1. 250K Stripe on the FSX array

2. You must enable WRITE CACHE and use these settings for perf

SEE UPDATE BELOW FOR READ CACHE SETTING

3. With Write Cache enabled which is required for perf, be aware without the 3ware battery backup unit for the card you CAN lose the array in the event of a power failure or crash and the card has data in the memory of the card in transit to the drive.. you can also end up with corrupted data and the array still function. If you do not have the 3ware BBU for the card I would not put any drive on that card which has mission critical data and no OS drive.

Placing FSX on the array alone would only be susceptible to loss in power failures and crashes if it is in a WRITE operation at the time of the crash (installing addons or a service pack)  Otherwise simply reading from the drive it wont hurt anything should such failures occur. However, you should have that BBU from 3ware to ensure complete safe operation and at that point you can place any drive on the controller with confidence.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116051

That controller will allow single drives to perform much better as well as multi I/O arrays.

4. Make SURE you update BOTH the cards firmware and drivers using the latest release from 3Ware. I believe the latest codeset is 9.5.1 as I recall and make sure file and print sharing are enabled in Windows and enabled in the firewall which is required for communication with the card at Windows boot.

5. The card is designed for 3GB/s from each port connector. The 150 Raptors are 1.5GB/s units. The new Vrap is 3. One advantage to that card is if you were to take 2 cheaper 3GB/s Seagate drives with the 32mb cache, they would exceed the 1st gen Raptor for performance but only in RAID0 configuration.

6. DO NOT partition a RAID array, ever. Create the array and install FSX to it and if this is some kind of backup and the target array it not the same drive letter at the original install there will be problems you can not solve without a complete reinstall of FSX and addons. Make sure the target array for FSX and the Windows drive end up with the same drive letters they are on now.

 NOTE: NEW SETTING FOR UPDATE 9.5.2

NEW SETTING IN THE CONTROLLER

PLEASE MAKE SURE READ CACHE IS SET TO BASIC

DISABLED or INTELLIGENT is SLOWER

I already had a remote mount from another card I used.. to tell you the truth I dont remember right off hand what came in the kit but I do think it has a plate it sits on. I would have to dig in my parts box to see what came with the BBU originally.

I know 3ware sells a separate remote mount but as I said I already had one so I simply clipped the battery into it. The battey does get warm so if space is tight remote mounting even a few inches is a nice thing to have. You could probably get something at Radio Shack that would do the job.. they did at one time sell universal clips for flat batteies but I have not been to a Shack in a while.

Multivolumes? On the array itself?  Thats partitioning.. no, the array is the array. Its for FSX only and I also use mine as a scratch drive for video editing and photoshop. The free space left over is great for such things.

The card supports 4 SATA II plugs... you can make any combination of drive setups you like.., single drive with a 2 drive array, 3 drive array or all single.

If you intend to boot from the card and not use any onboard controller you will need to configure the boot drive on the card as a single drive and bootable then set the BIOS of the computer to boot the 3ware controller as the boot hard drive. The card should then do the rest.

If you move all your drives to the 3ware controller then you can shut down the ICH9R controller in the BIOS and it will no longer appear in Windows. Single drives should not require data destruction however you will get a warning if that may happen or you ake a mistake in settings so just watch the screen and dont click OK if you are not sure. A RAID array will require data destruction..

You know.. the best thing to do when you are learning something like this is work one drive at a time and then build the array last. Dont slam things and move them in an ordered sequence to learn how to set up the drives and card.. 

EDIT: The only problem you may end up with here is a configuration issue with drive letters.. how the BIOS sees the drives and how Windows sees the drives will be 2 different things.. in that, you may have issues because the boot.ini file is no longer correct for the location of Windows even if the drive letter is the same... hmmmmmm   yea, I can a problem there. You may have to do a boot repair using the Windows install disk and the 3ware drivers on a floppy and access the RECOVERY CONSOLE to correct and rewrite the boot.ini file and repair the Windows boot that way.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291980

Swapping boot drives is always a pain in the arse when going from a MB to card controller

I was not aware of the restriction to the 1st slot for card boot on the P5E3. I will check into that though.

Sorry it was such a hassle

I am really not sure how that may play out with everything on the array. I have always been one to put the OS on one drive and FSX on its own. None then less the controller with the drive will be much more efficient and perform much better than the motherboard ports, thats for sure.

Past a certain storage speed point FSX flight loading time is not based on the drives.. its based on the CPU, memory and video card which is why myths get perpetuated about how the faster drives wont make any difference.

You are seeing the limits of your components other than the storage array in FSX loading time however be rest assured you are not limited or suffering in scenery and texture loads which is what it important.

There is such a thing as "Maxed Out" for storage performance on todays rendering hardware and with 2 Vraps in RAID (on that professional 3ware card) you are there and then some. You have reached the performance level of SAS (SCSI) with that array. The array on that card will deliver the data at a speed which is equal to or faster than the limits of the system which can process it.. until such time as nex gen motherboard. CPU/memory and video adapters come along at which point your storage system is ready for them and will not pose any bottleneck

By the way.. just an FYI: a single Vraptor on that card in SATAII single drive mode will just about beat 2 1st generation Raptors in RAID0

Merry Christmas Nick.

For clarity as I have just ordered XPP x64 OS (hard to find these days) should be here in days and I will be doing the whole re-install thing.

 I have FSX on a dedicated array.  FSX is the only thing on that array. 

For my OS drive do I want to partition it to save reformatting time?  I would put the OS on say a 30gb partition and other programs on the remainder.

My primary interest is FSX performance so if a single partition is preferable I am ok with it.  All that a separate OS partition would be saving me is the time of reinstalling the OS which I have seemed to be averaging once per month for various reasons.

Not sure what to do here what’s best?

Nick how do you have your system setup?  Do you partition your OS drive?

Hi Nick,

As a followup, my kind wife gave me two 150GB VelociRaptors for my 3ware card for Christmas.  I rebuilt my FSXsp2 rig over the Christmas vacation using the drive-layout list below.  I have just one thought with this configuration.

Freakin' Screams... 

I would like to thank you again for you patient-guidance and your professional dedication to the FS Community at large. 

Drive C:  WinXP_x64 -> 150GB WD Raptor ->  Asus P5E3 SataII port 0 (AHCI mode) (formated 'primary/active' 4k clusters - default) (write cache enabled)

Drive D:  FSXsp2 -> (3ware 9650se w/BBU 'PCIe slot1') -> 2x 150GB WD VelociRaptors (256K Raid 0 Stripe) (formated 64k clusters - FSX)

Drive E:  Archives -> 320GB WD Caviar -> Asus P5E3 Sata port 1 (AHCI mode) (write cache enabled)

Notes:

• I do have a APC 1500va UPS dedicated to this rig; therefore I do not worry about enabling write-cache on the OS and Archive drives listed above.
• I had to use the upper-most PCIe slot1 for the 3ware card to get the MB to boot with this controller.  Something peculiar about this combo that I found after purchase.

Question:  When reformating drives, is it ever necessary to perform a "complete" format of the drives or is 'quick' format adequete; especially when changing cluster sizes?  Thanks for your thoughts...

With kind regards,

Its about choices... what I posted will take you into years of constant and reliable storage performance. Why wonder where a problem is coming from? Each time you add the right hardware to a system and confirm it you are removing another bottleneck

@ Psybear.. the CPU is relieved of the stress by using the suggested hardware. So slower CPUs benefit from it even more than fast ones

Hi Nick, I was following your recommendations through this forum and others, and I almost understood everything ok. I purchased two vraps and the 3ware is coming. For the OS I have a seagate barracuda 1TB sata II 32mb cache.

What I wonder is the following:

The single Sata II OS drive, would be better to be installed as a single drive on the card? (on this case, the card should boot the system) or plugging the OS drive directly to the first available on-board sata port would hit pèrfomance or bring some problems under this configuration? (2xvraps Raid0 on 3ware and OS sinlge drive plugged to onbaord stat port)

Many thanks for your support.

Mario

Raid is overkill with Vraps.   you wont see any advantage over a single Vrap using that card with the exception of one circumstance and even then the gain although better, would not be 100%

If one purchased the card and did not spend the money on the Vraps but instead purchased 2 32MB cache drives those would be equal in speed in RAID on that card with a single Vrap

So you do not need to RAID those Vraps. The only exception I would make to that is if you intend to install very large photoscenery packages which have huge files associated with it.. then I can see some advantage with the RAID on the Vraps.. otherwise its overkill

I have a few systems that I use the card strictly for the performance application and use a motherboard SATA port for the OS and it works fine so that is an option, just not as fast.

Using the card for all drives and shutting down the SATA system completely is the highest perf option however do keep in mind, to do so means you must have the battery backup unit for the card operational too. External backup units will not protect from data loss in the event of a crash and the BBU module must be used.

Nick,

Should I enable Queing in 3DM2 for single drives on the 9650se that are set to 'fixdisk'?  I understand my FSX raid0 set should have it unchecked  but what about my single Raptor boot drive (fixdisk) or my single Caviar archive drive (fixdisk)?

I checked the drive compatibility doc on the 3ware site and both of these are listed to have 'enable NCQ'.  I understand your instruction above to not enable NCQ for the FSX drive/set, but what about other fixedisk drives?

3Ware 9650se-4PL (w/BBU) - Onboard Matrix Raid/AHCI disabled

Lane 1 = WD Raptor 150GB fixedisk (WinXP_x64)  <-- Enable NCQ?

Lane 2&3 = WD VelociRaptor 150GB x2 (Raid0) FSX  <-- NCQ is OFF!

Lane 4 = WD Caviar 320GB fixdisk (Archive)  <-- Enable NCQ?

Short and to the point!  I doesn't get any easier than that.  Thanks for the quick reply as I know you're terribly busy.