Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question

A8N-SLI slow transfers to raid5 PCI card

Last response: in Motherboards
February 7, 2006 5:38:43 AM


I just finished building a file server.

1GB Ram
2 x 160GB WD1600JB 8MBPATA
2 x 200GB Maxtor DM 8MB SATA
Hightech RocketRaid 1640 PCI
4 x 300GB Maxtor DM10 16MB Raid 5

When I copy from a PATA drive to my Raid5 array, the copy goes very fast.

When I copy from a SATA drive to a PATA drive, the copy goes very fast.

Oddly enough, when I copy from an SATA drive to the Raid5 array, it goes about 1/4 the speed then the copy from a PATA does.

The two 200GB SATA drives are plugged into the nforce4 SATA controller, not the Silicon controller.

And the reason I am not using the silicon sata raid controller is because the raid5 array with be moving into a different machine.
February 7, 2006 4:07:35 PM

Where the hell do you have the RAID5 array? On a PCI RAID add in card or something?

EDIT: just realized you are in fact using a RAID card. Here's the thing: PCI sucks. The maximum theoretical bandwidth is 133MB/s at 33mhz. Can you say bottleneck?

Trying to move files from your PATA or SATA drives to and from your RAID5 array is like trying to push an oyster into a slot machine. Or something...

It just doesn't work. To increase performance purchase a PCI-e RAID controller or move the array to the NVRAID SATA ports.