How to enable a healthy RAID storage array on Win10?

On 11/13/2016 12:49 PM, Paul wrote:
John McGaw wrote:
Just for grins and completeness I just ran the same test on my K: drive
which is an external USBIII enclosure holding a salvaged 3tB WD 'Red'
drive. I really don't know what the relative performance between the
'Red' and 'Green' drives is and I've always assumed that they were pretty
much the same with a few firmware tweaks for NAS use.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.2.0 x64 (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 154.136 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 344.519 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 3.791 MB/s [ 925.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.992 MB/s [ 486.3 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 207.623 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 161.693 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 4.610 MB/s [ 1125.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 2.634 MB/s [ 643.1 IOPS]

Test : 50 MiB [K: 0.0% (0.7/2794.4 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/11/13 11:14:32
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 10586] (x64)

Notice the strange swapping of the first sequential numbers between the
D: and K: drives -- weird. Even weirder the last random tests are
actually better on the USB-connected drive.


Normally the software would ask for "uncached" access. So
that OS caches would not affect the results. However, the
track cache on the drive probably still works, regardless.

You could look at the USB drive properties. and see if
it is set for "Performance" or "Quick Removal".

The same sort of thing happens with SATA drives. And
at the time I didn't trace it down. It seems if you
have SATA drives set for AHCI, and the BIOS is set
to "HotPlug=disable", a number of the recent Windows
OSes use a huge cache while doing so. If HotPlug is
enabled again (and you can see all your SATA drives
in the Safely Remove menu), the system write cache
is relatively disabled.

On the new machine, I've had as much as 5GB of write
data stored in RAM (and charged to the system), when a writing
process is too fast for the disk. If Hutplug is enabled,
allowing ejection of disks, the OS stops using that
cache.

But really, none of this is supposed to affect a
disk benchmark program, as they're supposed to defeat
caches when running tests. It's still pretty hard
to get reproducible results.

Especially difficult, is benching the cache RAM
inside the hard drive and getting a believable number.
The developer of the benchmark knows a SATA III disk
with 128MB cache RAM, should be able to run the link
at 550MB/sec or whatever, and then they have to adjust
the benchmark until those results come out on a burst
test.

Paul

I hadn't really thought much about how OS cache might affect the benchmark.
The internal HDs C: D: E: F:in the system have the default of cache on and
the externals are still set for fast removal, cache off. Don't know how
that might cause the reversal in the benchmark but with so many things
interacting it might not be possible for me to know. Just as long as it
running I guess I shouldn't complain.

"Paul" wrote
[snippage]
The deal is, Home has "striped", which is the kind you
like. Whereas Pro includes "mirrored" for redundancy.

http://superuser.com/questions/10010...aid-windows-10
[snippage]
And I would think Win10 would offer Hardware RAID,
as long as a proprietary driver package and
RAID control panel were added. Intel has these.

Paul

I have Win10 Pro on the desktop. AFAIK, only Win10 Pro supports software
RAID and I recall only seeing 'striped' option. In order to investigate
device driver issues, I removed my AMD HD6450 graphics card to expose nVidia
hardware and used a VGA monitor. From the nVidia website I recovered the
Win7-64bit coprocessor device driver set and set compatibility for Win7. The
nVidia driver package installed cleanly, but still Win10 refused to
recognize nVidia hardware RAID. Win10: "my way or the highway". I turned my
attention to Win10 software RAID that we discussed earlier.

I found nVidia motherboard graphics a nightmare in Win10. The screen would
flash (even in Remote Desktop) and graphics lacked memory. It would go
completely black with no option but the power button. Rather than reinstall
the AMD HD6450 graphics card, I decided to invest in the future and
purchased an nVidia GTX 950 graphics card. Not only does it have HDMI 1080p
to support my flat panel TV, but it has DisplayPort, a path to 4K HDTV.
After installation from the DVD, I was ecstatic. Quality and speed of
Youtube HD graphics was much improved. I have WinTV, fed by coax signal from
my log-periodic UHF antenna, focused to the other side of the Salish Sea.
That too, was much improved. The signal is jammed for the HDTV tuner on many
channels, by Win10 emissions, but works well in WinTV on Win10 with GTX 950
graphics. Hence, I may use it exclusively for HDTV. Tropospheric ducting is
the likely explanation for over the horizon HDTV reception.

GTX 950 graphics is better quality than my Xbox 360.

I have not yet put any time into GTX 950 overclocking, so some packaged game
software does not work well. With 2 GB memory, none of the graphics memory
issues above are pertinent. Even if I never get the time to play video
games, the nVidia GTX 950 graphics card has already proved its worth.

Regards,

X

"Norm X" wrote in
news
"Paul" wrote
[snippage]
The deal is, Home has "striped", which is the kind you
like. Whereas Pro includes "mirrored" for redundancy.

http://superuser.com/questions/10010...aid-windows-10
[snippage]
And I would think Win10 would offer Hardware RAID,
as long as a proprietary driver package and
RAID control panel were added. Intel has these.

Paul

I have Win10 Pro on the desktop. AFAIK, only Win10 Pro supports
software RAID and I recall only seeing 'striped' option. In order to
investigate device driver issues, I removed my AMD HD6450 graphics
card to expose nVidia hardware and used a VGA monitor. From the nVidia
website I recovered the Win7-64bit coprocessor device driver set and
set compatibility for Win7. The nVidia driver package installed
cleanly, but still Win10 refused to recognize nVidia hardware RAID.
Win10: "my way or the highway". I turned my attention to Win10
software RAID that we discussed earlier.

I have Win10 Pro as well, and had no problems setting up a software Raid
1 array with two 2TB drives. IIRC, if you want to use hardware raid, you
need to add that driver to the install media before installation, but
that may just be with my Asus mobo/AMD processor.

I read a very good discussion of the various forms of RAID yesterday, and
the author had done a lot of testing and found that the native Win10
Storage Spaces was a reliable way to get the same redundancy. If I can
find the link again I'll post it.

Tim wrote in
.131:

"Norm X" wrote in
news
"Paul" wrote
[snippage]
The deal is, Home has "striped", which is the kind you
like. Whereas Pro includes "mirrored" for redundancy.

http://superuser.com/questions/10010...aid-windows-10
[snippage]
And I would think Win10 would offer Hardware RAID,
as long as a proprietary driver package and
RAID control panel were added. Intel has these.

Paul

I have Win10 Pro on the desktop. AFAIK, only Win10 Pro supports
software RAID and I recall only seeing 'striped' option. In order to
investigate device driver issues, I removed my AMD HD6450 graphics
card to expose nVidia hardware and used a VGA monitor. From the
nVidia website I recovered the Win7-64bit coprocessor device driver
set and set compatibility for Win7. The nVidia driver package
installed cleanly, but still Win10 refused to recognize nVidia
hardware RAID. Win10: "my way or the highway". I turned my attention
to Win10 software RAID that we discussed earlier.

I have Win10 Pro as well, and had no problems setting up a software
Raid 1 array with two 2TB drives. IIRC, if you want to use hardware
raid, you need to add that driver to the install media before
installation, but that may just be with my Asus mobo/AMD processor.

I read a very good discussion of the various forms of RAID yesterday,
and the author had done a lot of testing and found that the native
Win10 Storage Spaces was a reliable way to get the same redundancy. If
I can find the link again I'll post it.

I remembered that you only have to mess with the install media if you
want to boot from a hardware raid, otherwise the setup can be done after
install.

Tim wrote in
.131:

"Norm X" wrote in
news
"Paul" wrote
[snippage]
The deal is, Home has "striped", which is the kind you
like. Whereas Pro includes "mirrored" for redundancy.

http://superuser.com/questions/10010...aid-windows-10
[snippage]
And I would think Win10 would offer Hardware RAID,
as long as a proprietary driver package and
RAID control panel were added. Intel has these.

Paul

I have Win10 Pro on the desktop. AFAIK, only Win10 Pro supports
software RAID and I recall only seeing 'striped' option. In order to
investigate device driver issues, I removed my AMD HD6450 graphics
card to expose nVidia hardware and used a VGA monitor. From the
nVidia website I recovered the Win7-64bit coprocessor device driver
set and set compatibility for Win7. The nVidia driver package
installed cleanly, but still Win10 refused to recognize nVidia
hardware RAID. Win10: "my way or the highway". I turned my attention
to Win10 software RAID that we discussed earlier.

I have Win10 Pro as well, and had no problems setting up a software
Raid 1 array with two 2TB drives. IIRC, if you want to use hardware
raid, you need to add that driver to the install media before
installation, but that may just be with my Asus mobo/AMD processor.

I read a very good discussion of the various forms of RAID yesterday,
and the author had done a lot of testing and found that the native
Win10 Storage Spaces was a reliable way to get the same redundancy. If
I can find the link again I'll post it.

Here is that link:


http://betanews.com/2014/01/15/windo...nd-refs-is-it-
time-to-ditch-raid-for-good/

"Paul" wrote

Win10 has Software RAID.

From what little information given in Win10 versus in hardware RAID, leads
me to conclude that Win10 Software RAID is slightly better. In my hardware 3
drive RAID 0 storage array the whole one whole RAID stripe is seen at once
and can be partitioned for more than one OS.

In Win10 Software RAID, I see two drives 1 and 2 in Task Manager.Whenever
DATA D: drive is active, the activity in drive 1 appears greater than in
drive 2. I interpret this as greater smarts in software versus hardware
RAID. For I/O smaller than one cluster size, only the 1st drive is used and
no activity is registered for drive 2. Win10 appears to advertises that
drive wear and tear, head movement and power consumption is minimized. If
the read/write heads are not in lockstep like in hardware RAID, I think
there may be a slight advantage in queued I/O.