Need good 1+0 RAID. Advice, please!

[knowyouremeny]

I ran 0+1 on the integrated NV RAID... 64kb clusters, 128kb stripes, partitioned. It performed horribly.

NV RAID 0+1 HDTach (http://d40.yousendit.com/F/3OSU409W4DNRF2NQCMLOQUEFLU/untitled.JPG)
ATTO no queue (http://s48.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1ATPXUQKCYRV23R79LSA4SIVNX)
ATTO w/ queue (http://s49.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2D6N0PABWJ18W3JV0BJYI6TML4)

I got rid of the partition and the 64kb clusters. Performed the same. Got rid of the 128kb stripes and used "optimal" (64kb) stripes. Performed the same.

I got rid of the array altogether and checked the drives out one-by-one... all gave good results. 75 MB/s on the outside, 40 MB/s on the inside... so it wasn't a problem with the drives and/or cables.

I then put them into RAID0 x4, which gave me pretty good results:
HDTach (http://s44.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2T5W0PDUVDYZV1CKU3IUZUBP38) (still very ugly, but at least it's decent bandwidth)
ATTO no queue (http://s44.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=17FAMQ7A8KRRK1MWDTP70CZEU8)
ATTO w/ queue (http://s44.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=26JMJYVLKZLIB1XVFGGZPUNEZV)

So I've pretty much decided that everything is ok, but NVRAID sucks in 0+1... which is what I need... not 0x4.

So what would you suggest? What RAID controller does good 10? The only slots that I have are PCI, PCI-e x1. x4, and x16, so I can use pretty much anything except the PCI-X cards.

[Mt_Goat]

Try 16 stripe and 16 cluster unless you are going to use it for video files. Then if you are installing an OS on it DO NOT use the IDE SW drivers.

[knowyouremeny]

Try 16 stripe and 16 cluster unless you are going to use it for video files.

I am. :)

Then if you are installing an OS on it DO NOT use the IDE SW drivers.

I never tried not installing those... but I got it set up now in a way that's halfway ok with me. :) 2 drives in RAID1. 2 in RAID0. Do you know for a fact that those drivers mess up the arrays?

The culprit was the NVRAID1 combining the RAID0's underneath it. Right now, I'm getting the same average MB/s out of 2 drives in 1 that I was with 4 drives in 0+1. Not sure why it was performing so poorly.

[Armo]

larger clusters are for accessing and transfering huge ammounts of data to and from the array, i use 512byte block size and 128kb stripe size cause of the huge files i have.

[Mt_Goat]

Set up the RAID-0 first then combine the other drives into it when asked to create a 0+1. You just have it backwards for performance + redundancy.