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I have desktop in which I installed HP SmartArray P400 controller with two HP DF0146B8052 hard drives. I made RAID0 logical volume from them, but I am getting 20MB/s write speed and ~140-120MB/s read speed. Also there is quite low scatter for benchmark results (I am getting quite nice line) and it looks like controller is "capping" my speeds. I tried reseting controllers configuration and I haven't found any settings in HP ACU (Array Configuration Utility) to help me.

I am using Windows 7 Ultimate and M4A78 board

Does anyone have ideas what could be wrong? Also I am attaching diagnostic results.

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    From the log, it looks like you don't have a working cache battery installed. Is that true?
    – jscott
    Mar 13, 2011 at 21:39
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    There is interesting setting about read and write caches. pastebin.com/0e83Cinf - read has 100 and write 0 :/ Mar 13, 2011 at 21:48
  • I applied all possible updates for disks and controller and is seems that it helped a bit though I didn't get performance that I would like from such array. Sep 13, 2011 at 11:56
  • In the accepted answer, the key is #3... You need to get a functioning cache battery installed.
    – jscott
    Sep 13, 2011 at 15:11
  • What does cache battery give for me? Only possibility to save data during power failure.... No - I didn't install cache battery Sep 16, 2011 at 7:15

2 Answers 2

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  1. Make sure that you have the latest P400 firmware on your card (yours is very outdated!)
  2. Make sure that you have the latest firmware for your HP drives (yours isn't up to date)
  3. Have a Cache battery installed on your P400 (you don't)
  4. Enable the controller's write cache (you haven't)

To upgrade your firmware, download the Smart Update Firmware DVD from this page: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=1157689&prodTypeId=329290&prodSeriesId=1157687&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=4024

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Check your raid caching policy for the virtual volume you created. I had a similar issue a few weeks back with an LSI card.

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  • Could you point me how should I do it? Mar 13, 2011 at 21:49
  • I'm not familiar with that specific card, but you will want to check to see if the write policy is set to write back, not write through. If you right click on the virtual drive from the ui, you should be able check the properties and change it from there.
    – Dan
    Mar 13, 2011 at 22:00

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