Modding a Barracuda or Spinpoint to get a cheap VelociRaptor

[Dancer]

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?

 

[Dancer]

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.

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.

 

[Dancer]

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]

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:

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?

 

[Dancer]

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.

Thanks for the suggestion trentlad. Matrix raid looks like an interesting solution much closer to what I thought I wanted. However, according to the article you linked (which is admitedly 5 years old) Matrix raid is only supported for Intel's ICH6R south bridge. I don't think this option exists for my gigabyte board with an amd phenom II. I assume the Matrix raid was mentioned in the manual and available in the bios settings. For my gigabyte board the options I can see are RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 0+1 (hope that's the right way around).

I was pretty much all set to go waith a RAID 0 OS and then just get a 1TB for storage, but learning that motherboard raid might not give that great performance increase and that software raid might be faster but is not supported in my Windows 7 Premium version I've been somewhat discouraged.

Rather than splash out a lot of money now for marginal improvements in performance I'm thinking I might just get another storage drive and back it up daily to my external storage, and wait another few months to see if the SSDs get a bit cheaper.

 

[Dancer]

Here's a source
http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=429
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQiZVoJqyqo

I tested both and found windows7 raid and the intel matrix/motherboard raid (which is also software as the cpu does all the work and not hardware like some people think) were about the same performance wise.

Last week my windows 7 installation got corrupted and I just did a restore of my boot drive. My Velociraptors which had my Steam folder on it, and are striped using windows7 raid were unaffected.

Great links, thanks. I found the same arguments doing my own googling (so no I didn't base my decision just on the word of one post, but it was an eye opener that got me investigating). I would have shared some links, but I couldn't find anything as clear cut as your links above. Yes, they are just one guys testing, but coupled with various other articles and the arguments for your mobo dying leaving you in a fix with "fake" raid I think it is pretty convincing. I'm sure some mobos have better raid controllers than others, but I could find no information on that.

bremen1874 you are of course right that shortstroking cannot improve the max and nobody is claiming that you can. If you look at the charts in the links I posted you will see that. However, I don't understand your argument that you can't short stroke a disk by creating two partitions. Surely if you create the first partition as your OS and the second as storage all your OS and program data will be stored on the fastest part of the disk? Thus when stuff is loaded the heads will never leave the fast partition. If this is not correct I'd love an explanation or a link.

Thanks.

 

[Dancer]

A lot of people are waiting for SSD's to drop in price.. thats not going to happen. What will happen is that the size will increase and the GB per £ will become more competetive.

I very much doubt that the Crucial C300 64GB will ever drop below £100 purely as it is selling so well the demand maintains that price and at the current price point, it is competetive enough already. There are countless posts on here about how wonderful SSD's are but as others have said, once you try one you cannot go back. As a result of that, I've now removed ALL my spinneys from my games machine and its just got the Revo.

Well, if we see an increase in the GB per £ that IS effectively a drop in price (although likely it will be a gradual process)! As higher capacity drives become more affordable demand for low capacity SSDs, like the C300 64GB, will decline and eventually the effect should be lower prices. However, I wouldn't bet on any major price changes before X-Mas, but it should be very interesting to see how SSDs improve in the coming year.