HardDrive desisions

[wingnuttzz]

Stupidly sold one of my Hitachi 320gb drives, and currently have a dilema.

my current set-up is as followed

2 x 160gb Seagate/Maxtor drives in RAID 0 (primary, OS, installs etc)
1 x 320gb Hitachi drive (file storage)

(and i have a couple of external drives)

the problem is the 160gb drives are a mates, and he is wanting to get them back to sell on.

now i have be thinking about buying a 1tb samsung spinpoint to replace the RAID, but after looking at benchmarks i'm unsure.

this was my Hitcahi 2x320gb RAID 0 (nvidia chipset)
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f384/wingnuttzz-savage/HardDrive2.jpg

this is my current 2x160GB seagate/maxtor RAID 0 (intel i7 chipset)
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f384/wingnuttzz-savage/2x160gbRAID.jpg

now compared to the samsung 1tb benchmarks i found in the benchmark thread
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v476/scoobiedave/HDTune_Benchmark_SAMSUNG_HD103UJ.png
http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/338/hd103uj1000gbty3.jpg

both my RAID's were faster than the samsung, but i can tell you for sure, my current 2x160gb RAID doesn't feel fast.

so what would you recommendation me??? Buy the samsung 1tb spinpoint, or 2x500gb samsung spinpoints or buy the 2x160gb's or my mate and another HDD for storage space??

 

[~Divine~Wind~]

RAID is normally faster than single drive.

Example:

2x 320Gb Sammy F1's

Not 100% sure what the dip in the middle is about but Im asuming had somethign to do with me moving files about xD

both the 320 and 500Gb F1's are single platter iirc so I would expect them to score roughly similar

 

[wingnuttzz]

wow, thats a fast set-up you have, lol

i never knew the 500gb was a single platter too.
expect that to be fast, espically for its size.

really do like the speed of the RAID!!

 

[~Divine~Wind~]

Thats 2 320Gb F1's on a ICH10R (Asus P5QPro).
Raid0 128K stripe.

I did then partition the array tho :/

Silly Idea but I like things tidy xD

Its split to 3 partitions windows,games,temp storage.
Have then got a 3rd 320 F1 for just storage/media.

Im looking at moving the storeage drive into another rig as the main drive as the one in there is gettin scarily noisy.

I will more than likely then be lookin at the F1 1TB or similar, possibly 640's depending on how well they perform.

 

[wingnuttzz]

128k stripe is quite big. Personally i use a 32k stripe. something as big as 128k is generally only used for video encoders etc (i.e, those with huge files)

i generally partitions my drives too, 30gb just for windows (prevents it getting fragmented with the rest of my stuff) and then the rest for everything else, lol

 

[netdps]

128k stripe is quite big. Personally i use a 32k stripe. something as big as 128k is generally only used for video encoders etc (i.e, those with huge files)

i generally partitions my drives too, 30gb just for windows (prevents it getting fragmented with the rest of my stuff) and then the rest for everything else, lol

128k Raid 0 is usally the best performance for Desktop PC's.

 

[~Divine~Wind~]

Just checked, yeah 128k stripe.
Not had any trouble with it, nice and snappy goin froma single SATA drive too.
Installs are noticeably faster I would say.

 

[wingnuttzz]

think there is a lot of debate about stripe sizes, lol, sure there have been many threads. Not going to argue!!

i did a build for a friend using 2x750gb f1's, and that was a fast machine, so snappy and installing took no time.

 

[~Divine~Wind~]

Yeah theyre nice drives, and tbh quietest drives I've used to date I think.
Think the not checking stripe may have been to do with the "another install" attitude

Not seen any downsides to it really.

I nabbed an updated version of acronis and made an image after base install, not looking forwards to when that day comes Never used acronis with raid before lol