Best boot drive?

lay-z-boy said:
Wrong. Access time goes up when placed in a raid array and increases the more drives you add.

For a boot drive it's best to get an ssd. It's the low access time you want not huge sequential read and write which looks good on paper but has little real world benefit.
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ive got confused what i mean was in raid 0 it takes half the time(almost) to read a file because it is been read from 2 drives.

drak3 said:
My vertex 2x30GB raid stripe does not stutter ...
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thats because they are vertex's which as everyone knows use different controllers and thus dont stutter
 
Most simply,

I have just ordered a new build (Intel E5200 2.5GHz

ASUS P5QL-E

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

Antec 300

OCZ Stealth Xtream 500W PSU

OCZ (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Gold)

and I will be using vista home premium

If I'm looking at spending £100 on an OS disk - would http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-071-SA be the one?

I'm sorted for other drives, this is the last thing I need...
 
raptormonkey said:
Too expensive. Think i wil either look for a 2nd hand raptor or get a 320g F1 Samsung!
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So the real comparison is;
2nd hand raptor 74gb @ around £45 each (two on MM)
Samsung 320gb F1 @ around £37 each (new from store)
2nd hand Samsung 64gb SSD @ £70 each (if you can find one)

OS/boot drive will require lots of small fast random writes, so lower access times is what you want.

You cant afford an SSD, so a cheap raptor is your best choice.
 
phill0i said:
ive got confused what i mean was in raid 0 it takes half the time(almost) to read a file because it is been read from 2 drives.
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OK.. I wouldn't put it quite like that though. What you said is true, if access time is non-existent - for example when reading/writing large files. Unfortunately for RAID 0, using an OS/loading programs etc is using lots of very small files, which RAID 0 fails at - it reads sequential data at twice the rate of a single HDD but when it's waiting 9ms or so between each kb-size file, each of which might take 0.01ms to read (based on 100Mbyte/s read speed), any RAIDing speed boost really is insignificant.
 
but in terms of OS performance, i.e. fast boot-up, quick loading of folders and files and general day-to-day (non-gaming) activity, would I be better off with an SSD set up (plus my other SATA drives for documents, etc) or a raid 0 set up?

i just want my new build to be as lag-free as possible

thoughts pls!
 
rambunktor said:
but in terms of OS performance, i.e. fast boot-up, quick loading of folders and files and general day-to-day (non-gaming) activity, would I be better off with an SSD set up (plus my other SATA drives for documents, etc) or a raid 0 set up?

i just want my new build to be as lag-free as possible

thoughts pls!
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Me too!
 
For your OS and apps, you can't beat SSD's. The £90 samsung will feel faster than a RAID0 raptor setup almost all of the time.
 
raptormonkey said:
So, other than SSD, which is too expensive for me, what should i be looking at?
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As said, not a raptor. I have two WD Caviar Blacks in RAID 0 which perform quite well, but I'd go for an SSD 64GB Samsung as mentioned as this'll be cheaper and faster as a boot drive. Yes the transfer rate may just be faster for the Spinpoint, but the access time (much more important for the os drive) is almost non-existent in an SSD.
 
raptormonkey said:
Still quite a lot of money for a small hard drive though
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Once you disable System restore, Hibernation, tweak the page file size down, you shouldn't have any problem fitting your OS, common apps and whatever games you happen to be playing at the moment on there.
You can always have a mechanical drive for mass storage and just cut and paste the game install directorys between them if you feel like playing an old game without reinstalling. Most games will take less than a minute to move between your SSD and Mechanical drives.

When you keep your media files elsewhere it's surprising how little space you actually need.
 
If you're still looking at them in terms of £ per gb you've completely missed the point.

OS drive needs enough space for the OS. I'm yet to see one of my friends make it over 60 gb on a windows install. That you can get terabyte drives for less money is no more relavent than that you can buy tape storage at a better £ per gb than hard drives.
 
LinktoInsanity said:
As said, not a raptor. I have two WD Caviar Blacks in RAID 0 which perform quite well, but I'd go for an SSD 64GB Samsung as mentioned as this'll be cheaper and faster as a boot drive. Yes the transfer rate may just be faster for the Spinpoint, but the access time (much more important for the os drive) is almost non-existent in an SSD.
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Ok, so in effect, ditch the idea of a raptor, get an F1 as storage and an SSD for boot. But if money tight just get an F1 Samsung? If so, good idea to partition a part of it for OS?
 
Second/third posts down summed that up. And yes, the OS should be on a partition at the start of the disk because that is the fastest part of a HDD.
 
Drop the raptor yeah. Not a wise purchase these days. F1 with a boot partition and a storage partition is certainly very usable, but inevitably far slower than an ssd. The agility range from ocz is out now, which are likely to be very good but cheaper than the vertex range
 
Noticeably quicker if you frequently use programs that access/write very large files e.g. some games, video editing.. otherwise probably not worth the extra money for most people.
 
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