Alternative too SSD's..

adamknox

adamknox

adamknox

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Bridgwater, Somerset, UK
last few weeks my hard drive has seemed to get a little louder. While i have run diffrent hard drive error scans and all have passed. I am still getting a bit worried and think its time to put my hard drive out to stud.

I have a 1Tb WD hard drive which has everything installed on it and normally sits around half full (mostly of music and games) I did toy with buying a SSD for the games but i couldnt live with my self spending over £150 for a 64GB SSD. So insted im going for a RAID 0 set up! (yes i know they can fail but even if i just got one hard drive it could fail right? Same risk..sort of)

This is what im planning...

3 hard drives (Something like these) http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-130-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=768 in raid 0 set up. This would hold all my games,( i have around 200Gb of games) windows 7 64bit and programs. with my 1Tb or my samsung 500Gb for backup (i back up my user Account file once a week)

I have never delt with RAID 0 before so i have a few questions.

1: would i see an improvment during gaming? Games like Oblivion or fallout 3 that seem to judder when loading new textures from the hard drive etc)

2: would i see an improvment with winodws 7 performance? (faster start ups etc)

3: Does these hard drives seem okay for raid 0? Lol i know the 10,000rpm ones would be a lot better ..but that would come to around £550 ><

thanks for any help you can give - Adam-Knox
 
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You will get improved game loads, because these are largely sequential operations.
Win7 will feel slightly faster.
Those drives are fine, The Samsung F3 are good too.

All in all it's no real substitute for an SSD. Sequential performance is much improved, but performance whilst multitasking or random small file operations is low. You won't get the "snappy" 24/7 responsiveness on the desktop that SSD's are known for.

If all you care about is game loads though then a RAID0 of mechanical drives is good value for money.

SSD wise I can recommend the Intel 80GB, It's £169 on OCUK currently and I find provides enough room for around 5 big game installs as well as the usual Win7 + apps.
 
Zarf said:
If all you care about is game loads though then a RAID0 of mechanical drives is good value for money.

SSD wise I can recommend the Intel 80GB, It's £169 on OCUK currently and I find provides enough room for around 5 big game installs as well as the usual Win7 + apps.
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thanks very much for your help :) I was tempted like i say by an SSD as they do look amazing. Maybe when they come down in price + up in size! At the moment tho i think im deff gunna go with raid0.

Another question i had .. does size matter?.. lol Size of the hard drives? I hear some people saying 320ish GB are best for raid while others say go for 500GB. As long as it has a single platter it will be okay.
 
It isn't number of platters that improves speed, it's the size of them and thus their density. So you're better off going with a pair of single platter 500GB drives (Samsung F3).
 
AbsenceJam said:
It isn't number of platters that improves speed, it's the size of them and thus their density. So you're better off going with a pair of single platter 500GB drives (Samsung F3).
Click to expand...

what about going with three of them will that still be okay? lol sorry if sounds like a nooby question. never delt with raids before lol

P.s or what about three of these http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-245-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=940 It has 32Mb cach.. (no idea what that is lol but bigger than the 16Mb ones)
 
Be aware RAID 0 can fail quite easily... my raid 0 array lasted a few months before I started getting controller errors then few weeks later unbootable.

If you are going to run RAID depending on how much work you do I recommend doing bi-weekly backups atleast.
 
adamknox said:
what about going with three of them will that still be okay? lol sorry if sounds like a nooby question. never delt with raids before lol

P.s or what about three of these http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-245-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=940 It has 32Mb cach.. (no idea what that is lol but bigger than the 16Mb ones)
Click to expand...

Three 320GB/platter drives will be quicker than two 500GB/platter ones but you might as well go with the latter since: you won't notice any benefit above them, cost less, less power, more space and less chance of failure.

Cache size makes no difference and the 500GB WD's don't use 500GB platters yet I don't think.
 
rexehuk said:
Be aware RAID 0 can fail quite easily... my raid 0 array lasted a few months before I started getting controller errors then few weeks later unbootable.

If you are going to run RAID depending on how much work you do I recommend doing bi-weekly backups atleast.
Click to expand...

tbh at the moment i reformat every 3-4 months soo i dont mind about it only last a few months :D
 
AbsenceJam said:
It isn't number of platters that improves speed, it's the size of them and thus their density. So you're better off going with a pair of single platter 500GB drives (Samsung F3).
Click to expand...

AbsenceJam said:
I don't see where anyone said differently. Either way they're wrong, look up benchmarks of F3's and 320GB disks.
Click to expand...

wasnt having a go at you mate lol Just been told so many diffrent things/sown so many diffrent benchmarks and all are diffrent -_- so bit confused. sorry if ya thought i was :P
 
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