3 x Raptor's in Raid 5 or 2x in Intel Matrix 1 and 0 or SCSI?

[Aurhinius]

Well the topic says it all,

I currently have a WD Raptor 74gig drive and it is fine, no complaints however being a glutton for punishment I want to improve load times on games.

The question I have is, do I spend about £300 for a Adaptic 68pin U320 SCSI card and buy a 73gig 15K rpm drive?

Or do I try raiding a couple of WD raptors?

I would like to keep my OS intact at all times because I get narked having to reinstall it. Thus I need some data protection. I thought about RAID 5 - i.e 3 WD raptors. This would probably cost about £300 as well.

3rd option is to try out intel's matrix storage tech and put 2 WD raptors, half of the drives in raid 1 (OS) and the other half in RAID 0.

I have a P5WDH deluxe which I belive can do RAID 5 on SATA. So the question is....

What would you go for and why?

Also I would like to hear from those who are running MATRIX or who have tried it. Intel eludes to the fact you can just add another drive and have it build the array while you are still using the computer. This sounds great as I can migrate my OS from 1 drive to a raid setup without a reinstallation. Is this possible?

 

[cavemanoc]

I currently run a few arrays off a Dell Perc 4e/dc pci-e Scsi controller.

3*18Gb 15k cheetahs - Raid 5
4*72Gb 15k4 Cheetahs - Raid 0

They are very quick - will dig out the benchies - looking at about 160-170mb/s for the Raid 0 - I'm sure it should be quicker, but I can't push it any further for some reason. But they are far from hassle free - I can count the number of times I've wanted to put the whole lot on Fleabay!

Raptors vs Seagate 7200.10 = very little difference now. I know my next build will be with the new Seagates, with the possibility of a RocketRaid controller if I really want to splash out.

It's hard to recommend Scsi unless you really need lightning fast access, they are awesome for level loads, but I find only a couple of seconds quicker than my mate with 2*Satas...

If you are going to go for it - Do not spend that kind of money on the controller - can be had for less than 1/2 the price.

Have a look through the HDD benchmark thread Here - gives a good idea on speeds. The Intel Matrix seems to perform very well.

 

[rpstewart]

I have a P5WDH deluxe which I belive can do RAID 5 on SATA. So the question is....

What would you go for and why?

Don't go with RAID5 on the Intel controller for a boot drive. It has no hardware support for the parity XOR calculations so these have to be offloaded to the main CPU; as a result writes are slow and are accompanied by high CPU usage. This is OK for a storage drive which is read biased but you don't want a swap file on something that can only write at 20-30Mb/s, task switching would be excruciating.

 

[Aurhinius]

I have heard about the seagates but I want fast access times as well as good transfer performance.

Basicly I want my cake and eat it!

I am prepared to have just a single SCSI drive if that proves to be the best option. Honestly I don't want to shell out for 3 x 15k drives as that will cost a bomb.

I am also limited to a 1xpcie slot for a SCSI controller/raid card. I had a SCSI drive in the past and it was only U160. At that time it was still ATA5 drives but it totally trounced ATA5 by miles. SATA is probably on par these days though.

it would be nice to see how a single SATA Raptor and SCSI drive compare.

Cave - is a rocketraid really going to be any better than the intel IC7R on my P5WDH

 

[accod]

I've only used Matrix with raid 0. Got a couple of 150GB Raptors with 2 raid 0 partitions on them. Did that so I can make sure my OS and games are on the faster part of the drives. Use the 2nd partition for stuff I'm not so bothered about.

Been using it for 6 months now.

 

[cavemanoc]

A single scsi won't really be worth the outlay for the controller card - even the latest SAS cards are 'only' getting on towards 120mb/s which can easily be beaten by a couple of Satas in Raid 0 giving you 5x the space for less than 1/2 the price

If you're willing to go down the 'other' route I've picked up my last 15k4 72Gb scsi cheetahs for about £80 a piece - so actually starting to become reasonable value - with a 2nd hand controller for £120ish you would be looking at <£300 all in which isn't bad! BUT - those cards are NOT pci-e 1x compatible, and running off a pci controller is a complete waste.

TBH I'd be tempted to run a 4 disk Sata array straight off the mobo controller for your Games etc... in a Raid 0 for max speed, or possibly 2x2Disk Raid 0 arrays - have a play and see which is faster. Always helpful to have your swap/OS on a different drive to your main info. RPStewart is you man for the RocketRaids - he's used them - I haven't - but I suspect you'll have the same problem with the lack of spare pci-e 8x lane

How many Sata ports have you got, and how many are tied into the Matrix controller?

Or... Keep your Raptor as the OS/Swap file drive and fill the other Sata ports with a Raid 0 array of 7200.10s - should be nice and speedy

 

[Aurhinius]

Yeah I have been looking around and was considering an LSI SAS card but my motherboard is gimped with it's lack of dual x16 pcie lanes.

My only solution is too hold off and change the board then go SAS or SATA or just go SATA now.

I still like the idea of picking up an Adaptec u320 HBA and just running a single 15K SCSI drive. The access time alone would be pretty impressive.

You'll have to let me know where to look for those cheap drives, because that is very good price.

I am still looking at SCSI controllers but so far adaptec are the only ones that make a pci 1x u320.

As for SATA I think only 3 ports are tied in to the IC7R so raid 5 is an option but that forces anything else on to the jmicron controller. Really I don't want to add another SATA controller when I have the IC7R. I doubt a Rocketraid would add anything performance wise unless I was going for 4+ drives and I don't see me doing that.

I am not looking for massive amounts of space either. I would be happy with the 100-200gb mark. I don't store data and I don't really download either. I tend to have the OS, office and 6 games installed at any one time. I like to keep my PC relatively clean and tidy.

I currently backup my drive to another one with Acronis so I kinda have that covered too. A raid 1 would be nice for the os and office with games being shunted on to a raid 0. Thus I figured best of both worlds and head raid 5. Having said that I then considered just a single SCSI drive as my past experience with it I was rather impressed but as mentioned it was back in the day when Ultra ATA 5 was the best you could get.

Has serial ATA really caught up that much?

My ideal solution would be a raid 5 array of 3 70gig 15k drives but my motherboard doesn't look like it can cope. So perhaps a single SCSI drive is the way to go.

Perhaps I can get hold of a second hand older U160 SCSI raid controller that is PCI. Too bottle necked??

 

[cavemanoc]

I suppose if you're going to get the latest drives it's not too bad - the 15k5 scsi from Seagate weights in at 125mb/s compared to the Sata which gives 78mb/s, and yes there is a marked difference in seek time (3ms vs about 12ms)

Others might correct me but I've never really found the seek times a huge advantage - it's the average read that makes the most noticeable difference to your game level loads. Looking through that thread on HDD speeds guys using 2*7200.10 in Raid 0 were getting just shy of 120mb/s so I just don't see the value of the single scsi solution.

Of course if this is just the start and you plan to add more ove time when you upgrade over time when the scsi bug bites you and you feel the need... - If you want more info my my sources just fire an email my way (trust) and I'll see what I can dig up for you.

(Pci bandwidth is capped at 127mb/s so anything more than a single drive will start to bottleneck - I had this problem when I was running a pci-x card - it works, but not at full speed.)