Dell Poweredge Scsi Raid Controller - Multiple Questions...

[dopefisher]

Ok, so I have a regular gaming PC that I like to run Scsi drives on, so I went all out and bought a 350$ pci express Dell Poweredge X8 Raid controller. And, of course, I have a few questions here.

1. this might sound dumb, but the card is x8 speed, is it ok to have it hooked into a x16 slot? and should i change the timing of the slot to x8 in bios?

2. I have 2 36gb 15k rpm scsi drives attached to this raid controller. I want the maximum performance possible, i dont care at all about data integrity or anything else, and i love to multitask, e.g., run a virus scan while burning a dvd and playing rainbow six: vegas. I have a dual core amd cpu. I have a read a bit about raid in here, but it seems different for every system, would you advise using raid 0 or 1? and GPT or MBR for the partition type? (i dont run a server)

3. I am wondering which drive i should install windows vista to now: my sata 2 drive, or my raided scsi drives? i will use one for gaming, and the other drive for the OS. at the moment i use the raid scsi drives for my games, IDE for storage, and my sata 2 drive for vista.

4. since i installed this poweredge card, my system has heated up by about 6 degrees celsius. should i raise/lower voltage on my psu, or just add some cooling?

5. feel free to comment on anything else i might have missed, lol.

btw, before i formatted the raid drives in windows, i got an 81.2 mb/s read time in HD Tach, and after i partitioned them, it dropped to 41.2! now i am really wondering what raid setting to use, etc.

 

[gavinseabrook]

Well, though it is an 8x card, it should work fine. The port should automatically detect. As far as the setup, I would believe you should put the vista drive as a sata, and storage as scsi in a MBR environment on a raid 0. About the heat, just add a fan or 2, cant ever go wrong on fans lol. And about the partition, instead of making seperate drives, make it a large drive, with all of your different files in folders, instead of drives.

 

[Rick]

is it ok to have it hooked into a x16 slot? and should i change the timing of the slot to x8 in bios?

Yes, this is fine. Timing? I'm pretty certain you won't have to change that...

have 2 36gb 15k rpm scsi drives attached to this raid controller. I want the maximum performance possible

RAID 0 is what you are looking for.

I am wondering which drive i should install windows vista to now: my sata 2 drive, or my raided scsi drives?

Having Windows on your SCSI drives will increase the 'overall experience', but for gaming, you really want you games on those SCSI drives.

since i installed this poweredge card, my system has heated up by about 6 degrees celsius. should i raise/lower voltage on my psu, or just add some cooling?

If noise isn't an issue, put in some more case fans or replace your existing ones with more powerful fans. This will lower your ambient temperature and lower the temp of all other components as well. Lowering voltages can decrease temperatures somewhat, but you also run the risk of instability.

btw, before i formatted the raid drives in windows, i got an 81.2 mb/s read time in HD Tach, and after i partitioned them, it dropped to 41.2! now i am really wondering what raid setting to use, etc.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/concepts/perfStripe-c.html

"Decreasing Stripe Size: As stripe size is decreased, files are broken into smaller and smaller pieces. This increases the number of drives that an average file will use to hold all the blocks containing the data of that file, theoretically increasing transfer performance, but decreasing positioning performance.

Increasing Stripe Size: Increasing the stripe size of the array does the opposite of decreasing it, of course. Fewer drives are required to store files of a given size, so transfer performance decreases. However, if the controller is optimized to allow it, the requirement for fewer drives allows the drives not needed for a particular access to be used for another one, improving positioning performance.

Tip: For a graphical illustration showing how different stripe sizes work, see the discussion of RAID 0.

Obviously, there is no "optimal stripe size" for everyone; it depends on your performance needs, the types of applications you run, and in fact, even the characteristics of your drives to some extent. (That's why controller manufacturers reserve it as a user-definable value!) There are many "rules of thumb" that are thrown around to tell people how they should choose stripe size, but unfortunately they are all, at best, oversimplified. For example, some say to match the stripe size to the cluster size of FAT file system logical volumes. The theory is that by doing this you can fit an entire cluster in one stripe. Nice theory, but there's no practical way to ensure that each stripe contains exactly one cluster. Even if you could, this optimization only makes sense if you value positioning performance over transfer performance; many people do striping specifically for transfer performance."

 

[dopefisher]

thanks guys.

this brings up a few more questions though, lol.

if i go in and change the block size of my raid 0 array, will i lose all the data on it?

also, should i install windows on the scsi array and cut out the sata 2 drive altogether? (or just use it for storage, etc)

 

[Nodsu]

This depends on the specific controller - some allow migrating stripe size while some don't. The setup program will hopefully tell you whether your actions are destructive or not.

 

[dopefisher]

hey thanks guys. i did what you all said, (minus installing vista in the raid array, my POS "friend" has my disk, why? i dont know!) and i ran HD tach on the raid array, and i am getting a 350 mbps burst speed, and a 129 mbps average read time. i have never seen drives fly like this.

 

[gavinseabrook]

your very welcome. Glad to be of help