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Help Needed with Raid-0 - Why is my pc not fast using Raid-0 ?

By offtherails2010 ·
Please help guy's and girls!
below are my specs;

Mobo - Asus Crossfire II with nVidia nForce 780a SLI SPP Chipset
CPU - AMD Athlon 7850 Black Edition @ 2.8Ghz
RAM - 8GB Kingston DDR2 @ 800Mhz
GRAPHICS - Asus GeForce 9800GT
HDD - Western Digital 800GB with 64MB Cache x2 in Raid-0 (STRIPE) Config

but my problem is that this raid-0 setup is not as quick as my friends pc, an identical pc like mine but he has 4GB LESS RAM THAN ME !!

im from the intermediate level of pc knowledge, still learning, but skills are limited!

please can someone tell me why my pc is over 30 seconds SLOWER than my friends, yet we have exactly the same hardware and software installed ???

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First off, how are you measuring "30 seconds slower"?

by seanferd In reply to Help Needed with Raid-0 - ...

Also, why do you think it has to do with the RAID level?

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Stopwatch!

by offtherails2010 In reply to First off, how are you me ...

we both have our 2 pc's at my house and we timed the bootup process from hitting the power button via stopwatch until both pc's get to the desktop! my pc does it in and around 1:29 secs ish and my buddies pc in 57 secs ish!

i dont really have a clue why his machine is almost 30 secs faster getting to the desktop when we have both built the same pc each except my buddy has 4GB less ram than me!

any suggestions ???

PS many thanks in advance to all!

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OK, boot time, then.

by seanferd In reply to Stopwatch!

So, what do you have loading at boot time? This will make all the difference. What is popping up in your system tray or desktop that isn't loading on the reference machine?
Take control!
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx
Most everything you want to look at will be under the Logon tab. Disable rather than delete by removing the check from the box.

Have the drives been defragmented at all? Do they contain a lot of junk like temp file, internet cache, etc.?
Clean up temp junk:
http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner
Then run the Windows defragmenter, or any one of your choice.

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wow! neat program!

by offtherails2010 In reply to OK, boot time, then.

Thank you again for the cool heads-up!

Hey thanks for the cool program dude, just put the program (autoruns) on both machines and the exact same bootup software on both systems are displayed in the exact order...

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sorry, forgot to mention...

by offtherails2010 In reply to OK, boot time, then.

the defrag states of both os machines are 0% fragmented and also the temp files and junk files are continuously cleaned on a very regular basis...

any other idea's ?!?

ps, thank you once again!

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Another cool program?

by seanferd In reply to sorry, forgot to mention. ...

Monitor from boot to a loaded desktop:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

They have a whole suite of utilities and a blog and stuff. Check the sidebar.

Don't set a filter, Enable boot Logging under Tools. Reboot.

[edit - the log will be a monster. If necessary, you can experiment with filtering to suit after you run it unfiltered once.]

Use LoadOrd to compare the, er, load order of drivers and stuff.

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What OS are you using here?

by OH Smeg Moderator In reply to Help Needed with Raid-0 - ...

32 BIT OS's have a Upper Limit of Usable RAM of about 3.25 GIG depending on the Chip Set of the M'Board.

If you are running a 32 Bit OS and forcing it to attempt to work with 8 GIG of installed RAM this can slow down the process dramatically.

Similarly if the hardware is the same but the installed OS is different that can account for the differences in Boot Speed. A OS like XP loads faster than either Vista or 7 loads.

Col

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Both pc's are running windows 7 64bit !

by offtherails2010 In reply to What OS are you using her ...

Many thanks to all for trying to help!

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What OS and RAID 0 Issues

by TheChas In reply to Help Needed with Raid-0 - ...

First of all, what OS are you using?

Any 32 bit OS is only going to use the first 4GB of RAM. Any more just gets in the way. Plus, depending on how much RAM is on your video cards, a 32 bit OS may only have just over 2GB of RAM it can actually use.

I don't like using a RAID 0 configuration. The only feature of RAID 0 is that you have 1 huge hard drive instead of 2 very large hard drives. Depending on how files are split between the 2 drives, you can slow down some operations as files are pulled from the multiple drives.

I use multiple hard drives. But, rather than setting up a RAID 0, I use 1 drive for the OS installation and boot and the other drives for storing different data. If I have to format my OS drive and start over, I don't loose any data files in the process.

Now, if both systems do have RAID 0 setups and you both are running 64 bit OS's, the difference is either in BIOS settings, or in the order of installing device drivers, software and OS updates.

My money would be on the order of installations and how that impacts the order that different drivers and utilities load. If you are running Windows, disable auto-hide for the taskbar and watch the order of the system tray icons loading. You should find either a different sequence of loading, or perhaps there is a installed software difference between the 2 systems.

Chas

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dude, spot-on for the drive config, but...

by offtherails2010 In reply to What OS and RAID 0 Issues

Yaa, i use the same sort of hdd config dude, the raid-0 config for the os installation & boot (2 physical hdd's) and a separate 3rd hdd to store all my important data, same as you do! i find this one of the best ways of almost forever keeping one's data just in case the drive with the OS gets messed up!

Both me and my pal meticulously installed everything one-by-one together and also updated our BIOS to the most latest version before setting up the raid array too, but i really cant understand why his machine is still quicker than mine which boasts double the ram!

im at my wits end!!!!

Many thanks for your input dude, im very greatful !

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