300Gb Verlociraptor vs Raid 0

peter212693 · 1 Feb 2010 at 18:47

Hi all,

Im currently using a 300gb verlociraptor drive in my main pc, which is used for web browsing and games. Data is not an issue thats all saved on my server in a raid 1 array.

So was thinking and doing some research, do I get say 2 320Gb western digital drives in a stripe and ditch the raptor? Don't need this for space really as still got loads of space on my raptor, just thinking performance wise.

Only chose the 320Gb WD as an example as I know these are dam good drives.

So what do you think?

Thanks

bees · 1 Feb 2010 at 20:15

i supposed, raid 0 still better.

Ziggy4 · 2 Feb 2010 at 08:59

Depends. Don't know that I'd be so fast to dump my VR. It's a damn good drive itself. Certainly your seq. r/w will be improved by the RAID0 but you might not see a substantial improvement over random r/w and the VR has the better access time which benefits many applications if you run them from this drive. It's an ideal OS drive IMO. What is your budget? Why not hang onto the VR, and run it alonside the striped drives? You could run your games off the array and retain the OS / apps on the VR. I used to have a couple of regular Raptors in RAID0 as the OS volume and noticed little or no difference when I switched over to the single VR. Benchmarks might say otherwise but in real use I suspect you'll struggle to see much of an improvement. If you want to see a tangible performance boost from an OS drive you might want to consider an SSD?

peter212693 · 2 Feb 2010 at 09:36

Thanks for your advice. I dont really have any more to spend

I've just got the update bug. If the VR is going to be a all round better drive I will just stick with it

Thanks

Ziggy4 · 2 Feb 2010 at 10:02

I've just got the update bug.

I know that feeling well!

If you're itching for a new toy, an inexpensive but worthwhile update might be a fast high capacity drive. Something like a Samsung F3 or WD Caviar Black. These would work very well for your games and having them located on another drive will take some of the strain off the OS volume and help with reducing fragmentation.