RAID Array Stripe Alignment affect Performance

By klau
in Hardware Hangout

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klau

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Just found out that RAID arrays can have alignment issues, separate from the well known 4K sector issue.

I suspect it to be the cause of slow transfer rates on my Adaptec RAID 3805 RAID6 (5x Hitachi 2TB 7200 RPM) array.

Nodesoft Disk Bench only gets 100MB/s writes and 80MB/s reads (these figures are more in line my Windows File Copy performance)

http://www.nodesoft.com/diskbench

But I don't know why the following benchmarks report so much higher

Atto/HDtach:

ATTOANDHDTachbenchwithRAID63805Hitachi2TB.jpg

Crystal:

CrystalDiskbenchwithRAID63805Hitachi2TB.jpg

However,

I think I have confirmed that my array is not aligned, but am not sure.

State of Array:

aligninfo1.jpg

Results:

Alignment Calculator:

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157

aligncalc.jpg

Alignment Checking Script:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?57599-RAID-Non-RAID-Partition-Alignment-for-max-performance&p=518021&viewfull=1#post518021

Device ID: Disk #2, Partition #0

=======================================================

Total Volume Size: 5 TB

Starting Offset: 134235136 (131089 KB)

Partition Alignment: ** NOT ALIGNED!! **

VM Check Alignment Tool:

http://ctxadmtools.musumeci.com.ar/VMCheckAlign/VMCheckAlignment10.html

vmcheckalign.jpg

My Calculation:

Formula: ((Partition offset) * (Disk sector size)) / (Stripe unit size)

Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929491

Partition off set = 134235136b

Disk sector size = 512b

stripe unit size = 262144b

block size = 512b

answer = 262178

This is an integer, thus indicates the array is aligned. But this conflicts with the conclusions of the other calculators, so WTF? I have no idea what I'm doing lol :weep:

Array Info:

Adaptec RAID 3805 RAID6

HD 5x (Hitachi 2TB) Sector Size: 512Bytes

Stripe Size: 256K

Disk Format: GPT

Windows Disc mode, Basic or Dynamic: Basic

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