Experiment: Hitting my P67 with heavy I/O

[frontier204]

<hmm if someone can put a bad idea icon beside my post title like a broken lightbulb or something I'd appreciate it >

Hi all,
I'm in that strange "let's kill things" mood so I'm trying to trigger the Cougar Point SATA2 issue. Call it a suicide run with a motherboard or something...

Anyway, here's the setup, running on my main:
Core i5 2500k OC 4.2 GHz running F@H SMP
Radeon 4870 running F@H GPU (clocked at stock 4870 speeds)
2x4GB G-Skill Ripjaws DDR1333 9-9-9-24 (stock)
Gigabyte P67A-UD3P
Connected to SATA3 ports 0 and 1:
Kingston SSDNow V Series 128 GB (running in SATA2 mode)
WD Caviar Black 1 TB (running in SATA3 mode)
Connected to SATA2 ports 2 and 3:
Seagate 7200.10 360 GB
Seagate 7200.10 320 GB
Connected to SATA2 port 4 and5:
SATA -> ESATA -> Enclosure -> Seagate Momentus 7200.2 (mobile 120GB)
Cheap LG DVD burner

I plan to stress the old Seagates in a non-organized fashion over a longer period of time to see what happens. As for now, pictures can explain what's happening:

Initial Benchmarks:

EDIT: Adding another HDD into the mix, this time through eSATA enclosure.


Stress #1


I'll check again with the benchies in a 1-3 days if the heavy I/O actually affected performance.

[chrisk]

Yes! I was gonna say get something folding in there too. Lots of heat is needed for this.

If you end up losing WUs (bad fr the project), maybe just run Furmark or something. or just get some crappy airflow.

Only think to be careful of I suppose are stressing the gpu, cpu, etc.

Fun!!!

[frontier204]

Hmm didn't think of that... although the folding IS on the "unaffected" SATA3 drive. If anything out-of-the-ordinary happens I'll transfer my F@H to an external drive running off either the 3rd party USB3.0 or a firewire add-on card.

[_dangtx_]

get hdtune/eraser, you can still wipe from windows and fold at the same time

win win situation!

my system, as i said this morning, has been wiping drives for a while and i see no issues

[lowfat]

Very interesting in seeing results.

[writhen]

Lol, you're a maniac but I'm curious about the results as well :P

[frontier204]

Originally Posted by _dangtx_

get hdtune/eraser, you can still wipe from windows and fold at the same time

Well copywipew is a Windows program so I am running it while folding. ...8 passes on the HDDs and it's still going.
I like the idea of using Eraser though, because its "wipe free space" option creates multiple files on the HDD, and with a journalling filesystem like NTFS would introduce a less predictable signal through the IO compared to a sequential wipe. Thanks for the idea, I'll use it if the HDDs survive the 36 passes (or if today's snowstorm causes a blackout long enough to cause my UPS to shut off my computer).

[_dangtx_]

yeah,sorry about that..saw a dos something screeenie :p

eraser is pretty tough..

if i have time, i do a gutman/dod with hdtune, then load up eraser as well on them drives.

hdtune or wiping at boot wipes the whole drive, eraser in windows leaves a bit out..i think. still

for this test of yours i see it working out well.

my board ,so far,suffers nothing from 24/7 wiping, both with hdtune and eraser.

[frontier204]

Yep, (2 days - 5 hours) of wiping and still nothing extraordinary happened.
I've completed 30 passes on the 320GB and 25 passes on the 360GB, making them the most thoroughly-wiped HDDs I've ever owned. While still performing the wipe, I hotplugged another old hard drive, a 120GB 7200RPM mobile HDD. I'm doing a sanity check on the mobile HDD as the other two are still chugging away at the wipe.

This is easily the most load I've placed on a single controller since I figured out I was a PC hobbyist, so it makes me wonder what those "OEM" tests did to consistently blow out their SATA2. (pictures a Gateway with an out-of-spec PSU and no intake fan with 4x VelociRaptor 600GB attached to the SATA2 ports running datacenter loads)

[_dangtx_]

no idea lol.

mines been running since i was able to get my hands on the combo.