for the help. 

 

Cheers

 

PS: I just overclocked my 4930k to 4.4 Ghz with offset (voltages up to 1.38), but I guess that isn't the issue.

[JCMPTech]

You can run an extended smart test if your worried about the drives, extended test will take a few hours per drive, but mechanical drives in Raid will not be consistent speed wise depending where on the drive its physically writing to.  Extended smart test are not fool proof verification but surface test and butterfly reads take much longer and could cause issues with data if the drive is failing mechanically and kinda push it over the edge.  My large raid is dump storage for temporary backups for systems being serviced, data is only on my raid as long as a device is on my bench so it's only storing data for 24 hours, and at most a few days if I'm waiting for parts, so I have no experience with slow downs over time with raids full of data.  My important stuff is a software mirror set up in windows disk management. 

 

I have a license for QA32 in my shop in a bootable PE image and also use  PartedMagic bootable OS for data recovery and additional testing but since your running a raid, this tool is one of the few I have found that can test raid configs and its FREE:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/getmirror/hddscan_for_windows,1.html

 

If you haven't  backed up data off of them already, do so before running any test other than the SMART ones.  I have had both QA32 and PC Doctor kill a failing drive running the butterfly read and seek test.  Prior to the tests they ran slow but data was still readable, after failing butterfly disk was no longer mountable.  Also real world SINGLE mechanical drive performance is around 1.6gbps , and a bit is 1/8th of a byte, so 200MB should theoretically be the slowest you hit, with spikes in the 400MB range since your data is striped.

[RedSector]

8 hours ago, Mixmaster5 said:

Questions: 

 

1 - does this mean one of drives starts to die? 

2 - can I check every singel drive without deleting the RAID 0? 

3 - should I switch to software RAID?

4 - would a hardware controller give me increased speeds? I thought about the Adaptec 6405 with 512 MB cache and 4 ports. I don't need anything other than RAID 0

 

 

1 For RAID 0 - There is "no warning" given prior to death of HDD. My last HDD M/brd RAID 0 took 11 years to die.

2 In Bios or Intel Raid Program you can check consistency of any Raid array.  As RAID 0 This is worth nothing as faults cannot be fixed.

3 Software Raid is slower.

4 Commercial Raid Cards are generally faster than motherboard ones. (Do your own research prior as there are often little quirks and price catches and glitches worth considering in the mix )

 

4.1 Like SAS cables are additional cost not supplied, Battery backup for on-board cache,  etc.

 

A SSD is faster than any HDD in and out of RAID 0.  Have toyed with idea of trying combo HDD SSD in RAID 0 never got around to trying it out. With just SSD's Raid 0 there is laws of diminishing returns.  There faster but not that much faster to make it worth giving away fault tolerance, early death warning and ability to upgrade firmware.

 

Why run raid 0 at all one modern SSD or M.2 will hands down be better at everything.  

[Mixmaster5]

Thanks for the replies. 

 

When I rebooted, the speed got faster but still: with a 16 GB benchfile file, i decreased constantly...and then it suddendly speeds up again. Very weird behaviour.

 

I don't wanna use SSDs cause I need at least 4 TB...that gets expensive quickly. 

 

So:

 

1. Theare are a lot of used RAID Cards but a lot are also not compatible with W10. Any suggestions for a RAID 0? 

2. Is it possible to tranfer a MB RAID to a software RAID without loosing the data? I would like to test the difference. 

 

Cheers