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Abstract: With the right number of identical hard drives, motherboards that support RAID can choose from RAID 0, RAID 1, and sometimes even RAID 0+1 for improved performance, data redundancy and backups.
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The advantages of RAID: Tests
We carried out a set of tests on our Athlon XP 2800+ system equipped with the
Highpoint controller and the twin 120GB Seagate ATA-5 drives. Using three
different hard disk benchmarks, plus some timed file copies we tried to get a
picture of just how much of a real-world performance boost a hardware or
software RAID 0 array will give as compared to a single drive. We also
tested a RAID 1 configuration to see where it fits in terms of
speed.
Futuremark's
brand new benchmarking program, PCMark 2004, includes 4 separate hard drive performance tests. These use Intel's Rankdisk application to record an isolated simulation of various common Windows disk access events. The performance of the drives in these events is then rated based on the amount of data they were able to transfer per second.
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PCMark 2004
HDD Benchmarks - Results |
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Physical Drive
Size |
XP
Startup |
Application
Loading |
File
Copying |
General HDD
Usage |
| A) No RAID, Single HDD |
120GB |
7.168 |
6.536 |
22.778 |
5.085 |
| B) Hardware RAID 0 |
240GB |
10.281 |
7.050 |
32.104 |
6.588 |
| Software RAID 0 |
240GB |
10.535 |
6.984 |
29.426 |
6.713 |
| Hardware RAID 1 |
120GB |
8.396 |
5.391 |
15.353 |
5.364 |
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Units: |
|
MB/s |
MB/s |
MB/s |
MB/s |
The results of the tests speak like this, for the "XP
Startup" tests RAID of any sort seems to be an advantage. When we
consider "Application Loading," there isn't much of advantage for RAID 0,
though you can see a performance handicap imposed by RAID 1 begin to appear. The
"File Copying" tests definitely show the advantage of having a RAID 0 setup.
Lastly, the "General HDD Usage" tests show surprisingly little difference
between a software and hardware RAID 0 array, at least on a fast computer.
SiSoft Sandra 2004 |
Source: Sandra |
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Sandra is designed to test the theoretical power of
a complete system and individual components. The numbers taken though are again,
purely theoretical and may not represent real world performance.
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Sisoft Sandra 2004 -
Benchmark Results |
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Avg. Access
Time |
Buffered |
Sequential |
Random |
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Tests: |
Time: |
Read: |
Write: |
Read: |
Write: |
Read: |
Write: |
| Single HDD -Standard IDE |
7 ms |
87 |
50 |
41 |
42 |
8 |
9 |
| Hardware RAID 0 |
6 ms |
82 |
52 |
80 |
55 |
9 |
11 |
| Software RAID 0 |
6 ms |
82 |
52 |
81 |
55 |
9 |
11 |
| Hardware RAID 1 |
3 ms |
89 |
28 |
42 |
27 |
15 |
9 |
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Units: |
milliseconds |
MB/s |
MB/s |
MB/s |
MB/s |
MB/s |
MB/s |
You can see the advantage in terms of reading and writing speed that RAID 0 gives, as
well as the slow writing performance of RAID 1 quite easily in this benchmark. Still
no difference in performance between hardware RAID 0 and
software RAID 0.
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