Setting up a seagate Raid 0 system, Smids ! help !

Combat squirrel

Combat squirrel

Combat squirrel

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7 Aug 2004
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Smids !!! You seem in the know about harddrive setups, at the moment I have a seagate 80gb SATA2 7200.9 harddrive for my system, I was going to get a raptor to make it quicker, but looking at a few of your posts, it seems buying another one and raiding it will be faster,

I know the reliability will be lower, but im hoping seagates relibility will bring it up a little, BUT i dont want to format is it possible to somehow get raid 0 working, by somehow copying the data to a raid 0 system ? Can I just plug it in and tell it Raid 0 ho ! lol

Im guessing I carnt, I was thinking id have to copy my current system disk to another HD, (image it or something), install 2nd seagate drive, format the raid 0 system and then re-image it back to those disks?

Also one more thing, I dont get why in Raid0 you get 160gb space from 2 80gb drives, I thought 2 drives shared the I/O thus logically you would get 80gb's again ? Or have i lost the plot :D
 
For OS/App's a 10k Raptor/15k SCSI would be faster/better! This is because of the low Random Access which is very important when dealing with OS/Apps as they have to constantly access loads of little files!

RAID 0 is best used for Video editing work or large Graphics work as they have high bandwith but poor Random Access.
 
I had 2 x Seagate 200GB Barracudas SATA in RAID0 (TOTAL 400GB), it certainly was faster than a single Barracuda, also had 2 x 74GB Raptors in RAID0, very fast 130MB/s Average read, Randon access 7.6ms in HD Tach, now running Raptors as single HDDs.

As already stated ONLY use RAID0 if your are working with very large file, ie video etc, remember when using RAID0 you have NO redundency, ie one HDD goes, you loose ALL your data on BOTH HDDs, so if you go that route make sure you have a 3rd HDD (single) to back up the data you don't want too loose.

So, if you are NOT working with large file, I would get the Raptor. :)
 
When I get in tomorrow ill hdtach my raptor and raid, will give you some kind of start point. Id say raptor personally from the 2 tho, mines got the raptor as boot/windows and the raid for everything else (windows swap file in 2GB partition at the VERY start of the raid)
 
Hmm, real world, I've always found my RAID0 7200rpm faster than my raptor single - and I've had a lot of different setups:

7200rpm
36G Raptor
74GB Raptor
7200rpm RAID0
Raptor 74GB RAID0
150GB raptor
4x80GB RAID0+1

I can honestly say that even though I don't deal with huge files except in games, my RAID0 feels faster than the raptor 74GB. I have set a small stripe which is why probably. 16K stripe makes windows extremely nippy.

The only question comes down to reliability in my eyes where the raptor is leaps and bounds ahead.
 
Combat squirrel said:
Thats what im thinking smids, also another seagate drive is cheaper,lol.

So if I set a small stripe size will help as a windows boot drive yes? :) faster than raptor ? :)
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In my experience yes. 16K stripe is the optimum Windows stripe - though it needs defragging regularly :p.
 
amdnv said:
A good allrounder is 32KB as its the default on a lot of controlers.
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Yup, I use this as I play games.

Basically, smaller stripes = better read however higher CPU usage.

In a RAID0, anything which is bigger than the stripe is only placed on one harddisk :eek:. Most windows files are tiny and so you need a 16K for optimum windows. However, game files like a hl2.gcf file is mahoosive - say 1.5GB. Breaking 1.5GB down into small 16KB blocks is going to use a lot of blocks and CPU time to find and read. This is why gamers are told large stripe for fast map loading etc. 32K/64K are see as middle road. 32K is better I think as I have used 64K which wasn't great for windows loading however 32K is. 128K is purely games/videos. Well that is a mini-summation should you opt for the RAID route.
 
Seen some review sites benching raid 0 with 2 and 3 HDD's with varying sizes down to a little as 4KB lol, I guess they defrag PC 1x per day :p
 
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