Modding a Barracuda or Spinpoint to get a cheap VelociRaptor

Dancer

Dancer

Dancer

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Reading an interesting article on how to mod a spinpoint or seagate barracuda drive to get transfer rates that match, or even exceed, a VelociRaptor I thought I might give this a go.

I assume this should work just fine in raid 0 - that is using the mod which is basically setting a first partition of 300 GB, can I then set only that partition as raid 0 and then use the remaining partition either as two spare drives or set as raid 1? (I have a Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 motherboard if that makes any difference)

Secondly, am I better of getting two
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB (HD103SJ)

or two:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB (ST31500341AS)

... or even two
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB (ST31000528AS)

Opinions? Advise?
 
Looks like an interesting idea, It says you can only use the first 300 GB. The remaining 1.2 TB will be inaccessible.

Edit: Didnt read all of it lol.
 
Yup, its called shortstroking and you can RAID any shortstroked disk as you wish.

My vote would be for the Samsung F3's or indeed the latest F4 1TB model, but I haven't read enough about its speed given its 5,400rpm which I believe is compensated for by its platter density. Perhaps someone else could comment on the F4 performance?
 
Ive heard of that method before. I think its called 'short striping' or something.

Admittedly i did think it was the innermost tracks that were the fastest, not the outermost
 
Doesn't void the warranty.

In RAID the access times will increase offsetting some of the point of it but throughput will increase a lot.

Personally I think your better off just buying an SSD as its not really that noticeably different using this method to a stock 7200.12 disc (I have tried it).

http://aten-hosted.com/images/hdtune4.jpg

Loading Modern Warfare 2 off a normal 500GB 7200.12, RAID0 with 3x 7200.12 and loading off a 32gig short stroked version gave very little noticeable difference in load times, putting the files onto a cheapy Patriot SSD saw load times approx. 3x faster.
 
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Rroff said:
Personally I think your better off just buying an SSD as its not really that noticeably different using this method to a stock 7200.12 disc (I have tried it).

Loading Modern Warfare 2 off a normal 500GB 7200.12, RAID0 with 3x 7200.12 and loading off a 32gig short stroked version gave very little noticeable difference in load times, putting the files onto a cheapy Patriot SSD saw load times approx. 3x faster.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, thanks. Not quite what I wanted to hear - but I still think it might be worth striping one partition as raid 0 (for speed) and then the rest as raid 1 (for redundancy). Then again maybe its not even worth bothering with raid 0 at all and just do raid 1?

I'd love to get a cheap SSD, but even the cheap ones cost as much as a couple of 1TB drives and have so little capacity I'd have to install most of my programs on a slower drive anyway (I need a new drive partly to get a bit more space as well - was planning to use my old system drive for storage). Besides - it is my understanding that SSDs might get cheaper later this year, or at least that GB per £ will improve. SSD is still a very new tech and in the rapid development phase.
 
Yeah I didn't bother with the SSD purely for the fact that the same money could buy two of the best HDDs known to man (Samsung Spinpoint 500GB F3) and get an inherent backup of all my data along with a performance boost with RAID... oh and about 900GB more space.

I figured I could wait the extra 5 seconds for my game to load a level or the additional 1.5 seconds for Firefox to load... cos that's about as good as it gets! LOL!! SSDs simply aren't worth the cost at the moment and I don't think I'd touch anything lower than the Crucial C300 64GB if I ever made the move... so I'll be waiting a while till that puppy comes down in price.
 
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I bet it'll get close for a fraction of the price.

This is my RAID 0 bench with two 500GB F3s (they aren't even short stripped) and below it is the fastest lone Velociraptor bench I can find:

RAID 0 - 2 x 500GB F3
5ls5jd.png


Single Velociraptor
2qaphn6.png
 
I think what I will do - unless someone jumps in and says NOOOO :) - is to get two Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB and set them up as Raid 1.

I understand that this will not give me great write speeds, but I can live with that until SSDs drop in price. Raid 1 should give me good read-rates though and I can sleep soundly safe in the knowledge that my data is backed up (I'll still be using external storage for things I really can't afford to lose).

Still not entirely sure if I should bother partitioning the first 300 GB as the OS drive though. I assume just partitioning it automatically allocates the "fastest" part of the disk as the first parition. Also, can I set the disks as raid 1 and then partition them? Sorry for the ignorance, but I've never partitioned disks in a raid before.

Thanks
 
Dancer said:
I think what I will do - unless someone jumps in and says NOOOO :) - is to get two Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB and set them up as Raid 1.

I understand that this will not give me great write speeds, but I can live with that until SSDs drop in price. Raid 1 should give me good read-rates though and I can sleep soundly safe in the knowledge that my data is backed up (I'll still be using external storage for things I really can't afford to lose).

Still not entirely sure if I should bother partitioning the first 300 GB as the OS drive though. I assume just partitioning it automatically allocates the "fastest" part of the disk as the first parition. Also, can I set the disks as raid 1 and then partition them? Sorry for the ignorance, but I've never partitioned disks in a raid before.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Instead of relying on your motherboards fakeraid you can just setup software raid in windows, partition part of one drive for the O/S and your important data and install Windows, then create a software mirror in windows (RAID1) onto the second drive this gives you redundancy for your O/S and important files, then create a software stripe partition (RAID0) between the two drives to store your games on, this gives you a much faster partition to load games off and windows software RAID stripes are faster than motherboard fakeraid stripes too :) simples
 
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trentlad said:
I bet it'll get close for a fraction of the price.

This is my RAID 0 bench with two 500GB F3s (they aren't even short stripped) and below it is the fastest lone Velociraptor bench I can find:

RAID 0 - 2 x 500GB F3
G]http://i26.tinypic.com/5ls5jd.png[/IMG]

Single Velociraptor
G]http://i56.tinypic.com/2qaphn6.png[/IMG]
Click to expand...
That it a lot closer than I expected. It is worth noting that the speed of the RAID drives are of a 100Gb partition, it would be nice to see what the speed is of the entire drive would be if possible? I'm quite tempted to try this myself now.
 
trentlad said:
I bet it'll get close for a fraction of the price.

This is my RAID 0 bench with two 500GB F3s (they aren't even short stripped) and below it is the fastest lone Velociraptor bench I can find:
Click to expand...

This was very interesting btw - so thanks for that. Edit: Was this hardware raid, "fakerraid" or software? (although owning windows 7 premium I believe raid is not supported)

I'm currently split between getting two 500GB striped as RAID 0 and then just a single 1TB drive for storage - or getting two 1TB drives and put them in RAID 1 for running OS and storage.

Of course, as ubersonic points out, it might me that my gigabyte ga-ma770t-ud3 motherboard's raid controller will do a worse job than software RAID, so I guess I'm not quite done researching yet. Edit: How do I find out if my motherboard has a good raid controller or is not worth bothering with - I know setting up my gigabyte with raid requires drivers to be installed for windows so that is a bad sign, but does that automatically mean I'll get poor RAID 0 performance?
 
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Have you looked into Matrix RAID? I'm guessing if you've got a Gigabyte board then you'll have Intel RAID controllers so you might want to consider it. I've got a thread open about it here.

I've been really happy with the performance and had no issues at all so far. I had my RAID 1 array repair itself a few days ago and I'm not sure why that was but all the data was restored and it pretty much self repaired. Like something out of Terminator 2.

Dancer said:
I'm currently split between getting two 500GB striped as RAID 0 and then just a single 1TB drive for storage - or getting two 1TB drives and put them in RAID 1 for running OS and storage.
Click to expand...

I had a similar choice until I discovered the Matrix RAID. I also figured that was a hell of a lot of storage space and it was storage overkill.

Two 500GB F3s partitioned;
Partition 1 = 50GB
Partition 2 = 450GB

which produces;
RAID 0 - 100GB
RAID 1 - 450GB

When you boot your PC you'll see an option to press a button and view the RAID options. That's where you'll perform your partitions and that process will ensure that the inner most portion of your HDD is used for the RAID 0 partition.
 
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ubersonic said:
Instead of relying on your motherboards fakeraid you can just setup software raid in windows, partition part of one drive for the O/S and your important data and install Windows, then create a software mirror in windows (RAID1) onto the second drive this gives you redundancy for your O/S and important files, then create a software stripe partition (RAID0) between the two drives to store your games on, this gives you a much faster partition to load games off and windows software RAID stripes are faster than motherboard fakeraid stripes too :) simples
Click to expand...

Fakeraid? Is a motherboard RAID considered fakeRAID? I never knew the software RAID was faster!

My main concern is if windows corrupts and I loose all my data. The motherboard RAID seems a lot more reliable (unless you decide to perform a BIOS update after setting up your RAID array). I doubt the performance boost would be worth the risk tbh... remember we're talking about Windows here. :) I could be wrong though so please do correct me if I've misunderstood.

Also, wouldn't you want the OS to sit on your RAID 0 array? This would lower start up time and your programs will load a little faster too, hence you'd get more of the benefits from RAID 0.
 
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Dancer said:
I think what I will do - unless someone jumps in and says NOOOO :) - is to get two Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB and set them up as Raid 1.

I understand that this will not give me great write speeds, but I can live with that until SSDs drop in price. Raid 1 should give me good read-rates though and I can sleep soundly safe in the knowledge that my data is backed up (I'll still be using external storage for things I really can't afford to lose).
Click to expand...

NOOOOO! Hehe.

One other point to make is that your HDD performance will be a little slower in RAID 1 than a single drive would perform on it's own.

The Matrix RAID allowed me to use only TWO HDDs and create a RAID 0 partition for my OS (which performed the fastest bench I've ever seen in a RAID 0 array with two HDDs) and RAID 1 array to store my important data since it's an inherent backup of all my important data.

I should be using an external HDD to store the REALLY important stuff so I need to set that up ASAP.
 
MikeHunt79 said:
That it a lot closer than I expected. It is worth noting that the speed of the RAID drives are of a 100Gb partition, it would be nice to see what the speed is of the entire drive would be if possible? I'm quite tempted to try this myself now.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing it would be slower since my RAID 0 array is using the inner most portion of my HDD.

I couldn't be happier with the speed to be honest, and that's without stripping.

To the OP - it would be really nice if you could do an install log on this thread. Just let us know what settings you used and any problems you faced. It's kind of a two way aid, you'll get help from us if you have issues and then you'll also help anyone else who would like to perform the same setup.
 
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