2x 1TB WD Black (FZEX) Drives vs 1x 2TB WD Black Drive

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Psyonus

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Mar 26, 2014
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OK so here is my question.

I currently have a 250GB Samsung EVO as my OP Drive and am looking to add some Magnetic Storage to house my Steam Lib.

I want the Read/Write to be fast so I can limit the number of games I need to move to my SSD.

I am looking at two different ideas as follows:

2x 1TB WD Black (FZEX) Drives in Raid 0
or
a Single 2TB WD Black (FZEX) Drive on its own.

Would it matter a great deal if I used the Motherboard Raid controller or should I get a PCI-E controller?

I am specifically looking for benchmarks to determine if there is a significant difference or not.
If anyone out there knows of any good benchmarks I would love to get a link!

Cheers Guys
 
Solution
kenrivers
Either way you go you need to make sure you have a good backup plan in place remembering that if one drive fails in RAID 0 then all data is lost.

You may want to look at some of these links:
https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110416171539AARTMg2
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2289753

I'm not a gamer so any advice I could offer would be pure speculation. Some of what I have read suggests that RAID 0 only offers a minimal performance gain and the SSD is the way to go. I have no experience and don't know whether any of that is true.
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kenrivers

kenrivers

Illustrious
Dec 29, 2010
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Either way you go you need to make sure you have a good backup plan in place remembering that if one drive fails in RAID 0 then all data is lost.

You may want to look at some of these links:
https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110416171539AARTMg2
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2289753

I'm not a gamer so any advice I could offer would be pure speculation. Some of what I have read suggests that RAID 0 only offers a minimal performance gain and the SSD is the way to go. I have no experience and don't know whether any of that is true.
 
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Solution
popatim

popatim

Titan
Moderator
Dec 2, 2009
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While in random everyday usage you might notice a slight loss of performance, what you pick up with large files, like map loads, may well be worth the extra hassles of dealing with raid0 , like being good with your backups, Knowing full well you might have to reinstall everything, the cost of two disks is more than the cost of a single disk twice the size...
 
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gospelmidi

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Dec 24, 2009
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After years of tinkering with RAID, I finally decided the modest real world increase in disk speed wasn't worth the hassles, especially when a 7200 rpm EIDE hard disk drive failed after two or three years. There is quite a bit of tuning required to get the best RAID performance, which takes more time than RAID could possibly regain.

May I suggest that you install all of your games and software on your hard disk drive(s). Then, in the settings for each game, assign the SSD as the location of your graphics and scenery libraries. Just before playing a game, vacate storage space on the SSD as needed, and copy those graphics and scenery libraries to the SSD. This will allow you to use the SSD for video playback with many games, instead of just a select few.
 
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