Good drive for windows and gaming ?

Slinger · 4 Dec 2006 at 18:36

Hi guys,

Excellent forum here, I can see you all being a great help for me when I build my gaming rig next year, but anyway, i need a bit of help with hard drives

I would like a good fast drive, not a raptor, seem to be a waste of money, I dont really want to spend more than about 70, and I dont really need any bigger than 160GIG or so(dont mind a bigger one if its good), Could you maybe show me a link to a good HDD. I will be using the hard drive to have windows on and also the latest games.

Cheers all in advance

Slinger

thefishdude · 4 Dec 2006 at 19:45

raptor waste of money :eek:

sheesh lol

anyways samsung spinpoint hdd ar very highly rated and also fast.

PureAppleJuice · 4 Dec 2006 at 19:53

Blasphemey raptors aren't a waste of money

sprognak · 4 Dec 2006 at 19:54

Seagate 7200.10, but you'll be taking a gamble on whether it's the nice silent ones or the loud ones. Either way they're the fastest 7200's around.

afraser2k · 4 Dec 2006 at 19:58

I find StorageReview to be very good for hard disk reviews. Very in-depth reviews of the disks for various applications and also noise levels.

Slinger · 4 Dec 2006 at 21:12

jidh007 said:
Blasphemey raptors aren't a waste of money

Ok, should have worded that a bit better. But thanks guys for your replys

easyrider · 4 Dec 2006 at 22:24

I have a raptor as my boot drive and gaming drive.

Couldn't go back to anything else.

sprognak · 4 Dec 2006 at 22:25

easyrider said:
I have a raptor as my boot drive and gaming drive.

Couldn't go back to anything else.

That's what I thought till I spent £130 and did this:

2x 7200.10's with the jumpers off (SATA-II 3Gbps) in RAID-0

Slinger · 4 Dec 2006 at 22:40

sprognak said:
That's what I thought till I spent £130 and did this:

2x 7200.10's with the jumpers off (SATA-II 3Gbps) in RAID-0

Could you explain this for me ? im a noob to benchmarks, I assume this means very good ?

I might consider doing this then, but have to learn the different raid setups too

Slinger · 5 Dec 2006 at 18:44

Bump the bumper

basmic · 5 Dec 2006 at 19:19

Slinger said:
Could you explain this for me ? im a noob to benchmarks, I assume this means very good ?

I might consider doing this then, but have to learn the different raid setups too

Punch raptor hdtach into here.

sprognak · 5 Dec 2006 at 21:15

Slinger said:
Could you explain this for me ? im a noob to benchmarks, I assume this means very good ?

I might consider doing this then, but have to learn the different raid setups too

Sorry, forgot to get back to you on this.

RAID-0 known as "striping" involves splitting data across X disks. There is no redundancy offered, hence each drive used in the "array" introduces an X-fold increase in the MTBF (mean time between failures). For example, in my setup above, I am using 2 Seagate 7200.10 320Gb drives. This effectively doubles my data transfer capabilities and with SATA-II, sends burst rates through the sky.

Given the MTBF of approximately 1.2 million hours of the Seagate's (137 years) (source - review websites), the chance of failure in RAID-0 is slim, but still up to double that of the Raptor 150Gb (Also 1.2 million hours). In fact, the RAID-0 Seagate failure time is theoretically the same as the RAPTOR-X (Windowed - 60 million hours) or approximately 68.5 years use.

Anyways, that aside, the point I was making was that for around £130+VAT, you can have two Seagates giving you far greater performance than a single raptor, generating less heat and running quieter - plus have 4x the storage capacity - as long as you are willing to accept the slightly increased risk of failure.

Of course, you could always RAID-0 two Raptors and beat the performance (possibly) but for that money you could stripe 4 Seagates, have 1.2Tb of storage and faster performance again...

As for RAID (Redundant Array of Independant Disks) configs, the most common three are:

RAID-0 - striping, no parity. Fast but increased risk of data loss in drive failure.
RAID-1 - mirroring, two copies of the same data. No performance increase.

RAID-5 - Striping with parity drive. One drive holds "parity" information used to reconstruct data on a failed drive. The drive may be rebuilt onto a blank drive, but only one drive can fail at a time if data is to preserved. The array is vulnerable until the data has been rebuilt. Because of the generation of parity data, write performance is generally slow on RAID-5 without a dedicated hardware RAID controller.

RAID-6 and RAID-10 are variations on the above. RAID-6 is RAID-5 but can sustain 2 simultaneous drive failures. RAID-10 is 2 mirrored RAID-5 arrays.

Slinger · 5 Dec 2006 at 21:36

Thanks for geting back

How often have you seen raid 0 Fail ?

I dont think this would be any different in terms of failure to a single hard drive, becasue the single drive could also fail and then you lose data, least here you are getting faster performance

Also, ive seen 320 gig 7200.10 and i think 250gig 7200.10 . are these the same specs and speeds etc, just a different capacity ?

BillytheImpaler · 5 Dec 2006 at 21:42

Slinger said:
Also, ive seen 320 gig 7200.10 and i think 250gig 7200.10 . are these the same specs and speeds etc, just a different capacity ?

They get slightly faster as the size increases becasue data denisty is higher but for all intents and purposes performance should be pretty much the same across the 7200.10 line.

ByteJuggler · 5 Dec 2006 at 21:57

Slinger said:
Also, ive seen 320 gig 7200.10 and i think 250gig 7200.10 . are these the same specs and speeds etc, just a different capacity ?

The short answer is yes, they're pretty similar in most respects, although obivously the drives are not identical (given they're not the same size!)

The long answer:
The maximum sustained transfer rate is the same, according to the technical specicifications, for all the drives in the range, at 72Mb/sec apart from the 750Gb, which has a marginally higher maximum at 78Mb/sec. (Interestingly though, my 7200.10 320Gb does seem to get very much 80-ish Mb/sec peak real world scores, which just goes to show that the benchmark is not that accurate or that Seagate is slightly conservative with their ratings.)

The average areal data density on the platters is likewise the same for all the disks, at 114.4Gbit/square inch, apart from the 750Gb which has an areal density of 128.2Gbit/square inch. The track density is reportedly identical on all the disks. These stats and a lot else can be verified in the drive range's technical specifications on p. 29. One would therefore expect the 750Gb disk to be marginally the fastest in the range. There shouldn't be a noticable difference between the 250Gb and 320Gb I would think.

rpstewart · 5 Dec 2006 at 22:00

sprognak said:
RAID-5 - Striping with parity drive. One drive holds "parity" information used to reconstruct data on a failed drive. The drive may be rebuilt onto a blank drive, but only one drive can fail at a time if data is to preserved. The array is vulnerable until the data has been rebuilt. Because of the generation of parity data, write performance is generally slow on RAID-5 without a dedicated hardware RAID controller.

RAID-6 and RAID-10 are variations on the above. RAID-6 is RAID-5 but can sustain 2 simultaneous drive failures. RAID-10 is 2 mirrored RAID-5 arrays.

Nearly but not quite, what you have labelled as RAID5 is actually RAID3. RAID5 spreads the parity blocks across all the disks, you still lose one disk's worth of capacity but the performance when a drive fails is better since the parity blocks can be read quicker than with RAID3. Your comment regarding write performance holds for RAID3, 5 & 6.

RAID10 is a mirrored pair of RAID0 arrays, 15 is a RAID5 array of RAID1 arrays. Finally if you want scary speed and money isn't an object then RAID50 is the way to go - RAID0 arrays of RAID5 arrays. We use them in a SAN configuration and the sustained read speed is scary - 400Mb/s upwards

sprognak · 5 Dec 2006 at 22:31

rpstewart said:
Nearly but not quite, what you have labelled as RAID5 is actually RAID3. RAID5 spreads the parity blocks across all the disks, you still lose one disk's worth of capacity but the performance when a drive fails is better since the parity blocks can be read quicker than with RAID3. Your comment regarding write performance holds for RAID3, 5 & 6.

Correct, thanks for clarifying that. Was writing this in the adverts while watching TV

RAID10 is a mirrored pair of RAID0 arrays, 15 is a RAID5 array of RAID1 arrays. Finally if you want scary speed and money isn't an object then RAID50 is the way to go - RAID0 arrays of RAID5 arrays. We use them in a SAN configuration and the sustained read speed is scary - 400Mb/s upwards

Probably correct also, haven't dealt with stuff that size for a long time. Did build a SATA RAID 5 system recently using 8+2 Maxtor Diamondmax (company policy I was working for was Maxtor - eugh). The SySoft Sandra disk transfer rates were 300Mb/s+. If I get a callout again I'll run HDTach and let you know the results.

Cards were AMCC 3Ware. Expensive and fast

wesley · 5 Dec 2006 at 22:54

RAID 0 is nice but kill the seeking time which is most important to me

got 74GB raptor as main drive, would never go back to any 7200rpm IDE/SATA hard drives again, ever.

Sylver123 · 6 Dec 2006 at 02:36

So the Seagate 7200.10`s are the fastest SATA drives around?

I was thinking of buying this one with my Core 2 Quadro setup this year coming:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-084-SE

How reliable is it for gaming and windows boot time performance? and does this drive also require you to change the pin from the default mode to the high speed mode on the littile jumper to achieve the full speed of 3GBps?

Would also like to know how quiet this drive is?

sprognak · 6 Dec 2006 at 07:10

Sylver123 said:
So the Seagate 7200.10`s are the fastest SATA drives around?

Asides from the Raptors yes. And to be honest having owned both I prefer the Seagates for noise and heat.

I was thinking of buying this one with my Core 2 Quadro setup this year coming:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-084-SE

If you're going for a Quadro it's obvious money isn't really an issue. Consider the Raptors in a cooling "caddy".

How reliable is it for gaming and windows boot time performance? and does this drive also require you to change the pin from the default mode to the high speed mode on the littile jumper to achieve the full speed of 3GBps?

Great for gaming. I'm a big MMORPG player and my zone loading times are the fastest by far! You do have to remove the jumper.

Would also like to know how quiet this drive is?

Well it will either be very quiet, or very noisy. I'm afraid that's just luck of the batches right now. This may have changed by the time you're ready to buy.

Good drive for windows and gaming ?

Man of Honour