HW RAID0 for FSX. Good ot bad?

[phadis 5]

I'm about to make a hardware RAID0 of two 500GB 7200rpm HDD's. I've read that RAID0 is not a good solution for FSX, but there are little to non info to back that statement up.

I mean, if I already have the RAID, should I still put FSX on a single drive?

[HLJames 2,568]

Conventional wisdom common sense and expert opinion will tell you RAID0 is bad.

Test results using FSX benchmarks will tell you it has no impact.

 

HLJAMES

[vgbaron 3,627]

http://forum.avsim.n...or-not-to-raid/

 

good advice here..

 

IF you have a dedicated controller card, NOT motherboard software RAID, AND if you can set a stripe of 256 or better, you will have some benefit. If not, don't bother as it might actually hurt your performance.

 

Vic

[phadis 5]

Thanks guys, but I'm a little confused. They say motherboard raid is bad, but hardware raid is ok. AFAIK I have both? Hardware raid in a chip on the mobo.

[dazz 69]

Software RAID is for example Windows 7's striped, mirrored and spanned volumes. "Motherboard RAID" is hardware RAID, now how good is the mobo RAID controller at saving you CPU cycles and handling the RAID is another story

[SAAB340 28]

Thanks guys, but I'm a little confused. They say motherboard raid is bad, but hardware raid is ok. AFAIK I have both? Hardware raid in a chip on the mobo.

In the link Vic posted NickN is saying unless you have a hardware raid with its own dedicated RAM. What it comes down to is CPU utilisation. You don't want to rob FSX of CPU cycles. What is it you want to achieve with the help of RAID0. Faster load time? You won't get faster FPS if that's what you're after.

 

Based on my own testing, Load times are just minimally affected by transfer rates. What helps is access time.

Think about it this way. How fast your CPU can process all the data is what determinate the load time. Sometimes the CPU have to wait for data to be collected from the HDD. Normally it's only a small piece of data the CPU is waiting for. The actual transfer time of the data takes up only a small fraction of the total time between the CPU requesting and receiving the data. What takes up a whole lot longer time is the time it takes the disk to fetch the data for transfer after it received a request for it. Access time normally go up slightly with RAID0 as we now have minimum twice the amount of read heads and platters that all have to line up in the correct position until the data has been be red.

 

RAID0 is great if you copy large files to and from it. But that's not what FSX does.

[phadis 5]

In the link Vic posted NickN is saying unless you have a hardware raid with its own dedicated RAM. What it comes down to is CPU utilisation. You don't want to rob FSX of CPU cycles. What is it you want to achieve with the help of RAID0. Faster load time? You won't get faster FPS if that's what you're after.

 

Based on my own testing, Load times are just minimally affected by transfer rates. What helps is access time.

Think about it this way. How fast your CPU can process all the data is what determinate the load time. Sometimes the CPU have to wait for data to be collected from the HDD. Normally it's only a small piece of data the CPU is waiting for. The actual transfer time of the data takes up only a small fraction of the total time between the CPU requesting and receiving the data. What takes up a whole lot longer time is the time it takes the disk to fetch the data for transfer after it received a request for it. Access time normally go up slightly with RAID0 as we now have minimum twice the amount of read heads and platters that all have to line up in the correct position until the data has been be red.

 

RAID0 is great if you copy large files to and from it. But that's not what FSX does.

Ok. Thanks for your informative answer. :)