Raptor/Raid storage dilema

keylion · 16 Apr 2007 at 21:55

Hi all,

Soon I am going to be building my new PC. At the moment I have one of the original 36GB 8MB cache WD Raptors. What would you experienced ones think to the following:

1) Keep the Raptor for my OS and buy a 500GB drive for storage.

2) Buy 2x 160GB drives and have them in a Raid 0 configuration. I have an 400GB external drive that I can use for backup's and other storage needs.

Would I get much of a perfomance increase with option 2?

If option 2 looks the best, what drives dhould I get - just the cheapest?

Thanks for looking.

Regards,

CS

rpstewart · 16 Apr 2007 at 22:19

If you go with option 1 then chances are the storage drive will be faster (in transfer rate terms) than the Raptor. The original 36Gb Raptors aren't all that quick these days, the data density isn't that great compared to the newest 7200rpm drives so even the 10krpm spindle speed can't make up for it. However the spindle speed advantage of the Raptor will give better seeks than any of the 7200rpm drives.

Option 2 will give by far the best sustained transfer rate but the seeks won't be that great - probably a touch less than a single drive and nowhere near the Raptor. There are a lot of varying opinions on whether seek times or sustained transfer rates are more important when determining overall performance. If you use a lot of small files then seeks are more important, large files on the other hand will benefit from a higher sustained transfer rate.

For options 2 you probably want to be looking at a pair of the new breed of single platter 160Gb drives like the Hitachi 7K160s or the WD AAJS.

mcwildcard · 17 Apr 2007 at 13:30

Which option would be better for gaming and general windows use, option 1?

rpstewart · 17 Apr 2007 at 13:36

I don't think it's possible to generalise to that level. Each game is different, everyone's Windows installation will be different so the effect of the underlying storage subsystem will be different in each case.

smids · 17 Apr 2007 at 19:16

Got to agree with rpstewart however I will add one small comment.

Windows (indeed all major OS's) use very small files generally, with lots of them. dll's, .ini's, .exe's etc are all pretty small. This will benefit more from a small seek time. Games usually have large files - think the .gcf files for Steam. All very large (500MB upwards). These will benefit from a faster transfer rate (think in terms of read rate).

So, if we look very simplistically, Windows = seek, so long as you have average read (say 50MB/s), games = sustained read.

I mean I just bought a small SAS drive (just to test out) 2.5" 10K 36GB SAS drive, so I guess I'll find out... Average read of it is about 52Mb/s but seeks are about 4-5ms (faster than a Raptor). I guess I'll know soon enough... (well the drive only cost me £20).

naro · 17 Apr 2007 at 20:45

smids said:
I mean I just bought a small SAS drive (just to test out) 2.5" 10K 36GB SAS drive, so I guess I'll find out... Average read of it is about 52Mb/s but seeks are about 4-5ms (faster than a Raptor). I guess I'll know soon enough... (well the drive only cost me £20).

i've also got that. but my seeks are'nt that fast, only 7.6ms. Apparently, the SAS controller that you use matters.

HP-branded Savvio 36gb 10k with Adaptec 4805SAS

HP-branded Savvio 36gb 10k with LSI 8408E

naro · 17 Apr 2007 at 20:46

keylion said:
Hi all,

Soon I am going to be building my new PC. At the moment I have one of the original 36GB 8MB cache WD Raptors. What would you experienced ones think to the following:

1) Keep the Raptor for my OS and buy a 500GB drive for storage.

2) Buy 2x 160GB drives and have them in a Raid 0 configuration. I have an 400GB external drive that I can use for backup's and other storage needs.

Would I get much of a perfomance increase with option 2?

If option 2 looks the best, what drives dhould I get - just the cheapest?

Thanks for looking.

Regards,

CS

Hmm.. i guess it depends on your budget. If you're lucky, you might be able to find a 2nd hand WD360GD for cheap and do a Raid 0. If not, you can look at the WD1600AAJS to do Raid 0 for your OS.

keylion · 18 Apr 2007 at 00:10

Thanks for all your replies so far. Not sure what to do yet though. One other issue in staying with my existing Raptor is that 36GB is a little bit small these days. Once you've got everything installed, a couple of large files on your desktop and you're out of room!

Like the idea of finding another matching Raptor (will be about £45 by the look of it) but not sure about two 3 year old drives as my main disk, although I get the impression that they are very reliable.

Going to wait until next week (and the Intel price cuts!) before I order the rest of my system so I will do some more research in the meantime.

Any other comments are also welcome.

Thank you all.

CS

therealnerd2 · 26 Apr 2007 at 23:22

I benchmarked 36G raptors vs 300gb drives in windows and IIRC the 300gb whipped the raptors, even in RAID vs RAID.

keylion · 27 Apr 2007 at 00:33

therealnerd2 said:
I benchmarked 36G raptors vs 300gb drives in windows and IIRC the 300gb whipped the raptors, even in RAID vs RAID.

Thanks for that, it is very interesting. I've been doing a lot of reaserch on the best SATA drives to buy recently (in preparation for going RAID 0) and in several reviews/benchmarks i've got the impression that the latest generation 'standard' hard drives are not that far away and, in certain circumstances, even beat raptors. Taking this into consideration, and that my raptor is an original three year old model, i've decided to go for just one Segate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB drive for now to replace my original raptor. I didn't want to go straight to RAID 0 now as I though that the difference between my raptor and the new drive may be muddied by the difference between my old rig and new one. Maybe in a few months I will add another Seagate and go RAID 0, possibly along with Vista.

Regards,

CS