RAID Performance
This section probably represents a mini-review by itself. But I'll try as best to keep it short and concise....
I've tested the RAID setup based on its 2 core offerings: Performance (RAID0) and Reliability (RAID1). The test utilised 2 x 10GB partitions in both NTFS and FAT32 formats.
Performance (RAID 0)
To ascertain the performance gains for a striped RAID 0 setup, several HDD specific benchmarks were run:
ATTO benchmarks
For those unfamiliar with what ATTO benchmarks offer, it serves as a comprehensive way to test the speeds for varying sized file/block transfers of a HDD. This is especially good for determining drive burst speeds, where the transfer speeds for each block-size are aptly reflected at their right side of each test-graph:
RAID0 (NTFS)
ATTO scores for a NTFS drive (UATA-100)
ATTO scores for NTFS drives in RAID_0/ATA-100 config
For the NTFS setup, the RAID setup shows a significant increase in speed as block/file sizes begin to exceed 4KB. However, due to the latency incurred from a 64KB stripe size, the transfer rates at smaller block-sizes are invariably slower. But notably, the RAID setup peaks at over 2x the speed offered by a standard ATA-100 driven by the I815E chipset!!
RAID0 (FAT32)
ATTO scores for a Fat32 drive (UATA-100)
ATTO scores for Fat32 drives in RAID_0/ATA-100 config
Similarly, for the FAT32 rendition, the ATA-100 RAID also offers astronomical increases (2x) over their non-RAID variants. As seen again, transfers below 4KB seem to lag slightly in RAID formats, but pulls sharply away at sizes anything above that. In addition, the NTFS RAID version attains terminal velocity at a higher transfer speed than their FAT32 counterparts, showing the incremental efficiency of NTFS.
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