Does RAID0 Really Increase Disk Performance?

PCMark05

We used PCMark05 to conduct two tests: the HDD benchmark module and the system overall performance, called System. On the first one we wanted to see the performance increase in the hard disk drive system by the use of a RAID0 system instead of a single-drive configuration. On the second test we wanted to see if this increase in the hard disk performance was translated into a higher overall performance.

System batch performs the following tests: HDD XP Startup, Physics and 3D, 2D Transparent Window, 3D Pixel Shader, Web Page Rendering, File Decryption, 2D Graphics Memory – 64 lines, HDD General Usage and three multithreading tests. The results are given in a PCMark05 specific unit.

HDD batch performs the following tests: XP startup, application loading, general usage, virus scanning and file write. The results are also in a PCMark05 specific unit.

The HDD batch score increased between 34.40% and 47.39% when we used a RAID0 configuration instead of a single disk configuration. The performance difference between the highest RAID result (128 KB stripes) and the lowest one (4 KB stripes) was of 9.66%.

Our PC overall performance increased between 4.44% and 8.82% when we used a RAID0 configuration instead of a single disk configuration – excluding the result with 64 KB stripes, which was 3.73% below the result achieved by our single-drive configuration. As you can see, a higher disk performance increases the overall system performance a little bit, but not as much as the performance increase of the hard disk drive system itself.