Confirm Barracudas IV low RAID performance?

[Grisu]

Hi,

I already have a Seagate Barracuda IV (60) und and PCI Raid Contoller card (HPT370). I think about building a raid 0 for more performance.

Some people say that the barracudas have very low raid o performance ...

Can you confirm this?

[surlyjoe]

hmmm havent heard that yet,, your read speed will drop slightly in raid-0 but your write speed will be faster, just depends on what you wanna do with it... but this is true with all brands of drives

[Grisu]

It's just the thing that I need more space for video-editing and the concerning data. So I well, why not buy a second barracuda and check them together as a raid-0?

But I read of a great loss of performance when using the barracuda IVs in a raid-0, because they shall be too fast or something like that ....

So I' still waiting to get some more information ....

[nullCRC]

I built a system using 2 Barracuda IV's (40 giggers) and a Promise Fasttrak TX2 in RAID0. Seem to be fine to me. Previous ssytem had the IBM's, didn't like the failures.

[cloasters]

I read that the Barracuda IV's do indeed have a speed problem in RAID-0 configuration. One source said that they do have the problem, and another confirmed it.

As nullCRC reports no problem, looks like this is another wonderful "gotcha!" But it didn't get the other guy. For digital circuits, we have an awful lot of analog problems.

I have a Seagate Barracuda IV 40 Gb, too. I don't care about RAID. Fortunately. I wish Seagate hadn't used the Barracuda name for IDE HDD'S. I swear, manufacturer's exploit this similar name stuff to the hilt.

[K6-III]

This was confirmed by StorageReview a while back.

[nullCRC]

I prefer my 9.1GB Cheetah to the RAID0 IDE drives though.

[cloasters]

The running cheetah logo on Seagate SCSI 10 K RPM HDD'S is most stylish and reassuring. I have two brand new U2W Cheetahs--but they're tiny 4.5 Gb drives. A SCSI Host Adapter for them recedes into the distance while more pressing hardware needs come to the foreground. Some day. Maybe!

[cloasters]

I just ordered a 40 Gb Seagate from Newegg. I'll have two now. Because of a broken wrist, I haven't yet installed the first one I bought. I sincerely hope they are good 'uns! After I hopefully grab 400 Mb of difficult to replace Win progs off of the pos 75 GXP, it will be hammer time for the 45 Gb IBumMer. Literally. Muw-ha ha ha! RMA? Naah, I'd only get a used 60 GXP.

Folks, you'll avoid a lot of problems by avoiding 30 and 45 Gb IDE HDD's. These simply have a higher rate of failure than do 20, 40 and 60 Gb drives--whatever the manufacturer.

[Azriel]

Be warry of Sandra results for raid performance. Always wrong.

[paulo carrasco]

Hi,

I' have two seagate barracuda 60G in a raid 0 configuration,
but I'm getting very low performance, around 17000-18000 with sys sandra...

does anyone have a clue..?!!!


thanks in advance

Paulo Carrasco

[Azriel]

Ummm... yeah.. that's sandra. Use atto's bench utility. It's in the AOAfiles.

[Winkie]

The problem was reported to be with the HPT370/A Chipset I believe, with Barracuda ATA IVs, because they read data too fast for the chip to buffer, therefore they had to re-read the data, however, later barracudas had a firmware revision which overcame the problem


That's as far as I know anyway

[Grisu]

Fact is that Seagate offererd a rechangement to the enduser to send the old drives in and get some RAID-optimized ones with firmware 3.51. That's what I did, and they are lots faster in a RAID 0. (HD-tach 2.61 benched with max above 50000)

[Winkie]

Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally? well I have 2 60s here that would like a firmware upgrade

[Grisu]

It's not possible to solve the problem with an FW upgrade, you would have to change the drives via Seagate ...