Only writing to "physical disk 4" in raid array

[Fredriks3]

System: Proliant ml 350 G5

Smart array p600 with 5 x 2TB in raid 5 divided in 4 1.9 TB volumes (due to vmware esx limitatins)

OS: Vmware esxi 5

Primary VM: Windows 2008 r2

In windows 2008 r2 i have combines de 4 volumes to 1 large.

My problem is that read and wite speed are often verry slow. For example in utorrentI get the message Disk overload 100% often. And downloading a large file from an FTP givs large speed variations. Eaven reading is slow, I could not even stream a videofile from the server to my laptop. Copying the file took 3-5 times as long as it should do.

If I look in  Recource monitor I only have activity on Physical disk 4, some load balancing would be nice.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Please provide more details around "In windows 2008 r2 i have combines de 4 volumes to 1 large."

It sounds like what you made in windows is not a stripe.

It sounds like first it writes on the first disk, until it is full, then writes onto the next disk, and then the next.

But, as all "Physical Disk" in Windows are actually part of the same set of real physical disks you wouldn't get more performance if you started writing to another part of the same real physical disks.

For RAID5 you want to have a cache or you get really bad performance - do you have a BBWC installed?