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Running high performance RAID system & ReadyBoost with Windows Vista

  • Artykuł

Hi, I'm Tony Mangefeste, Program Manager in the Optical Platform Group. With the upcoming Beta 2 release of Windows Vista, I took the opportunity to self-host it on my primary development system. At Microsoft, we’re encouraged to self-host the OS and other applications as they are developed. I take a great deal of pride in having the opportunity to run our software through the paces before our customers. The self-host process allows employees to put the software through its paces, and supports the development process. Up until now, I hesitated to install Windows Vista on my main system. My system is a dual-core processor system with four raptor hard disks connected to a RAID controller. I took the opportunity to install the operating system, and loaded the RAID drivers through the 3rd party load driver option during Windows Vista setup. The primary difference from Windows XP was that I am now able to install the drivers from a USB storage key. After I successfully installed the RAID driver and setup completed, you’ll notice that on the Windows Vista 64-bit installation has Drive Integrity checks on by default. 

I am not a RAID expert, but between now and Windows Vista RTMs, RAID driver developers will be boot-signing their drivers. Until then, you will need to turn off Drive Integrity checking by using a bcedit parameter. By using the command bcdedit –set nointegritychecks ON from an elevated command window, then you can disable the boot checking of RAID drivers that are not boot signed. I spoke with the team responsible for the 64-bit driver integrity checking, and there will be resources online during WinHEC 2006 for driver developers and end-users. And after all this, why am I happy that Beta 2 is working so well? As a serious gamer, I’m interested in maximizing the performance of my hard drives as much as possible. I’m very happy with the performance, and I recommend exploring Windows ReadyBoost in addition to getting your RAID array operational. To try ReadyBoost, try plugging in a USB key. Windows Vista will present you with the option to improve system performance. I recommend using ReadyBoost to improve system performance. And where should you look to read more about these cool features? There’s a few places. You can visit this site to learn more about 64-bit kernel mode signing, and visit the Windows Vista Performance site and read up on Windows SuperFetch and Windows ReadyBoost. Make sure and visit the Storage talks at WinHEC for more information about the future of hybrid drives. 

As I find more tips for gamers to squeeze the most out of hard drive performance, I’ll be sure and pass that information along. In the meantime, try out Beta 2, report issues and help us make Windows Vista a great gaming platform.

 

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 31, 2006
    Take a look at linux.
    Take a look at Linspire, who needs Vista?
  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2006
    Not as applicable for arrays, but does anyone know if they finally fixed the disk fragmentation issues present in the previous versions of windows?

    For example, MacOS does not even require a defragmenter due to the quality of disk management present. My XP machines fragment to horrible levels in just a few days of use.
  • Anonymous
    June 13, 2006
    If I have SATA in RAID 0, will Vista automatically load the correct drivers for my onboard Promise controller? If not, then Vista will never be able to be loaded on this machine.
  • Anonymous
    June 14, 2006
    i have a mixed results with vista & raid setup. my system consists of 2 raptors in raid0 and 2 older pata drives in ride0 plus 2 other sata drives (one of them i've just installed for vista only). all this on nforce4 and a64. i was not able to get this system to access my raid partitions during setup - no option to supply raid drivers, and only under recovery options i managed to install raid drivers (i could browse through my rapors to "load drivers") - but it's not remembered once you try to go back to installation window - "setup could not get information about the disks on your computer". i eneded up leaving only 2 sata drives and even then i had to reverse to just one as vista instalation was insisting on placing files on the drive with my data and did not let me use the new drive (partitioned with ntfs under xp).
    once i'd installed the system i enabled remaining drives in bios (and raid as well), installed nvidia drivers but still i can't get the pata raid drives to work - i can see one of them as requiring initializaton (but i'm not willing to loose my other stuff).
    any suggestions?
    by the way - what drivers are the correct ones: 32bit, 64bit or x86? - i installed  64bit vista and 64bit drivers but this x86 seems confusing (obviously in short manual there is nothing about this, and loading raid drives also seems automatic?), besides that 64bit are not digitaly signed (can this be source of any issues) and the IDE folder is quite empty when compared to other driver packs (and i still haven't got my pata raid to work).
  • Anonymous
    June 14, 2006
    bcdedit –set nointegritychecks ON
    does not work, but:
    bcdedit /set nointegritychecks ON
    does