Windows 7 loads faster from a single hdd than from raid 0

[zoomg7]

Hi guys

I've recently bought two seagate 160gb hdds with thought of making raid 0 array. I've encounter first problem when I was installing windows 7 64bit and wasn't able to load intel drivers. Windows told me that they weren't digitally signed. I've skip that as windows had some drivers and finished installation.
System loads up and work without any trouble, HD Tune shows over double increase in transfer rate but loading up windows actually takes a few seconds longer from raid 0 than from single drive

Drives I've used are seagate 7200.11 160GB, mobo abit ix38 quad gt with ich9r.

Anybody knows what I'm doing wrong???

[jim]

It's not all that surprising. Increase in transfer rate isn't going to make Windows load much quicker, you want increase in seek times and random reads (RAID 0 won't help with those).

At a guess, the extra drivers and system overhead are negating the tiny benefits from RAID.

[Agent]

RAID 0 comes into its own when you need to do large sequential writing and reading. For example, they made great 'dump' drives for any application that hits the read / write limit of your single drive.
A lot of people into video encoding use them for that reason.

As snootyjim points out, they have little to no positive effect on seek times which is the biggie when it comes to booting the OS. Look at a SSD for those

[zoomg7]

Maybe you right about drivers but HD Tune still shows tiny faster seek times and random reads when I'm using RAID 0. Maybe there is something in ICH9R which slows it down. I've tried also 128KB, 64KB and 32KB stipe size with the same results, altough with bigger stripe windows loads up a bit faster but still slower than from one drive.

[jim]

Exactly... so tiny that they're far outweighed by the extra hassle of RAID. ICH9R is built into the motherboard, so it's dependent on the rest of the system to make the RAID calculations and so on, using up resources that might otherwise be focussed on booting the OS.

Ultimately, it's a complete waste of time and always has been.

If you're doing some very specific operations, as Agent explained, then RAID 0 can be useful. Booting your OS isn't one of them.

[kalniel]

As the above. System booting is really not what RAID 0 is for, and it will often show an increase in time for mechanical discs.

[[GSV]Trig]

System booting on RAID will be slower from button press to desktop as well due to the controller having to do it thang, instead of going button, bios, splash, desktop, go. you have button, bios, raid controller, splash, desktop, go...

[zoomg7]

Ok, so raid 0 it's not so good as I thought but I'm not going to surrender so easly. I'll try use smaller stripe size and see what's happen. It seams to be better for windows with its loads of small files

[paul92]

i made this same mistake, if your wanting OS load times go with a ( cheap)SSD.

[spoon_]

Nothing wrong with RADI0 but system will hang for a big on BIOS from the controller to detect the drives. No doubt if you cut this time out system boots quicker.

I have 3 RAID BIOSes to go through before my machines boots up, honestly I couldn't be bothered how long it takes to boot up. After its done booting its crazy fast

[sk82jack]

i made this same mistake, if your wanting OS load times go with a ( cheap)SSD.

+1 for SSD. The Crucial M4 is coming out soon too

[[GSV]Trig]

Yeah SSD if you want quick button/desktop times..

[zoomg7]

What's about intel raid drivers? Does anybody know why windows 7 installation won't let me install them? I've tried with windows vista and had the same problem. It's hard to belive that genuine intel drivers are not digitally signed by microsoft

[jim]

I wouldn't worry about it. If you've installed the OS onto the RAID, it's working.

[kalniel]

What's about intel raid drivers? Does anybody know why windows 7 installation won't let me install them? I've tried with windows vista and had the same problem. It's hard to belive that genuine intel drivers are not digitally signed by microsoft

No idea They work fine for me.