Performance Hard Drive Setup?

[stocky]

Ah, a new section

I am having difficulty deciding on a Hard Drive setup for my peltier rig project. I'm undecided upon whether to choose upon the following:

1 x 36GB Raptor (currently have),

2 x 36GB Raptors,

1 x 74GB Raptor,

2 x 74GB Raptors,

1 x 7200rpm Drive (16MB?),

2 x 7200rpm Drive (16MB?),

3 x, 4x etc any significant performance increase?

I'm proposing a RAID-0 configuration, as I suspect this will improve performance significantly in any setup.

From the point of benching in PCMark and 3DMark is there significant differences in any of configurations?

Hard drives are a bit of a grey area in my knowledge, so any advice experience would be appreciated

 

[chris_ah1]

I would say 2*7200rpm drives.

The latest models definitely beat 36GB raptors and whilst 74GB raptors in RAID0 or RAID1 will probably give you an edge, I'm not sure its worth it.

AS I've said before, if you are a really nutter you will get a PCIe sata RAID card and stack as many drives as you can get...or better yet, a PCIe scsi RAID.

Of course the greater the number of drives, the faster it will be, but in RAID0 you will of course get a higher chance of failure. You could go RAID5 (or RAID3 I guess for some extra speed) but to challenge RAID0 I would have thought a rule of thumb is 8drive+ arrays along with one of those new nifty cards with the iop332 xor chip.

Then you have to remember that PCI 32-bit will be easily swamped by two or three fast SATAII drives in RAID0 so for up to 4 drives in RAID0 go with onboard mobo raid.

PCIe is a must for big drive arrays or PCIX or 64-bit PCI if you are lucky to have it and when I say big I mean 3drives+ with parity.

 

[Master_G]

Apart from benching, RAID 0 is pretty worthless, i would go for RAID 1 if you have valuble data or just run 2 serparate drives, for benching i would go with the raptors in RAID 0.

G

 

[maverik-sg1]

Apart from benching, RAID 0 is pretty worthless, i would go for RAID 1 if you have valuble data or just run 2 serparate drives, for benching i would go with the raptors in RAID 0.

G

Okay - interesting point, whats the difference with pro's and cons?

Cheers

Mav

 

[Firelord]

I did have raptors in RAID0 and switched to 80GB SATA-II Hitachi drives in RAID 0 and hardly noticed the difference. It was so insignificant.

As you've got a SATA-I board then i'd say a single Raptor 74GB (quicker and quieter than 36GB ones)

 

[stocky]

I am leaning toward a single 74GB Raptor TBH...

 

[K404]

Okay - interesting point, whats the difference with pro's and cons?

Cheers

Mav

Sorry..I`m gonna jump in here.

RAID0

faster write speeds

all the space of the 2 disks

1 disk going down means the whole lot goes. Any data loss is bad, but I guess this makes it tice as bad

RAID1

fat boost in readin speeds.

secure

twice as expensive for the same disk space

isnt RAID5 (whichever one uses 3 disks) the best value for money? I dont know if that gives the increase in reading AND writing, for that I`d maybe say a RAID0+1.

tuppence, as always

K

 

[Cashman]

Dazboots may be able to help you here guys, he used to run with 5 Raptors in some sort of RAID array.

Ask him, Im sure he'll tell you the pro's and cons.

 

[nick25]

I'd say 2x74GB raptors in raid0 for best performance unless you want to go SCSI.

I personally wouldn't buy raptors anymore though, I don't feel there price justifies the very small performance gain over larger 7200rpm HDs.

4 250GB samsung spinpoints in raid0 are pretty good

 

[stocky]

Do you notice a decrease in performance/ benchmarks with your 4 x spinpoints when compared to your previous Raptors?

I assume the SpinPoints are the 8MB Cache versions?

 

[stocky]

Why has this moved to 'Motherboards & CPU's' ?!

I have a feeling it was renamed at some point...

 

[Master_G]

Okay - interesting point, whats the difference with pro's and cons?

Cheers

Mav

RAID 0 :

Doubles the risk of losing all your data from drive failure.

Increased write speeds

Overall i have never seen a real world test that shows any noticeable difference from RAID 0, doesnt help boot time, game level load time etc.

RAID 1:

Halves the risk of losing all your data from drive failure (hence i recommended it if you have sensitive data)

Increase read speeds

Only get the capacity of 1 of the disks.

I would go for single disks in the end apart from benching and sensitive data, it leaves you with a lower chance of losing your data than RAID 0, gives you the same capacity, and in real world terms, the same performance.

G

 

[Alanore]

I would say 2*7200rpm drives.

The latest models definitely beat 36GB raptors and whilst 74GB raptors in RAID0 or RAID1 will probably give you an edge, I'm not sure its worth it.

AS I've said before, if you are a really nutter you will get a PCIe sata RAID card and stack as many drives as you can get...or better yet, a PCIe scsi RAID.

Of course the greater the number of drives, the faster it will be, but in RAID0 you will of course get a higher chance of failure. You could go RAID5 (or RAID3 I guess for some extra speed) but to challenge RAID0 I would have thought a rule of thumb is 8drive+ arrays along with one of those new nifty cards with the iop332 xor chip.

Then you have to remember that PCI 32-bit will be easily swamped by two or three fast SATAII drives in RAID0 so for up to 4 drives in RAID0 go with onboard mobo raid.

PCIe is a must for big drive arrays or PCIX or 64-bit PCI if you are lucky to have it and when I say big I mean 3drives+ with parity.

Just like the days back in PC Pro, some good advice there!

isnt RAID5 (whichever one uses 3 disks) the best value for money? I dont know if that gives the increase in reading AND writing, for that I`d maybe say a RAID0+1.

No, not many motherboards come with RAID 5 support, so you'll need an add in card which means its not value at all.

Although it your going for say 4disks in a RAID0. You'll probally still need a add in card.

The big problem with RAID cards, significantly those using the PCI interface is that compaired with the onboard (on-chipset) RAIDs they're dog slow. Often 4 Raptors in an array on a RAID card doesnt even beat 2 raptors in a RAID on the chipset. If your using PCI-X and probally PCIe you wont have this trouble.

In terms of benchmarks a RAID 0 of Raptors(74GB) is probally still king thanks to there massive I/O performance, but in terms of throughput, theres little seperating them and todays top 7k2 hard drives. Which is also true for day to day performance, you'll see little diffrence between 2 7200.8s and 2 Raptors.

 

[maverik-sg1]

Thanks for the information guys.

I am in the middle of setting up two Raptors in RAID0 - one question before I move forward - I am used to having my swap file on a separate drive, is it still best to do that now or should I keep it on the RAID?

Also - is RAID0 the grand pappy behind SLI and DUAL core of multithreading?

Cheers

Mav

 

[Alanore]

Thanks for the information guys.

I am in the middle of setting up two Raptors in RAID0 - one question before I move forward - I am used to having my swap file on a separate drive, is it still best to do that now or should I keep it on the RAID?

Also - is RAID0 the grand pappy behind SLI and DUAL core of multithreading?

Cheers

Mav

Hmm, I like to make a small partion on my drive for the swap file, it will stop that main partion getting fragmented so quickly. Your as well as putting the swap file on the RAID even if its not on a seperate partion.

 

[maverik-sg1]

Excellent - create new partition on the RAID tehn and drop the swap in there

5GB enough?

Mav

 

[Alanore]

More than, I tend to go for 1.5Gb.

Also if you format it with the FAT32 filling system it make it that tiny little bit faster.

 

[chris_ah1]

TBH I like making windows suffer with 500MB swap - FAT32 is faster - but only by a bit.