Raid 1: 7200 rpm or 10k rpm

Dr_Evil · 20 Nov 2006 at 17:04

Thinking of having a Raid1 Array for my new system. As I used a single 10k drive before, would it be best to buy a second 10k drive? Can i see a good performance improvement over using 2x 7200 rpm drives?

also is it safe to say that SATAII performs 2x faster when moving or copying larger files over?

just need some advice on what drives to use. Ta!

Cyber-Mav · 20 Nov 2006 at 17:09

10k drives have faster seak times then 7k drives. and sata 2 is no different from sata 1 in single drive configs, but burst transfers faster in sata 2. if going raid depending on your drives you mabe be able to saturate sata 1 speed of 150meg per second.

Dr_Evil · 20 Nov 2006 at 17:14

OK well I have a 36Gb Raptor (1st model) and was thinking what would benefit my multimedia/gaming system better:

* Raid 1 - 2x 36Gb Raptor Sata 10k RPM

or

* Raid 1 - 2x 80Gb Samsung Spinpoint SATAII 7200 RPM

this is for my system drive, mainly for OS, Program Files etc. I store all other stuff (downloads, video, documents, pictures) on secondary drives anyway.

ted34 · 21 Nov 2006 at 16:25

The 36gb raptors are beaten now by the new seagate 7200.10's for speed even though these are 7.2k rather than 10k + the seagates are quieter.

Minstadave · 21 Nov 2006 at 18:03

I went from a 36Gb raptor to 2x250Gb Seagate 7200.10s in RAID0 and I haven't noticed any drop in performance, but now I have ooodles of storage

Do you need the redundancy if RAID1? Because speed wise it offers no benefit over a single drive really.

Dr_Evil · 22 Nov 2006 at 09:43

I meant Raid 0 (striping). So are you saying that your 2x Seagates in Raid0 are as fast as 1x Raptor ?

Minstadave · 22 Nov 2006 at 22:26

Seek times aren't the same as a Raptor, but the sustained reads and bursts are much, much faster.

Overall I'm really pleased with the RAID0 7200.10s

daven1986 · 22 Nov 2006 at 22:40

are you sure you want a raid 1? you will have to have twice as many disks as if you had a raid 0 for the same size.

i would think about a raid 5 setup if you need decent read/write speeds and your data to be kept safe. or even raid 2/3 if you only need good read speeds.

raid 1 mirrors everything you have on 1 drive to another.
raid 5 keeps parity bits on each drive to back up data if all goes **** up
raid 2/3 keeps parity bits on an extra drive which causes poor write speeds but raid 0 read speeds.

daven

Minstadave · 22 Nov 2006 at 23:08

Look at his last post, he meant RAID0.

daven1986 · 23 Nov 2006 at 00:28

ah, my post still stands though. with a raid 0 if you store lots of data one strip failure and bye bye data. so i'd consider one of the others which incorporate backup if you don't want to risk losing your data. the one you choose depends on whether you want fast read or medium read and write.

daven

Dr_Evil · 23 Nov 2006 at 11:54

I never use my system drive to store importand files anyway. Providing you have 2 good drives, RAID0 will just offer 2x speed of 1 drive, correcT?

Reality Bites · 23 Nov 2006 at 12:22

Dr_Evil said:
I never use my system drive to store importand files anyway. Providing you have 2 good drives, RAID0 will just offer 2x speed of 1 drive, correcT?

no, it won't double the speed.

You will see around 50-60% increase (i.e from 50mb p/s to 80mb p/s). Don't take the figures as literal they are just an example.

Minstadave · 24 Nov 2006 at 00:20

You can get some blistering speeds with RAID0 7200.10s though, my setup has a sustained read of over 130MBs

daven1986 · 24 Nov 2006 at 00:32

Reality Bites said:
no, it won't double the speed.

You will see around 50-60% increase (i.e from 50mb p/s to 80mb p/s). Don't take the figures as literal they are just an example.

yeah it makes a big difference though, which increases the more drives you have.

daven

Cyber-Mav · 24 Nov 2006 at 04:18

strapping drives together helps to boost the sustained transfer speeds, but you won;t get a boost in seek speed thats why the raptors will be better, they have the faster seek speeds and by running them in raid you gain the advantage of having higher sustained transfer rates. and when your dealing with the 36gig raptor the sustained transfer rates are not that high to begin with and raiding them works wonders.

Dr_Evil · 24 Nov 2006 at 15:31

Can any SATA solution beat 2 x WD Raptor 74Gb (WD740ADFD) in RAID0 ?

Minstadave · 24 Nov 2006 at 15:33

Dr_Evil said:
Can any SATA solution beat 2 x WD Raptor 74Gb (WD740ADFD) in RAID0 ?

If they're the 16MB cache raptors then not in terms of seek time, not sure about sustained reads, would have thought the Raptors would win. Cost wise you could have 2x500GB 7200.10s though, so I know which I'd go for.

Dr_Evil · 24 Nov 2006 at 15:38

Yes new model 16Mb cache. I want to go for speed, no need for 1TB storage here...

My guess is this is the fastest solution on SATA, right?