which is faster

Gregfoster17 · 11 Dec 2011 at 17:08

Hi there,
I'm just wanting to know if anyone has any insight in to which set up might be the fastest (read and write speeds).

Set up 1; 500Gb HDD SATA 3 (6Gb/s), plugged into SATA 3 port

Set up 2; 2x1Tb HDD SATA 2 (3Gb/s), both plugged into SATA 2 ports running in RAID 0 using windows 7.

Both set ups are in the same motherboard (MSI P67-GD53(B3)), with win 7 running on a 60Gb SSD (SATA 2 (3Gb/s)).

Any thoughts on the set ups would be appreciated.

Jay794 · 11 Dec 2011 at 17:11

Surely it depends on the speed of the drive, thus the 500GB would be faster?

Gregfoster17 · 11 Dec 2011 at 17:19

oh yeah forgot to mention all of the drives (500Gb and the 2x1Tb HDD) all run at 7200rpm

weird_dave · 11 Dec 2011 at 18:06

Setup 2.
A single drive can't max out SATA 2, but 2 in RAID 0 might do with decent drives.
if you can state the make/model, it'd be fairly easy to estimate the speed of each setup.

d4ns · 11 Dec 2011 at 18:10

Certainly a difference in capacities though. 500GB will not last long these days. :rolleyes:

Surveyor · 11 Dec 2011 at 18:43

Set up 2.

A HDD in a SATA 3 port is no different than if it was plugged into a SATA 2 port.

The drive is the limiting factor not the interface.

Say all the drives had read and write speeds of 120MB/s.

The 500GB drive would work at those speed if it was connected to SATA 2 or 3.

The RAID 0 pair could theoretically have a speed of 240MB/s, 120MB/s from each drive.

I assume you're aware that if 1 drive fails in a RAID 0 setup then all the data is lost.

d_brennen · 11 Dec 2011 at 18:50

d4ns said:
Certainly a difference in capacities though. 500GB will not last long these days.

Depends on what you do with it, take the rolleyes with ye

Speed · 11 Dec 2011 at 19:08

Definately the Raid 0 setup, as Surveyor rightly says the drive is the limiting factor, not the SATA interface speeds. Plus you'll likely have higher platter platter density on the 1TBs.

neil_g · 11 Dec 2011 at 20:49

Depending what you use the raid0 it may have negligible performance benefits. Also depends on the set stripe size.

I read an article a while ago that benchmarked single vs raid0 raptors and the benefit vs cost didn't make it look worthwhile.

Gregfoster17 · 12 Dec 2011 at 14:12

thanks for all the replies, I'm aware of the risk that if one drive fails they both fail, but I keep all my photos and music and films on other HDD, so it's just my steam/DVD games that will be on it.

The 500Gb HDD was the one I got when I build my PC (Julyish) just to keep costs down, but that quickly filled up and by that point the HDD drives rocketed! But eventualy decided that with xmass and steam sales I needed th extra space now and not half way through next year!

skyripper · 12 Dec 2011 at 16:24

Just run HDTune (or your favorite benchmark) on the single drive vs the Raid0 and make your choice based on that.

My bet would be on the 2x1TB drives in Raid0 being quicker.