2 or 3 raptors?

arfur · 27 Jan 2007 at 23:35

I thinking of getting rid of 2 of my maxtors and replacing them with either 2 or 3 raptors. I thinking of either 2 74Gb or 3 36GB's, for the extra 20 quid or so I could get an extra 36Gb and have the whole lot in RAID 0

which leads me onto the next question.... does anyone know if the DS4 supports RAID 0 over more than 2 disks?

easyrider · 28 Jan 2007 at 00:23

Just get a single 74 gig raptor for boot drive.

Kaiju · 28 Jan 2007 at 00:44

Just a suggestion but you could source out some second hand 74GB Raptor's with 8MB and stick them in RAID 0.

I got another 8mb 74GB Raptor for £50 from an competitor's clearance bin which i'm happily running in RAID 0 with my previous one. The difference in games is significant and despite the pestering of experience users saying RAID 0 is dead, the feeling of running RAID 0 as a first time user is always nice.

arfur · 28 Jan 2007 at 09:13

cheers,

Dont see why RAID 0 is dead, I work in the industry and I use RAID 0 on our HP servers when we need performance and the data isnt critical, some of the servers only have 2 HDD's so you dont have any choice...

rpstewart · 28 Jan 2007 at 10:28

The DS4 has the Intel Matrix RAID southbridge so will support RAID over up to 4 disks.

Personally I'd look at a couple of 320Gb Seagate 7200.10s rather than Raptors, they're cheaper, bigger and just as quick as the 74Gbs.

arfur · 28 Jan 2007 at 12:51

ok, I've been looking around the net and people are saying that 2 barracuda's 7200.10's are pretty much the same speed as 2 raptors and cheaper, anyone got any opinions on this? I currently have 2 spinpoint 250's these are fast especially with vista

but I want more speed loading games. my current drives get about 200Mb/s burst and 94Mb/s average in HDTACH....

phill9800 · 28 Jan 2007 at 12:56

Does anyone have the results before and after to how fast these drives are? I'd like to see whether or not the bigger drives are just as fast when put into a Raid setup like the Raptors... I'd like to see the difference if someone could help me out...

naro · 28 Jan 2007 at 12:57

my personal opinion is that 10k rpm hdds are still faster than 7.2k rpm hdds.

If you want performance, maybe you can do a Raid 0 on 2 x WD360ADFD Raptors. And then leave your Spinpoints for data

Kaiju · 28 Jan 2007 at 13:37

Personally I feel a 10,000 RPM drive with 8MB or 16MB Cache in Single OR RAID Config will have a lower and effectively better Random Access/Seek Time than a 7,200RPM with 8MB OR 16MB Cache in Single OR RAID Config.

On the otherhand a 7,200RPM with 8MB OR 16MB Cache in RAID 0 will have a better Sustained Transfer Rate than a 10,000RPM 8MB OR 16MB Cache as a single drive and 10,000RPM drives with 8MB in RAID 0.

With 10,000RPM drives with 16MB in RAID 0, the Sustained Transfer Rates should be more or less the same. Based on using the same amount of drives in RAID of course.

FrankJH · 28 Jan 2007 at 14:42

I have heard that with the original Raptors in RAID 0 there wasnt that much of a performance boost (compared to the cost of buying the 2nd Drive)

I have had both an old 36Gb Raptor and a 75GB (v2) Raptor as boot drives and I really like them, but I suspect for my new build I may be tempted into doing a boot raid 0 with some fast 7200rpm drives.

arfur · 28 Jan 2007 at 15:18

from what I can see the Raptors are only SATA (150Mb/s) and the barra's are SATA2 (300Mb/s) so wouldnt the Barra's be faster anyway as long as the board supports SATA2 which my DS4 does.... I'd like to have raptors just so I can say I've got them, but I think the Barra's would be faster, also anyone got any comparisons with the spin points?

unde4d · 28 Jan 2007 at 15:25

SATAII drives aren't faster than SATAI. They support 300Mb/s, but no drive available can use all of that, or even 150Mb/s. Some1 with more knowledge of this stuff can probably explain it better than me.

simonnance · 28 Jan 2007 at 15:28

IIRC SATA-I/SATA-II doesnt make that much diff..... you just dont NEED that type of data rate for most uses, and just becuase the connection can support that speed, doesnt meant the drive can attain it.

arfur · 28 Jan 2007 at 15:30

I think it might be the controller that is capable of 300Mb/s if there are enough drives to push it to that level (4 maybe...) so ... do I get 2 raptor 36's or 2 barra' 7200.10's? I already have a lot of storage so I'm not too bothered about only getting 36's as its speed I'm after....

Kaiju · 28 Jan 2007 at 15:34

arfur said:
I think it might be the controller that is capable of 300Mb/s if there are enough drives to push it to that level (4 maybe...) so ... do I get 2 raptor 36's or 2 barra' 7200.10's? I already have a lot of storage so I'm not too bothered about only getting 36's as its speed I'm after....

You just answered your question. 36GB Raptors with 16MB cache in RAID 0 is your answer.

rpstewart · 28 Jan 2007 at 20:22

arfur said:
I think it might be the controller that is capable of 300Mb/s if there are enough drives to push it to that level (4 maybe...) so ... do I get 2 raptor 36's or 2 barra' 7200.10's? I already have a lot of storage so I'm not too bothered about only getting 36's as its speed I'm after....

The 300Mb/s bandwidth is per drive not per controller.

The 36Gb Raptors, regardless of the cache size, aren't that quick. The data density isn't that high so even with the 10krpm spindle speed the Raptor can't keep up with the 7200.10s. If you have a look back in the forum there are plenty of HDTach traces which show the 7200.10 keeping up with and beating Raptors.

Kaiju · 28 Jan 2007 at 20:58

rpstewart said:
The 300Mb/s bandwidth is per drive not per controller.

The 36Gb Raptors, regardless of the cache size, aren't that quick. The data density isn't that high so even with the 10krpm spindle speed the Raptor can't keep up with the 7200.10s. If you have a look back in the forum there are plenty of HDTach traces which show the 7200.10 keeping up with and beating Raptors.

The Raptor will always have a better random access/seek time than a 7200.10. The 7200.10 may keep up and sometimes beat the Raptors at sustained transfer rates, but that isn't the only variable to consider.

arfur · 28 Jan 2007 at 21:47

I want the drives for my OS / loading BF2 onto and for compiling video on after editing, does that help with the decision?

Kaiju · 28 Jan 2007 at 23:48

arfur said:
I want the drives for my OS / loading BF2 onto and for compiling video on after editing, does that help with the decision?

My personal experience with Battlefield 2/2142 & Windows is that the Raptor definitely enjoys the lower random access times.

cavemanoc · 29 Jan 2007 at 12:26

I wanted exactly what you did, but went for the third option - 15k SCSI cheetahs in a raid 0 = and yes - I was ALWAYS first onto the map. They are quite expensive, but if you only want it for your boot/primary games partition you can do it relatively cheaply:

Dell perc4e/dc controller: £100-150 (make sure it's got the ram module - the battery is not required!
2x18Gb 15k4 (or better) drives for Windows: £50
2x72Gb 15k4's for the Games: £180

About £350 all in but very, very quick. You can save a lot by going for smaller drives (perhaps 4x18Gb for the games in Raid 0) but the really nice thing is you can build it up slowly, adding more drives as you acquire them. (Of course you could always forget the larger drives and windows partition and just use the controller and 2x18Gb - £150-200 and you're up and running

)

It's not all roses - had a few issues over the last week with mine and it very nearly went out the window, but once you've got it up and running they're awesome!