PERC RAID6 Testing (Preliminary)

I bought my PERC back in July and it was DOA and it wasn't until Janurary that I got my replacement card back. And I finally ordered some drives last week and there I go.

System Configuration:
Motherboard: Gigabyte MA780GM-UD2H
CPU: Athlon X4 640 @ 1.05V
System Disk: Seagate ST3500841AS
System: Windows 7 Professional x64

RAID Disk: Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 7200RPM 2TB * 8
RAID Adapter: DELL PERC 6/i /w Battery Backup Unit
RAID Configuration:

• 8 * 2TB RAID6
• 256KB Stripe Size
• Adaptive Read Ahead
• Write Back
• Cached IO
• Formatted 4KB NTFS Cluster

Snapshots of DELL SAS Manager and Windows Disk Manager
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/5332/perc1.png
http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/5061/perc2.png
http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/8374/perc3.png

HDTune and Crystal Diskmark
http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/6494/perc7.pnghttp://img411.imageshack.us/img411/2333/perc6.png

ATTO with different queue size (Direct I/O = No Cache)
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/9931/perc10.png
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/9486/perc9.png
http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/6103/perc8.png

Initialization took a grand total of 9 Hours which is very good.
Due to the Double Parity calculation required for RAID6, even with the Battery Backup Unit (BBU) the write speed is relatively slow compared to RAID5.

One thing I have to say, these Hitachi drives are frigging LOUD :juggle:
Was expecting them to be as quiet as my external SimpleDrives.

are those the Hitachi 2 tb desk stars? if so you had any drop outs i was thinking of using these on my upgraded file server

Quote:

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Originally Posted by alsenior

are those the Hitachi 2 tb desk stars? if so you had any drop outs i was thinking of using these on my upgraded file server

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Yep they are. Bought them from Aria last week and they just arrived three hours ago
That is what I'm going to find out in the next few days. Only 4% Initialized :P

Cabling is horrible at the moment...All my drives are outside the case at the moment. Thinking of getting some sort of external box to store the drives.

a couple of these should solve the noise and cabling issue.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Icy-D...5-to-3x525-bay

edit: you would also get better write speeds if had a bbu attached

So far so good, doing a BST5 stress test on the array. Another 24 hours of stress test and they'll be in active service :)

That stress test tool is exactly what I'll be needing in a week or so, nice one :)

want