SATA/RAID Slowdown?

[Jethro]

I have a machine that has SATA/RAID capability that I have never used.
Now I am considering it - but since I am at best a novice on this, I
have to ask.

Will the presence and activation of SATA/RAID slow my machine down
overall? It is a AMD 3200+ Athlon64. I notice slow-downs already
whenever I multi-process applications.

Thanks

Jethro

 

[Joel]

I have a machine that has SATA/RAID capability that I have never used.
Now I am considering it - but since I am at best a novice on this, I
have to ask.

Will the presence and activation of SATA/RAID slow my machine down
overall? It is a AMD 3200+ Athlon64. I notice slow-downs already
whenever I multi-process applications.

Thanks

Jethro

My mboard supports both SATA/RAID too, and I haven't tried neither one yet
(I have 500GB SATA but still using as external via USB2). But I don't see
why a faster hard drive can slow down the system.

I have AMD 3700+ with 3GB memory. I use it for photo post processing
(Photoshop) and multimedia (either converting or authoring), and often have
several other aps running at same time. And I use "Task Manager" to control
the speed of system by knowing which prg requires or need more CPU and how
each uses the CPU to control them.

 

[Jethro]

My mboard supports both SATA/RAID too, and I haven't tried neither one yet
(I have 500GB SATA but still using as external via USB2). But I don't see
why a faster hard drive can slow down the system.

I was picturing the overheads of continuous RAID backups. The two
drives would both go thru the MOBO components. To me, intuitively, I
just figgered that double write would take more time than single
write. Could I be wrong?

I have AMD 3700+ with 3GB memory. I use it for photo post processing
(Photoshop) and multimedia (either converting or authoring), and often have
several other aps running at same time. And I use "Task Manager" to control
the speed of system by knowing which prg requires or need more CPU and how
each uses the CPU to control them.

Hmmm
I've never tried to use Task Manager to that end. Don't know how
either. Maybe I should look at that.

Thanks

Jethro

 

[Matthew Hicks]

It's not a double write. If you are doing simple raid-1 aka mirroring, the
write command is sent to the raid controller which then sends individual
writes commands to each drive. So the system only goes as slow as your
slowest drive.


---Matthew Hicks

 

[Joel]

I was picturing the overheads of continuous RAID backups. The two
drives would both go thru the MOBO components. To me, intuitively, I
just figgered that double write would take more time than single
write. Could I be wrong?

Hmmm I haven't used any backup for ages to know much about them. Yes, I
have started with floppy backup, then 250-500M backup (using Floppy
controller), then up to 4/8GB SCSI tape backup (it cost around $800+ and
each tape cost $50-80 a pop?), but never restored <g> so I never backup
since.

Anyway, I have 3 HDs and 2 DVD burners (1 disabled cuz lack of use) and
sometime all 3 are using at same time for different uses. The system sure
slow down but I think it's normal for system to run several jobs at same
time, or I don't think SATA/RAID (faster than IDE) has anything or much to
do with it.

Hmmm
I've never tried to use Task Manager to that end. Don't know how
either. Maybe I should look at that.

Here, I have to depend on "Task Manager" to be able to control what is
cooking on my system. If you pay a little attention to the Task Manager you
may notice that some program may use more CPU time but won't slow down the
system, and some may require extra CPU time for few short seconds (or
minute) during some heavy process that may cause slowness to system, so
sometime setting these aps to "High Priority" may help the whole system (and
some can be set to "Below Priority"

 

[kony]

I was picturing the overheads of continuous RAID backups. The two
drives would both go thru the MOBO components. To me, intuitively, I
just figgered that double write would take more time than single
write. Could I be wrong?

It doesn't take more time (negligably so anyway, with two
drives it could be that either of them takes a slight bit
longer than the other at any particular operation but it's
not worth considering in most cases).

More significant is the CPU overhead, but often when
accessing a drive the CPU is waiting for files anyway, it
has the spare time for this.

More significant is how it's implemented. If a discrete
chip sitting on the PCI bus, it's inherantly bottlenecked by
that bus, even moreso if other moderate to higher bandwidth
devices are on the same bus. For example, a typical Silicon
Image 3112 chip and a gigabit nic chip used similtaneously
(like copying files over the GbE lan to a suitably fast
recipient) would result in both sharing a little over
100MB/s available throughput.

You don't mention which RAID level though, nor the goal of
this... nor the most demanding uses... so we can't really
estimate if the pros outweigh the cons. In general on a
semi modern board with the southbridge integral RAID, the
performance factor for having the RAID is not a problem,
even of benefit if you were considering RAID0.