Data Failure

[Scorpiоn]

Case closed I suppose.  The hard disk failed.  I called the place up to see if there was anything else I could do (did all their tests and such, which returned a defecient component error) and pretty much my only course of action is a replacement.  However, the guy on the telephone told me I'd have to agree to a WMD agreement, which I let slide as a joke...  lo and behold:

By clicking the "I agree" button, I agree that Hitachi GST products will not be used for the design, development, manufacturing, testing, stockpiling, or use of biological, nuclear, missile or chemical weapons.

I guess we know Osama doesn't use Hitachi drives in his computer!

[NicksFXHouse]

[quote]Case closed I suppose.

[Fly2e]

Don't feel so bad Scorp  ;)

I am almost complete on having to reset my entire system!

On a cold February morning this year, I sat down in front of my PC with my morning coffee, powered up my system and got a nice message stating, "IDE Drive not detected".
To make a very long story short, since I had a raid configuration and one of my two hard drives did not want to spin up, I had to bite the bullet!  :P

Luckily I have ALL my stuff backed up everyday onto an external but it really sucked to have to rebuild my machine & my simulator!
I am still in the process of rebuilding the sim, add on by add on. This time I am documenting everything so when FSX comes out, it will be real easy to reinstall!!

Good luck!  8)


Dave

[congo]

Yikes!

There is a rather strong argument for making a backup copy of the FS9 folder and the other relevant folders in documents and settings and keeping that data on a different hard disk. Hard drives are one of the cheapest components to buy.

PC's should come with a warning....... "This machine could make your life miserable unless you backup your data onto a safe, seperate hard disk."

[congo]

Specifically, what behavior do you mean?

Did you reboot between each pass? If not, some of what you see could be because some of the files remain in PM or page. You must reboot between tests to assure the PM is clear for any type of test to be valid or have merit.

Copy/Paste is different than Cut/Paste. Do not mix tests which copies files to another drive or directory with tests that moves files to another drive or directory. Although they are similar in method, they should have distinctly different properties to their timed results.

The behaviour of the extremely long copy on the IDE drive compared to my SATA to SATA or SATA to ATA copy times is what I was referring to.

The results are repeatable, I just tried it again after a reboot.

I'm not moving files - copy/paste, also I tried it with other folders of similar size.


I have 2 x 80gb backup drives, both are ATA100 seagates but the newer one has 8mb cache, I just tried the same test on the newer drive and got a 6 minute copy time, which is more in line with a 2:1 performance comparison with the time taken on the SATA Raid array.

I'm not saying this is conclusive by any stretch, maybe you know of simple method to test realtime performance differences which are conclusive NickN?

Here is my configuration:

2 x 200gb WD 200gb SATA in raid0 (boot array)

2 x 80gb seagate ATA100 , the older ATA drive is on IDE0, the other is on IDE1.

[Scorpiоn]

Don't feel so bad Scorp  ;)

I am almost complete on having to reset my entire system!

On a cold February morning this year, I sat down in front of my PC with my morning coffee, powered up my system and got a nice message stating, "IDE Drive not detected".
To make a very long story short, since I had a raid configuration and one of my two hard drives did not want to spin up, I had to bite the bullet!  :P

Luckily I have ALL my stuff backed up everyday onto an external but it really sucked to have to rebuild my machine & my simulator!
I am still in the process of rebuilding the sim, add on by add on. This time I am documenting everything so when FSX comes out, it will be real easy to reinstall!!

Oh, reformatting doesn't bother me one bit.  I think I might be masochistic because I do it so much... ::) It was the fact that I might've lost all my info that scared me! Plus the fact I might've been out 200 buckaroos.  Thanks god for the warranty, though.  Despite the drive failure, I can still occupy myself since I own two PCs (if you count a laptop a PC), but typing on this lap is a nightmare.  Even if I didn't have a lap, I could use my dad's computer (500Mhz! D: ).

In the meantime, I plan to prep my "spare" 250 IDE (Hitachi!  No less...) so that I can copy most everything over when I make a RAID 1 with the replacement drive.  I can't prepare programs because of their infernal registry keys! Bullocks.

[NicksFXHouse]

The behaviour of the extremely long copy on the IDE drive compared to my SATA to SATA or SATA to ATA copy times is what I was referring to.

Ok I understand now... Coping a file from one drive or partition to another and timing it is one way to see the relationship between the read and write times on different drives however that type of analysis does not have anything to do with what is important which is the access time on the head and how efficient the files are laid out on the drive (block+cluster+defrag).

EDIT:
Let me put it like this

[congo]

Thanks for that NickN, I'll have a look at that site and see what I can learn.

I get to start over now WooHoo! I measured my files and my drives are set at 16kbs when they should be 32kbs.

[NicksFXHouse]

Thanks for that NickN, I'll have a look at that site and see what I can learn.

I get to start over now WooHoo! I measured my files and my drives are set at 16kbs when they should be 32kbs.

Before choosing that block number, make sure of the following:

1. All the files and applications were installed. Make sure all your games, office software and every possible application you use is installed.

2. All non-essential files were off the drive such as movies and huge ISO's which can be stored on another drive.

3. In the case of games... if the formula places the block size @ 32k, 64k may be a better choice. If the answer to Average kb file size divided by 2 = 45kb or higher, AND the system will be used for games, use 64k for the RAID block size. This covers the installation of future games and add-ons/updates for the games currently installed and being used.


Where you will notice a performance difference is in how the RAID drive boots FS9 and loads a flight. When the array is correctly set up and optimized (block + cluster) including a proper defragment, you should notice a significant difference in how quiet the array is with less disk access and how fast it is in general.

[congo]

I'm assuming that the 64kb size has no performance penalty and that the disadvantage is a reduction in storage space. (which I have plenty of)

Is that true?

[NicksFXHouse]

I'm assuming that the 64kb size has no performance penalty and that the disadvantage is a reduction in storage space. (which I have plenty of)

Is that true?

What you may loose by setting the block size too high or too low is access performance. Optimal: you want 1/2 of the file to be on one disk and 1/2 of the file on the other. It is impossible to know 100% that the average file size is extremely accurate... by that I mean it is possible to have alot of small files which are hardly ever used and that are driving down the calculated average file size on the drive.

The average file size is used as a base to start your calculations but that number may be skewed a bit and we want to ensure the files we want to be fast are covered in the block setting. For games, generally, 64k is a good block size.

My experience has taught me after years of testing and tinkering to that if the average file size / 2 = 45 to 95 on a game system to set the block to 64.