1x640gb or 2x320gb??

Fledge · 12 Mar 2009 at 22:45

For a gaming and video PC...

Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD6401AALS)

or...

Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (0A38018) X2

I really don't know which would be better.
Please help

Greenlizard0 · 12 Mar 2009 at 22:46

Are you planning to RAID 0 them? I'd take the two smaller drives. Though not a fan of Hitachi tbh.

Fledge · 12 Mar 2009 at 22:51

Yes, RAID 0 is my plan for two drives. Though tbh I don't see the point if I can have the same storage space in one drive - taking up less space.

Defenestration · 13 Mar 2009 at 03:24

The WD drive is a great drive, and unless you need a RAID1 partition now, I would go for the single WD drive. Reason being that you mention you will use it for video, so you will probably want to increase capacity later either way, meaning you'll have less drives.

However, getting two drives now gives you more flexibility now with matrix RAID (eg. RAID0 partition and also a RAID1 partition for backups).

Paul11 · 13 Mar 2009 at 08:17

Fledge said:
Yes, RAID 0 is my plan for two drives. Though tbh I don't see the point if I can have the same storage space in one drive - taking up less space.

the point is that RAID0 is for increased speed.

Fledge · 13 Mar 2009 at 08:19

Ah now this is starting to make sense

Paul11 said:
the point is that RAID0 is for increased speed.

Would the two smaller drives be faster than the WD?

Paul11 · 13 Mar 2009 at 08:31

Fledge said:
Would the two smaller drives be faster than the WD?

yes, the theory is that by having two drives you can read/write to them at the same time.

as to if its worth the hassle or not, that is another question and i would do some more reading up before you decide the best option.

with Raid0 both drives combine to look like one drive, but if one of them fails you lose the data on both of them... also raid arrays can fail.

this is not a problem if you have a good backup system in place

Bones · 13 Mar 2009 at 08:56

If you need the extra space for storage get a single drive, but if you want to put games, applications, operating system etc on it then go for raid0.

raid is performance (at risk) while 1 drive is at less risk.

Fledge · 13 Mar 2009 at 15:38

Does using RAID0 actually increase the risk of drive fail?

Paul11 · 13 Mar 2009 at 16:05

Fledge said:
Does using RAID0 actually increase the risk of drive fail?

dont think it increases the chances of a drive failing, but it does double your chances of failure because if one drive fails you lose data from both

Defenestration · 13 Mar 2009 at 16:41

No, it doesn't increase the chance of a drive failing.

Hadn't thought sbout this until now, but the fact that each drive only writes half the amount of data, then I suppose it could be argued that the risk of failure is not double (yet still more than one) when using two drives.

Fledge · 13 Mar 2009 at 17:18

Ok thanks for all the feedback, I think I'll go for the two drives in RAID0 due to better performance

Paul11 · 13 Mar 2009 at 18:31

Defenestration said:
then I suppose it could be argued that the risk of failure is not double (yet still more than one) when using two drives.

it is double, isnt it..

if you have one drive and it fails its 1/1
if you have two drives and one fails its 1/2

Defenestration · 13 Mar 2009 at 18:45

Paul11 said:
it is double, isnt it..

if you have one drive and it fails its 1/1
if you have two drives and one fails its 1/2

In general, yes.

It just came to me though when reading this thread that you're only writing half the amount on each drive in RAID0, so the head may be over the platter for slightly less time.

EsaT · 13 Mar 2009 at 21:21

If failure probability in given time is x for one drive with two such drives propability for one such event is 2x and because of even single failure is enough in case of RAID0 reliability is basically halved/failure probability doubled compared to single drive.

Defenestration said:
you're only writing half the amount on each drive in RAID0, so the head may be over the platter for slightly less time.

Read/write heads are there in any case if you have drive running.
And manufacturers would probably know it but I doubt that halving amount of transfers has that big decreasing effect to failures. (lot of other areas where weakest individual part can be)