The CERC Raid card is a hardware Raid-5 card with 6 channels. There should be a web based app that you use to manage the card and to run diagnostics.
Things to check for performance issues.
- What is the cache on the drive: 2mb, 8mb, 16mb?
- What is the speed: SATA, SATA2-150, or SATA300 ?
- What speed is the card rated at?
- Do you have a failed drive in the array?
- Is the BIOS of the drives up to date?
- Is the BIOS of the card up to date?
- Are the RAID drivers in the OS up to date?
- In the task manager, show one graph per CPU. Is any one CPU maxed out?
- Try disabling services and programs to see if you get a sudden performance boost.
The way the CERC works is that it creates a virtual pool of space that is composed of whatever space from the multiple drives that you assign. When you set up a drive letter you are actually creating a virtual drive that is carved out of the pool.
David.