the_beast

If you look at the Anandtech initial review of the Vertex, you will see that the initial Vertex version (one tuned for high sequential reads) stuttered almost as badly as the JMicron based controllers. This was fixed by better firmware, utilising the cache to better cache writes - ie the Vertex controller still stutters if it does not properly buffer writes. Therefore I am convinced it is specifically a cache issue, not a controller problem. I have also read reports of using such SSDs on RAID cards without any stuttering issues.

Now I am not saying that the JMicron based drives didn't suck when used on their own. But I am saying it is not really the controller specifically but more the fact that it had no cache - if you take the cache away from the Indilix (sp?) controller it will stutter just as badly. Add external controller cache and the problem goes away.


The guy didn't ask about RAIDing SSDs - he asked about Caviar Blacks.


I have doubts as to whether your RAID0 is really as fast as you think. The increased access times mean RAID is rarely a good choice for OS use. For more examples of this, see here.

You will also hurt performance badly by using the same set of disks in 2 partitions - you force the heads to seek a long way each time you read or write to each partition, thus vastly reducing speeds. You would be better separating your 5 disks out, maybe a 3 disk and a 2 disk set, or even a single drive and a 4 drive array.


If you use your scratch disk for sequential reads/writes, then RAID0 is absolutely the way to go, but for random reads it is not so good (as disks in general are crappy at this. By using separate disks for Pagefile, you allow Windows to choose the least busy disk for each write, and hence separate disks can perform faster.

(apologies if I have screwed up the quoting here - I am kinda in a hurry & tried to copy & paste things about to make my post more concise)

DuckieHo

Then again... the ver2 of the JMicron controller with higher clock speeds did lower latency issues. There's no doubt the the cache is what helps. However, the controller does have an effect on performance (i.e. Samsung vs Intel vs Indilinx)



I was talking in general terms...


I gotta question those benchmarks... Look at the sequential read graphs. They don't look... right. http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=2969&p=4

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DJZeratul

While the random access times increased slightly, it did not hurt performance at all. In fact it helped a lot.

Stopwatch test from POST to windows fully loaded on a clean install of Vista, on 2 Raptors in RAID0 on the onboard ICH10R controller took 45 seconds. On the 5 Disk 7200.10 RAID0 the time decreased to 22 seconds (also on the onboard ICH10R).

It is definitely faster than a single disk.

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samstaee

I decided against the idea of RAID 0 and, when I get the funds together I will get a raid 5 setup.

elec999

Anyone got the nailpolish guide/pictures for this card.
Thank you

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samstaee

I believe its in the OP

elec999

Hope it works with Perc6i
Thank you

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Blinky7

why use this nail ***** and stuff.....just put a small piece of regular tape on it...worked liek a charm for me, it's easily accessible in the house and does not damage the card...

Also, there seems to be a new version of green series 1tb caviars that is 2-platter, so 500gb per platter, but the name is exactly the same as the 3platter one, you need to look at other stuff like the release date...
Seems interesting, I'd liek to know if it runs all the time at 5400rpm or the speed is variable...

DJZeratul

Nail polish doesn't damage the card, you can remove it with some acetone on a q-tip. Its more permanent than tape and if you remove/replace the card a couple times you will find that the tape adhesive heats up and leaves the tape behind, can be an annoyance.

The new Caviar Greens run at variable speeds using IntelliPower, the previous generation were a fixed speed set at random by WD and could have been anywhere from 5400-7200RPM.

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the_beast

I have not heard of a higher clockspeed JMicron controller. It was my understanding that the second-gen JMicron controllers were actually 2 first-gen controllers bolted together with a cacheless RAID0 controller. As each controller was basically separate, the system hangs were bascially cut in half as the controller could address each half of the disk separately, thus needing half the effective number of writes per bank of flash.

(although I think we may be a little off-topic with this.)

There is something definately off with some of the graphs, I will admit. But the resulting measured results still kinda speak for themselves.


Vista must be much more heavily optimised for sequential reads at sartup than XP. Every time I have set up RAID0 system disk the startup times have been with 10% of each other. So I gave up with it. I have not tried Vista however - if your times are acurate then that is a healthy boost. Does the same apply to other apps? I find it somewhat hard to believe that every test I have seen actually comparing RAID0 to single disks in real-world tests (rather than fully synthetic benchmarks) conclude that performance gains are negligible, yet you report a two-fold speed increase. You figures are impressive nontheless.

You would be better off with RAID0 for OS use - RAID5 is not really suited to OS use either (it will suffer from the same problems as RAID0 as far as access times, but also has poor small random write performance - exactly the kinds of writes an OS makes regularly). The effect of the cache does work to mitigate this, but I would still recommend a single smaller OS disk (short-stroked HDD or SSD) and then a RAID5/6 storage array. If you need extra space for your apps or games and cannot afford a larger SSD then an extra 2-disk RAID0 array will be faster than a single disk for some games and roughly equal for others.

This does add up to a lot of disks though. I believe the optimal setup for most users buying disks now would be either a large enough SSD (prob 60/120GB) or single 1TB Caviar Black for OS (but not data - keep that off the main disk). Then have a separate RAID5/6 either locally or on a networked server to store your data.