Problem with SATA Raid

[kickz28]

Hi!

I'm new to the forum, found out about it threw Direct Canada.

First of all here are my computer specs:

Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi/AP
Intel Q6600 quad core
2x2GB Patriot Extreme Performance DDR2-800
EVGA eGeForce 9800GT

Now my problem is with my hard drives. I have 5 hard drives total (internal). 2x250GB for my Raid 0 which has the OS. The hard drives are Seagate 7200.10. Then I have 3x500GB Seagate 7200.11 for my data Raid (5).

I'm running Vista SP1 x64 and the performance of the Raid 5 is pretty good (although the line is a little bit jagged in places), but the performance of the Raid 0 is only so-so. The average speed isn't as high as it should (I think) and the line is all jagged with places going to very slow speeds.

I have the correct drivers (I think so anyway... the ones from the Asus website for the correct motherboard and OS). These are the latest right?

I also have an External 500GB (Seagate 7200.10) which I didn't test yet.

Any help is appreciated!
Thanks!
Joey

[kickz28]

Here are the graphs:

[NyteOwl]

RAID 0 is seldom as fast as most people think it should be, especially on fakeraid. The slight boost it gives is rarely worth the additional risk of data loss. That said the dips may be from extended accesses to the page/swap file. The second consideration is the controller - is the RAID 0 array and the RAID 5 array on the same controller? Some are faster than others.