PCI Low Transfer with Adaptec 2100S SCSI RAID 0

[Guest]

Hello everybody!
I have a MSI 875P Mobo with an Adaptec 2100S RAID card on pci32 and 2
cheetah 10K.6 in raid 0.
I have this problem, the average transfer rate is around 35MB/sec with
HDTune, and around 50MB/sec with HDTach, while it shuld be over 90MB/sec.
The benchmark programs are not so relyable, but every one shows a very low
transfer rate.
I've updated the Bios, FirmWare, NVRAM and SMOR to the latest version, and
installed the latest win2000/Xp driver for winXP.
I've updated the mobo bios but no go, there's no way to make the ctrl speed
up his transfer rate or burst rate.
The card is "designed for WinXP" but is recognised as 2005S with the WinXP
CD Drivers (instead of 2100S).
The Adaptec driver are newer and allow the correct identification of the
card, but the problem still remains...
Forthemore I found this:

http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/817/4.html

that is an article where it seems that this problem is well known with VIA
chipset mobo, and the solution seems to be a patch released by VIA:

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=2

[click WinXP-->IDE RAID & SATA-->3rd Party CTRLs]

or an UN-ufficial patch called vlatency_v019 that you can find on the net
(at your risk).
The problem is that the intel-based mobo are not mentioned, while I've the
same problem.
I'm looking everywhere in the Adaptec, Microsoft and Intel websites, but I
can't find anything.
Hoping that someone could help me...

- CRL -

 

[Guest]

If you run a board with a 875,thats a Intel 875 chipset,why are you
concerned with via.1st,go to Intel downloads,chipset,locate the chipset
installation utility for the 875.Try windows update for the RAID
controller,if
none exist,try windows update catalog,have you tried updating the drivers
in device mgr,see if xp updates it auto.Too bad intels RAID controllers
were'nt
used,easy to find those...

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your quick answer. I searched on the internet for people having my
problem, but I found just articles about VIA Motherboard, but they're useless
for me, as you said, since I have a Intel Motherboard.
On the Intel WebSite I can't find anything except the standard driver for
the chipset, but my problem is not mentioned anywhere and there's nothing
that seems could help me.
The 2100S driver I've installed now are the Adaptec ones, since Windows's
are eldier, but the problem arises with both.
I'll look in the Windows Catalog...
I didn't catch the sense of the last sentence...

- CRL -

If you run a board with a 875,thats a Intel 875 chipset,why are you
concerned with via.1st,go to Intel downloads,chipset,locate the chipset
installation utility for the 875.Try windows update for the RAID
controller,if
none exist,try windows update catalog,have you tried updating the drivers
in device mgr,see if xp updates it auto.Too bad intels RAID controllers
were'nt
used,easy to find those...

Hello everybody!
I have a MSI 875P Mobo with an Adaptec 2100S RAID card on pci32 and 2
cheetah 10K.6 in raid 0.
I have this problem, the average transfer rate is around 35MB/sec with
HDTune, and around 50MB/sec with HDTach, while it shuld be over 90MB/sec.
The benchmark programs are not so relyable, but every one shows a very low
transfer rate.
I've updated the Bios, FirmWare, NVRAM and SMOR to the latest version, and
installed the latest win2000/Xp driver for winXP.
I've updated the mobo bios but no go, there's no way to make the ctrl speed
up his transfer rate or burst rate.
The card is "designed for WinXP" but is recognised as 2005S with the WinXP
CD Drivers (instead of 2100S).
The Adaptec driver are newer and allow the correct identification of the
card, but the problem still remains...
Forthemore I found this:

http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/817/4.html

that is an article where it seems that this problem is well known with VIA
chipset mobo, and the solution seems to be a patch released by VIA:

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=2

[click WinXP-->IDE RAID & SATA-->3rd Party CTRLs]

or an UN-ufficial patch called vlatency_v019 that you can find on the net
(at your risk).
The problem is that the intel-based mobo are not mentioned, while I've the
same problem.
I'm looking everywhere in the Adaptec, Microsoft and Intel websites, but I
can't find anything.
Hoping that someone could help me...

- CRL -

 

[Guest]

You might need to take note of the hard drive transfer rate also. Seagate had
benchmark tested for 15,000 rpm drive transfer at about 50-60 MB/s. However
if the I/O overhead rates are hign, this rate will drop even further. The
predicted rate will be around 40 MB/s depends on the RAID controller card can
handle how many I/Os.
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/ref/transfer_rates.html

The hard drive you are using is 10k rpm, I would assume that the transfer
rate will be about 30-35 MB/s. By creating a RAID 0 with two drives, the read
performance supposely be 100% increase but the actual test does not normally
perform so good. Write will increase to about 50%.

RAID 0 with 2 x 10k rpm HDs
Read = 60-70 MB/s
Write = 45-50 MB/s