Over at The Void we've been experiencing a rather odd problem...

Our "Turbo" server is a dual-550 mhz HP NetCenter machine, 1 gb RAM, running TWGS on a RAID array off an Adaptec RAID controller with 64 mb of onboard disk cache. The server runs like a banshee, and was even able to support almost 100 simultaneous connections without so much as a hiccup not too long ago.

The problem comes at Extern. It takes anywhere from 2 to 3 minutes per game for Extern to run, and during this time lag becomes so horrendous it can take as long as ten seconds for a player to get a "Who's Online" report of only a couple lines.

I recently set up a second machine, a single processor system, but using the same model Adaptec RAID controller and drive brand/models, with duplicate RAID array configurations. The problem persisted on the test machine. I wiped the system clean, reverted back to a standard daisy-chain SCSI setup and reinstalled a copy of the active TWGS server. After the conversion, Extern for all four games ran in under 20 seconds.

Thinking it might be the Adaptec card I installed a HP NetRaid card, wiped the machine again and reinstalled from the ground up. The Extern lag reared its ugly head again.

It's almost embarrassing to have our P90-based TWGS server run Extern on six games several minutes faster than our 1.1 ghz "Turbo" server can run Extern on four games.

I'm at a loss here. In my extensive experience with RAID architecture, the RAID should be transparent to any software operating above the system level. So why the drastic differences in Extern run time between a standard SCSI configuration and a RAID configuration?

Any Sysops out there running TWGS on a RAID array? If so, what kind of RAID controller and drives are you running? Ever see this problem before? Anyone have a magic wand I can wave over the server box?