Raid Newbie - quick sense check

Gaman

Gaman

Gaman

Associate
Joined
3 Sep 2006
Posts
69
Location
Cardiff
Hi,

I've decided to replace my ageing Seagate drive as I just need something quicker as I'm fed up with Windows loading times in games (primarily WoW) so have decided to go Raid 0 (I backup regularly so the risks are fine).

I've got the Asrock 939Dual-Sata2 mobo and am planning on purchasing 2 x 7200.10 250GB 16MB sata drives and running them through the 2 sata connections. Would I be right in thinking that this will be quicker than running a single drive though the 'Sata II' connection? Or to put it another way, is the performance gain between Raid 0 on Sata vs a single 'sata II' drive significant enough to make it worth doing (given my needs)?

From the FAQs I *think* it is but from previous mistakes thought I was better off checking ;)

Cheers
G
 
Yes. Consider that with 2 drive RAID0 you're using 2 channels so the peak transfer rate for the SATA I array combined is actually also 300MB/sec (just like a single SATA II channel.) However, the RAID0 can sustain about 150MB/sec (and burst up to 300MB/sec) whereas the single SATA II drive will sustain maybe 85MB/sec peak (at the fastest part of the disk) and similarly burst up to 300MB/sec.

So all in all, the SATA I array will perform better than a single SATA II drive.

Are you sure the connections on that motherboard isn't SATA II anyway though? (I've not checked.)
 
Thanks for the help :)

Yes unfortunately they are definitely Sata I connections, the Sata II connection is seperate with support for 1 HDD only :( Still for the price of the board I am not complaining :D
 
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