Western Digital AAKS Series drives and Raid 0

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sparky__H
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Sparky__H

Sparky__H

Hi guys

I reached the point where my poor old 74Gb raptor can no longer cope with the 10GB install requirements some games seem to be shipping with now (Damn EA!) and it’s in need of a replacement.

I’m looking at getting a couple of the 320GB AAKS drives and popping them in Rad 0. I’m a previous user of Raid sets so I know all the risks and setup procedures.

I have a few questions before I part with my cash:

Is the data density on the 320GB drives the same at the 500GB drives thus providing the same output speeds?

Are there any other drives from other manufacturers that outperform the new WD AAKS series?

Sparky
 
The 320 and 500Gb AAKS drives use the same platters, I believe it's 2 in the 320Gb and 3 in the 500Gb one.

The only SATA drives I know of which can sustain a transfer rate faster than the AAKS drives are the 150Gb Raptor, the newer 74Gb Raptors and the Hitachi 7K1000s.
 
rpstewart said:
The 320 and 500Gb AAKS drives use the same platters, I believe it's 2 in the 320Gb and 3 in the 500Gb one.

The only SATA drives I know of which can sustain a transfer rate faster than the AAKS drives are the 150Gb Raptor, the newer 74Gb Raptors and the Hitachi 7K1000s.
Click to expand...

Just as I thought, thank you :)

The drive will mostly be used for games and programming so a stripe of say 16 sound right?
 
A 16K stripe might be a little on the small side, it'll give good benchmark results but the controller will spend a fair bit of time putting the bits together on a big file. 32K or maybe 64K is a better bet for all round performance.
 
Prolly missed something here but whats so special about the AAKS range in terms of the performance vs the RE2 ones for example?
 
The AAKS drives are a generation newer than the RE2 ones. WD have increased the data density on the platters of the AAKS quite significantly, this leads to a higher sustained transfer rate than the RE2 drives.
 
Average read of 120 MB/s

Burst of 230 MB/s

Thats fresh install no driver updates
 
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