Raid Help Needed.... Again! Calling all computer experts!
 

Hey guys,
I have finally implemented my raid array and am having problems. Here are the important specs for starters.

motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium (with Silicon Image 3114 raid controller)
HD's: 3 74GB WD Raptors running raid 5
OS: Vista 64 ultimate

The problem is everything works fine except the read/wright to the HD's is incredibly slow. It took almost an hour to load office 2007. Anytime the computer has to access the HD it's a long wait. Obviously this totally defeats the purpose of running raid 5 for me other than redundancy. The HD's stay clicking away for hours and never seem to stop reading/writing.

I've looked all over the net for solves to this problem with not much luck. The way I see it is I either have to:

• Dump raid and run a single drive for Vista 64.
• reload Vista 64 and run the nVidia chipset raid. only raid 0, 1, and 0+1 avalable.
• Dump Vista and run XP 64 instead in raid 5.

I don't know for a fact if any of these other options are going to work either but that's the way I'm leaning. I would preffer to stick with vista 32 or 64 if possible and run raid 5.

Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Adam

Did you remove the 1.5 GBps jumper limiter thing?



Updated drivers?

Yeah, I have the newest mobo BIOS and Raid drivers. What jumper settings would be best for me? Check out the link...
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1127&p_created=1071171477&p_sid=wsk_TqQi&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_ sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9NCw0JnBfcHJvZHM9JnBfY2F0cz0mcF9wdj0mcF9jd j0mcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1zZWFyY2hfZm5sJnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9d2Q3NDA*&p_li=&p_topview=1

I'm running 2drive 300gb RAID1, which is certainly dif. than yours, but everything loaded very very slow. Like forever. I I remember correctly, I had to either install a jumper or remove one, but heck if I remember, but it still went s-l-o-w.

I kept on reading stuff to find out what I was doing wrong, could find nothing, so just let it do its thing. If I remember correctly, it took me about 2 full days to load everything (XP Pro, full office, AutoCad 07, Mastercam, Megasquirt, misc utility and anti spy &virus protection, and some minor business programs like CWorks and some financial software), plus copy all my files over from the CD's I copied files to.

After it was all up and running, it runs at least the same as when I had a single 120gb drive.

Before doing anything drastic, go over everything.
(You know 5 minutes after u nuke the existing setup, the little lite will go on and you'll know what WAS wrong)

Check the basics, check ALL of the logs.
Sometimes there is one in the BIOS too.

Something very basic is wrong, maybe even a bad HD.

Did you use the RAID setup to format the HDs ??

Just asking ?s maybe one will click, and you'll see the error.

I don't recommend RAID for home users, no real benefit. Backups provide almost as much protection with 1/10 the cost, headaches and hassles.
And you MUST have them anyhow.

RAID 5 will slow down read/write, but it shouldn't be enough for you to notice.