Marvell Raid Controller [P8Z68 Gen 1], Intel Controller Non-Raid, GPT vs MBR
Dfg
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Really, the title should be longer than that. I am going to touch on various points, I am not going to extensively benchmark anything. I am just using Crystal Mark which works quite well.
History Lesson:
The first Hard Disk that I bought was WD Caviar Blue 320GB which was back in 2009/2010. It was fast and it worked quite well.The second HDD I bought was another WD Caviar Blue 320GB, this time the guy I bought it from tried to scam me because he painted the drive black to hide the fact it's a Blue Caviar. Yeah, Pakistan the land of morons. After that I bought a 1 TB Seagate Drive, then a 2TB Seagate LP drive and then another Seagate 1TB drive and finally 2TB ST2000DN001-9YN164.
I have always been keeping my system in check. Today I had to buy a new PSU (Cooler Master 750GX with 9 Sata ports) because my old PSU [Antec 650W TruePower] didn't have enough Sata Connectors. The connectors I used to extend my HDD reach where tripping my WD drive. I guessed I would have to upgrade the PSU later on, why not now. I bought the PSU back in 2010. It served me well, it was able to handle my OC settings and run the system without any problems. I hope they new on can handle the load.
I have always planned to dump my WD drives into RAID and use them for temporary storage in the future. But WD CB, the first one I bought has been working flawless and it had all my Critical info on it. When that HDD started to trip, I had a near panic attack. I backed up the HDD, removed stuff from it and then I decided it was time. So, I added another 2TB drive into the mix, I guess I can another 2TB in the near future because I have one SATA 2 Connector Available.
Moving on, I have always used MBR over GPT because like others I was scared and I wanted to increase my chances of recovery but what I didn't know GPT was much better than MBR. So, when I installed my new HDD and Windows asked GPT or MBR, I decided to give GPT a try. I must say, I am glad I did it. It's so much better than the rest and since I don't plan on using Windows Xp, I don't really care about worrying about Compatibility issues.
Date : 2012/08/02 5:05:20
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)
Marvell Controller:
I read a lot about how Marvell sucks for SSD and the RAID 0 speed is shit, but I didn't really care that, mostly because I am using WD HDD's which can't saturate the channel in any case. I installed both drives and went into the BIOS and selected SuperSpeed and rebooted the system. Once in Windows, I saw I had a new drive, I enabled the drive and used GPT instead of MBR. I then tried to check any monitoring tools for it. Unfortunately when you're using RAID you can't monitor the RAID Array drives using HDD Sentinal or even Crystal Mark/Info.
I run a simple test using Crystal Mark but before that I did move a 400MB file from my new 2TB drive to the raid. I was hoping to see some speed numbers on Teracopy but it didn't show anything. It just went to the new HDD in an instant. I was like blown away. I tested the drive using CM and I was shocked. The numbers were amazing! but I did the same test on all my other drivers and I got confused. For some reason my OS drive which is quite is slower than the rest. I guess it's because maybe the drive is being used by the OS but the results were weird.
But most of all the new 2TB drive was super fast.
MBR to GPT:
I will admit I am not adding more detail as I should but I just woke up an hour ago and I still quite sleepy, in short this whole thread is being typed with my head on vacation. So, kindly just go with the flow. I will update this later with more juicy stuff. My main concern is the OS drive performance. It's shit compared to the rest. I am thinking of moving it to the new RAID 0, that will speed up the OS but can also kill it if for some reason one of my HDD decides to die on me. I guess regular backups should fix it.
Now, what if I wanted to move my old Windows to the new drive? The problem I see is the MBR, my windows is installed on a disk which is using MBR, I can't move it to a disk using GPT and expect it to work. I already planned to installed a fresh copy of Windows, so I will just go ahead with that approach. That should fix some speed problems. If I was a gamer, I would be putting all my games on it but I don't really care about gaming anyway.
Man, I am really tired. I will update this later when my mind is working. Right now just look at the pictures and compare the performance difference.
History Lesson:
The first Hard Disk that I bought was WD Caviar Blue 320GB which was back in 2009/2010. It was fast and it worked quite well.The second HDD I bought was another WD Caviar Blue 320GB, this time the guy I bought it from tried to scam me because he painted the drive black to hide the fact it's a Blue Caviar. Yeah, Pakistan the land of morons. After that I bought a 1 TB Seagate Drive, then a 2TB Seagate LP drive and then another Seagate 1TB drive and finally 2TB ST2000DN001-9YN164.
I have always been keeping my system in check. Today I had to buy a new PSU (Cooler Master 750GX with 9 Sata ports) because my old PSU [Antec 650W TruePower] didn't have enough Sata Connectors. The connectors I used to extend my HDD reach where tripping my WD drive. I guessed I would have to upgrade the PSU later on, why not now. I bought the PSU back in 2010. It served me well, it was able to handle my OC settings and run the system without any problems. I hope they new on can handle the load.
I have always planned to dump my WD drives into RAID and use them for temporary storage in the future. But WD CB, the first one I bought has been working flawless and it had all my Critical info on it. When that HDD started to trip, I had a near panic attack. I backed up the HDD, removed stuff from it and then I decided it was time. So, I added another 2TB drive into the mix, I guess I can another 2TB in the near future because I have one SATA 2 Connector Available.
Moving on, I have always used MBR over GPT because like others I was scared and I wanted to increase my chances of recovery but what I didn't know GPT was much better than MBR. So, when I installed my new HDD and Windows asked GPT or MBR, I decided to give GPT a try. I must say, I am glad I did it. It's so much better than the rest and since I don't plan on using Windows Xp, I don't really care about worrying about Compatibility issues.
Date : 2012/08/02 5:05:20
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)
Marvell Controller:
I read a lot about how Marvell sucks for SSD and the RAID 0 speed is shit, but I didn't really care that, mostly because I am using WD HDD's which can't saturate the channel in any case. I installed both drives and went into the BIOS and selected SuperSpeed and rebooted the system. Once in Windows, I saw I had a new drive, I enabled the drive and used GPT instead of MBR. I then tried to check any monitoring tools for it. Unfortunately when you're using RAID you can't monitor the RAID Array drives using HDD Sentinal or even Crystal Mark/Info.
I run a simple test using Crystal Mark but before that I did move a 400MB file from my new 2TB drive to the raid. I was hoping to see some speed numbers on Teracopy but it didn't show anything. It just went to the new HDD in an instant. I was like blown away. I tested the drive using CM and I was shocked. The numbers were amazing! but I did the same test on all my other drivers and I got confused. For some reason my OS drive which is quite is slower than the rest. I guess it's because maybe the drive is being used by the OS but the results were weird.
But most of all the new 2TB drive was super fast.
MBR to GPT:
I will admit I am not adding more detail as I should but I just woke up an hour ago and I still quite sleepy, in short this whole thread is being typed with my head on vacation. So, kindly just go with the flow. I will update this later with more juicy stuff. My main concern is the OS drive performance. It's shit compared to the rest. I am thinking of moving it to the new RAID 0, that will speed up the OS but can also kill it if for some reason one of my HDD decides to die on me. I guess regular backups should fix it.
Now, what if I wanted to move my old Windows to the new drive? The problem I see is the MBR, my windows is installed on a disk which is using MBR, I can't move it to a disk using GPT and expect it to work. I already planned to installed a fresh copy of Windows, so I will just go ahead with that approach. That should fix some speed problems. If I was a gamer, I would be putting all my games on it but I don't really care about gaming anyway.
Man, I am really tired. I will update this later when my mind is working. Right now just look at the pictures and compare the performance difference.