Can some one explain this to me?
I have an Adaptec AHA-2940U2W adapter in my system currently and have 4 Quantum Atlas IV 9.1Gb HDD + 1 Quantum Atlas V 9.1Gb HDD on the U2W chain. I also have a DVD, Burner, Standard CDROM, and Zip 100 drive on the Wide channel. I have a SOFTWARE RAID 0 stripe set on the 4 Atlas IV HDDs using Win2K with 64K stripes.
Using that configuration, I can get a maximum data throughput of over 62MBps. Now here is what is bugging the hell out of me.
I purchased an Adaptec AAA-131U2 hardware array adapter w/ a 64MB cache DIMM on it. I then reconfigured my whole system so that all 5 HDDs were in a single RAID 0 config w/ 64k stripes. I get into windows and test it with the cache enabled and I can only hit 47Mbps throughput ONLY if all the CDROMS are unpluged from the array adapter! Otherwise, I get only 42MBps throughput!!!!!
What the hell am I doing wrong?!?!?
Every thing I have ever read tells me that a hardware array adaper should easily be able to outperform a software solution hands down.
Please help out a fellow WC please....
