How to setup windows boot parition to load from dynamic stripe array?

[chris89]

I'd like to have the OS on a Striped Raid Array, because I care very much for peak I/O performance.

The system does not have a hardware raid controller. I'm using IDE drives 3 x 80gb to be exact.

I know I can't install windows on a dynamic disk. Can we over-ride this and get it to work regarless?

If not i'd like to install windows 7 ultimate on the first 80gb drive. From there I'd copy the OS partition to the Dynamic array of (2) 80gb drives. So basically windows would boot from the boot partition on the first basic disk 80gb drive where it would only have the boot partition and a seperate backup partition. The boot mgr would then signal to boot to the dynamic volume so i can achieve faster I/O performance in windows.

Thanks

 

[bigmck]

If you want faster performance from your Win 7, get a SSD. A 120 GB can be had for under $100. This will improve your performance more than any one thing can. Your programs will open in one second and your PC will boot in 30 seconds. Check on Newegg, they had good deals.

 

[chris89]

Yeah see this is an old x86 dual xeon workstation. Runs good no doubt but lacking sata ports. I know I could add a SATA III PCI-X 64bit card which has about 1GB/s coming and going bandwidth.

I had to keep it minimal since I was giving it to someone. I had the 3 x 80gb IDE drives laying around. So I wanted to do a software RAID Stripe before I installed windows. Apparently you can't install windows on Dynamic Volumes. So I just installed Windows on the 80gb drive and Raid0 Striped the other two together for software Raid.

If we could figure out how to install windows on a Dynamic volume that would be sick.

Thanks

 

[LMiller7]

I know I can't install windows on a dynamic disk. Can we over-ride this and get it to work regarless?

Yes and no.

In some cases Windows can be installed on a dynamic disk volume, but not if the the volume is a RAID 0 array. This is not an arbitrary restriction but one of technical necessity. It is the chicken and egg problem. To read from a software RAID 0 volume the RAID drivers must first be loaded. The problem is that the drivers are on the disk, which cannot be read until the drivers are loaded. Windows can only be installed on a RAID 0 volume if RAID is implemented in the controller.

But in reality RAID 0 provides little benefit when used to contain Windows. RAID 0 improves transfer rate primarily for large files read serially. That doesn't happen very often in a modern OS where performance is largely dependent on seek time, which RAID 0 helps not at all.

If you want good performance install Windows on an SSD, not a RAID 0 volume.

 

[chris89]

Yeah thanks that's what I thought. I have had a lot of experience with Raid0'ing drives on say the Intel ICH southbridges and the performance is always worth it. We did some tests and basically all installs/ loading windows/ and starting up applications have been right on at double the speed of a single 7200rpm drive.

For instance on my ICH10R rig I have 2 1tera black edition drives and 2 250gb drives in raid0. Reading/ writing between them is around 180-240MB/s. Which is crazy since with single drives we were getting like 80MB/s read/write.

In terms of windows and loading apps I timed the difference and it took 1min45seconds on a single 7200rpm drive to load windows from post to desktop, and even with the RAID controller delay on our RAID0 when initializing it still took 52 seconds roughly which is pretty cool. Although that time is with either 128KB write through or 256KB write through. When the write through is at 16-64KB that time is minimally better than a single drive. With a 32KB write through we only gained about 5-10% over a single, however 128kb or 256kb made a solid 100% decrease in time in all I/O tests I ran.

Thanks

 

[bigmck]

There is not much you can do to speed up a Core 2 Quad. It is just slow. Your best move is to save your pennies and get a new setup.

 

[chris89]

Yeah it's just a rig I got for free i have like 3 Dual xeon systems and a couple triple sli lga 1366 xeon's .....

This is an old x86 3Ghz dual xeon with 4gb ram i was giving to someone who isn't a computer guru.... just trying to get him decent performance. Turns out i popped in the dual 2.2ghz prestonia's and 2gb ram and 3 80gig drives in ide... 1 with windows and it was running just fine. LOL

It can playback 1080p video without any problem and a bit of low end gaming. That's all this old guy cares about he doesn't know anything about computers.

THANKS THOUGH GUYS I APPRECIATE YOUR HELP A LOT!!! I wanna give u guys rep points just for helping.