RAID0!!

What RAID0 is good for:
Storage drive where you're constantly copying/pasting large files.
...thanks to good sequential read + write times
Combining lots of small drives to one big storage drive.

What RAID0 is NOT particularly good for
Fast loading of games.
Fast loading of apps.
Fast loading of OS at boot.
Reliability.

Above three things primarily depend on *random* read times, which are barely improved by RAID 0. Instead of an average of about 15ms, you might drop down to 14ms. The random access times on an SSD are near 0ms.

If you want faster boots and faster game loading then RAID0 is not the way to go - you need SSDs. In addition, the more drives you have in a RAID0 set up, if one single drive has a hardware or software (virus) error, you lose all the data across all of them.

EDIT: One thing that does improve random access times on a disk drive is short-stroking. I.e. taking a 2gb HD and only using the first 250mb on the platter. Extremely inefficient cost wise, but you do get faster game loading times. I RAIDed two old 500gb deskstars to single 200gb total partition and my random access times were about 8-9ms.
 
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Would have to disagree with some of the above, i'm using WD Blue Drives in Raid 0 configuration and my games seem to load pretty fast in comparison to having a single drive. The other thing which could help indicate raid 0 offering improvements is some of my benchmarks scores in comparison to others where I seem to be scoring higher figures yet using older technology for example ive got higher Heaven 2.5 scores then people with the same card but who are using the i7 processor.

Ive been looking upgrading my current Blue to the F3s but just waiting for a moment where I can start stripping my data from my current array.
 
I read so many different storys that it would speed loading games up, and some say not lol
I orderd another f3 now... for the price i thought it be worth it. so i wont see any speed up times in games at all then ?
 
Games honestly shouldn't load faster in RAID0 compared to a single drive.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/1371/10

It's something which is epically debated on forums, and some people swear religiously by their RAID0 arrays. Any benchmark of a RAID0 array will show minimal increase in random access times, which is the most important factor in app/game/os loading. It's possible that some games make use of contiguous file loading, in which case you might see some slight performance gain.

EDIT: additional link with data from Maximum PC benchmarks, which were considered to be the definitive review on this. http://uk.faqs.ign.com/articles/606/606669p1.html
EDIT2: oc.com benchmark http://www.overclockers.com/raptors-and-raid-game-load-up-results/
 
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iTek said:
Would have to disagree with some of the above, i'm using WD Blue Drives in Raid 0 configuration and my games seem to load pretty fast in comparison to having a single drive. The other thing which could help indicate raid 0 offering improvements is some of my benchmarks scores in comparison to others where I seem to be scoring higher figures yet using older technology for example ive got higher Heaven 2.5 scores then people with the same card but who are using the i7 processor.

Ive been looking upgrading my current Blue to the F3s but just waiting for a moment where I can start stripping my data from my current array.
Click to expand...

iTek. any info on the best way to setup raido plz mate..
Cheers :)
 
What motherboard you using?

Its pretty straight forward usually, I just ran through the Raid tool which was part of the BIOS on my motherboard (ASUS P5Q Pro)
 
iTek said:
The other thing which could help indicate raid 0 offering improvements is some of my benchmarks scores in comparison to others where I seem to be scoring higher figures yet using older technology for example ive got higher Heaven 2.5 scores then people with the same card but who are using the i7 processor.
Click to expand...

I don't understand how your hard drive will affect the Heaven benchmark?
 
It depends on the game but most games now have large textures which have to be loaded into graphics memory. This load is generally done at the start of a level unless there's some clever mechanics reading ahead and getting stuff ready for you behind the scenes. If you look at the 3GB+ installs for games now MOST of the data is in the form of textures. These DO take considerable load time and are usually helped by higher sequential read (as they are decently sized files).
 
Mercutio said:
It depends on the game but most games now have large textures which have to be loaded into graphics memory. This load is generally done at the start of a level unless there's some clever mechanics reading ahead and getting stuff ready for you behind the scenes. If you look at the 3GB+ installs for games now MOST of the data is in the form of textures. These DO take considerable load time and are usually helped by higher sequential read (as they are decently sized files).
Click to expand...

That's very interesting to know, cheers.
 
To give a real life example i'm ALWAYS the first person to load up in an instance in WoW. Running a raid 5 but the principle is the same :)
 
iTek said:
What motherboard you using?

Its pretty straight forward usually, I just ran through the Raid tool which was part of the BIOS on my motherboard (ASUS P5Q Pro)
Click to expand...

Hi,

I'm using an Asus rampage III Extreme. shall i put the sata connetions on any sata port on the motherboard ?

Cheers.
 
The place is see the most benifit and why I'm not going ssd is game load levels, as was said above, loading all the textures etc before u play, it has to faster at this because it's accessing the same quantity of data from 2 locations simultaneously
 
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