3 drives or 2?

kerrgreg · 30 Jan 2009 at 00:25

Ive got 3 74gb raptors two 8mb cache same model number etc and one later 16mb one.

my question is should i raid 0 all 3 or the 2 8mb's

im guessing that the 16mb will be limited to the speed of the 8mbs so effectivly it should be as fast as 3 8mb's? but as often with computers i dont imagine this is the case in reality

Ill be running this on the Intel (ICH10R/ Marvell 88SE6121) raid controler on my motherboard.

thanks

ChrisLX200 · 30 Jan 2009 at 00:40

The smaller cache won't make as much difference as having an extra drive in the array, so I'd RAID all 3. My guess!

kerrgreg · 30 Jan 2009 at 00:51

thats what i was thinking i guess the only real way to tell would be to bench them in the different options

can HDtune bench and array? or can it only go drive by drive?

ChrisLX200 · 30 Jan 2009 at 01:08

It can test an array.

kerrgreg · 30 Jan 2009 at 01:21

ok well hopefully ill post back with results later today

Alphane · 30 Jan 2009 at 02:32

I would imagine RAID draws data sequentially and while your higher cache Drive will outperform your other two it's unlikely it'll improve overall performance. Though tinking again this might not be entirely true as you 3rd drives response time within the sequence may be better and effect the timings of the entire sequence.

PistolPete · 30 Jan 2009 at 15:07

I've been running RAID5 with 2x16Mb cache drives and 1x32Mb. I swapped 1 of the 16Mb for another 32Mb (So I now have 1x16Mb and 2x32Mb) and it's increased by HDTach speeds....... by about 1%.