Revamping an older PC

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Hi.

I was going to get shot of my Shuttle PC and use the funds to build a new PC
to last a couple of years - but I don't have the funds. Instead I was
thinking of revamping my older, redundant machine - it has an excellent MSI
motherboard, XP2800 so I'll plonk in 1GB of PC2700. My question relates to
HD performance

In most of my PCs, since forever(!), the HD has always seemed to be the weak
link. They crunch along and sound so unhealthy after a few month's usage.
I do a lot of graphic-scanning and manipulation, and image handling as I'm a
photographer. When I revamp my Xp2800 PC I want the best performing HD
setup possible. This motherboard can't do SATA - so what should I be
looking at? Would 2 discs in a Raid array be a good performance help, with
the addition of a 200gb drive for temporary backups of my photos etc?

Cheers

Will

 

[Philo]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"Will" <w@news.lukrative.com> wrote in message
news:4171206c$0$94918$bed64819@news.gradwell.net...
> Hi.
>
> I was going to get shot of my Shuttle PC and use the funds to build a new
PC
> to last a couple of years - but I don't have the funds. Instead I was
> thinking of revamping my older, redundant machine - it has an excellent
MSI
> motherboard, XP2800 so I'll plonk in 1GB of PC2700. My question relates
to
> HD performance
>
> In most of my PCs, since forever(!), the HD has always seemed to be the
weak
> link. They crunch along and sound so unhealthy after a few month's usage.
> I do a lot of graphic-scanning and manipulation, and image handling as I'm
a
> photographer. When I revamp my Xp2800 PC I want the best performing HD
> setup possible. This motherboard can't do SATA - so what should I be
> looking at? Would 2 discs in a Raid array be a good performance help,
with
> the addition of a 200gb drive for temporary backups of my photos etc?
>

why not get an SATA controller card

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Will wrote:

> In most of my PCs, since forever(!), the HD has always seemed to be the
> weak
> link. They crunch along and sound so unhealthy after a few month's usage.
> I do a lot of graphic-scanning and manipulation, and image handling as I'm
> a
> photographer. When I revamp my Xp2800 PC I want the best performing HD
> setup possible. This motherboard can't do SATA - so what should I be
> looking at? Would 2 discs in a Raid array be a good performance help,
> with the addition of a 200gb drive for temporary backups of my photos etc?

The board could do SATA if you put a PCI card in, assuming there is a PCI
slot available.

However, SATA really isn't much of a performance boost. Photos can take up a
lot of space, and eat your drive up in a hurry if you have enough of them,
so you'll need lots of capacity. I, personally run RAID 0 on my machine and
love it. It's definitely a lot faster than a single drive of the same
specs. However, you'll either need a motherboard with onboard RAID, or an
add-in card. If you have to go the add-in card route, you might as well
make it SATA, since that's going to be the connection of choice in future
motherboards, so it makes sense to be able to move your drives to a new
board effortlessly (you'd lose everything on the RAID, though, as it'll
need rebuilt).

If it were my upgrade to do, I'd go with 2 nice 160 GB or 200 GB HDDs in a
RAID 0, using SATA if I had to add a PCI card to do it. Make sure you get
at least 8MB cache. Then, I'd get a nice 300 GB USB2/IEEE1394 external
backup drive like the Maxtor OneTouch series to back it up. That way your
backup drive is transportable.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 14:21:47 +0100, "Will"
<w@news.lukrative.com> wrote:

>Hi.
>
>I was going to get shot of my Shuttle PC and use the funds to build a new PC
>to last a couple of years - but I don't have the funds. Instead I was
>thinking of revamping my older, redundant machine - it has an excellent MSI
>motherboard, XP2800 so I'll plonk in 1GB of PC2700. My question relates to
>HD performance
>
>In most of my PCs, since forever(!), the HD has always seemed to be the weak
>link. They crunch along and sound so unhealthy after a few month's usage.

That sounds more like buildup of junk, kind of like film on
a bathtub it has to be cleaned up once in a while. Yet,
there is still plenty of room for improvement.


>I do a lot of graphic-scanning and manipulation, and image handling as I'm a
>photographer. When I revamp my Xp2800 PC I want the best performing HD
>setup possible. This motherboard can't do SATA - so what should I be
>looking at? Would 2 discs in a Raid array be a good performance help, with
>the addition of a 200gb drive for temporary backups of my photos etc?

1) Plenty of memory, 1GB is enough for some people but not
others. While doing something demanding (afterwards) check
Task Manager to get a peak memory load figure and add at
least 256MB on top of that to get a minimal memory amount
(needed).

2) Motherboard with southbridge-integral SATA controller,
NOT an SATA chip on PCI bus. You could just get an SATA PCI
card but it will reduce performance some. It would be a
reasonable choice for many people but I mentioned
motherbaord replacement since emphasis was on HDD
performance.

3) WD Raptor(s) for OS, and workspace.

4) Large bulk storage drive (could be SATA or PATA) for
other storage where utmost performance isn't necessary, yet
a modern large drive will still be faster (most likley) that
what you're currently using.

 

[Apollo]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"Will" <w@news.lukrative.com> wrote in message
news:4171206c$0$94918$bed64819@news.gradwell.net...
> Hi.
>
> I was going to get shot of my Shuttle PC and use the funds to build a
> new PC to last a couple of years - but I don't have the funds.
> Instead I was thinking of revamping my older, redundant machine - it
> has an excellent MSI motherboard, XP2800 so I'll plonk in 1GB of
> PC2700. My question relates to HD performance
>
> In most of my PCs, since forever(!), the HD has always seemed to be
> the weak link. They crunch along and sound so unhealthy after a few
> month's usage.

That is a sure sign of clutter combined with not enough memory causing
excessive swap usage. Get 1GB of good quality PC3200 memory and
overclock the thing a wee bit, give us some more details on the cpu,
week number, existing cooling and case/cpu temps.

> I do a lot of graphic-scanning and manipulation, and image handling as
> I'm a photographer. When I revamp my Xp2800 PC I want the best
> performing HD setup possible. This motherboard can't do SATA - so
> what should I be looking at? Would 2 discs in a Raid array be a good
> performance help, with the addition of a 200gb drive for temporary
> backups of my photos etc?
>

Sata isn't that much faster, raid0 pata should give you around 140 -
170% increase, but I'm not at all sure it's a disk problem. For graphic
/ photo manipulation you want as much ram as your motherboard will take,
unless you just want a faster swap file ;o)
Raid0 pata ~ 65MB/s transfer.
PC3200 @ 200MHz dual channel ~ 3GB/s

HTH

--
Apollo

 

[None]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 14:21:47 +0100, "Will" <w@news.lukrative.com>
wrote:

>Hi.
>
>I was going to get shot of my Shuttle PC and use the funds to build a new PC
>to last a couple of years - but I don't have the funds. Instead I was
>thinking of revamping my older, redundant machine - it has an excellent MSI
>motherboard, XP2800 so I'll plonk in 1GB of PC2700. My question relates to
>HD performance
>
>In most of my PCs, since forever(!), the HD has always seemed to be the weak
>link. They crunch along and sound so unhealthy after a few month's usage.
>I do a lot of graphic-scanning and manipulation, and image handling as I'm a
>photographer. When I revamp my Xp2800 PC I want the best performing HD
>setup possible. This motherboard can't do SATA - so what should I be
>looking at? Would 2 discs in a Raid array be a good performance help, with
>the addition of a 200gb drive for temporary backups of my photos etc?
>
>Cheers
>
>Will
>
Can your MB handle a SATA card?
If so you can run sata133 drives.
I use a four year old 1.3gig Athalon Thunderbird system running a
Promise ATA133 card and 7200 speed HD's.
(The MB runs at 100MHz FSB but tended to drop frames so I moved up to
133)
If you do alot of graphics work your drive can and will get junked up
very quickly with fragments requiring weekly, or more often,
defragging.
This maybe one reason why your past drives started ailing so
quickly.(i've found that leaving large numbers of big image files on
the drive can stress them as well. i.e. increasing the hunt/seek and
travel the head has to do.)
While many these days are going 0 raid(and I might someday) I've found
that a simple scsi ATA133 card and a 7200rpm drive solve all my
imaging requirments. I do alot of DV editing as well as my more
mundane still photography editing and scanning.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"kony" <spam@spam.com> wrote in message
news:7tg2n0tle9n4mmu6haj5adh3g7ie9ue827@4ax.com...

>>In most of my PCs, since forever(!), the HD has always seemed to be the
>>weak
>>link. They crunch along and sound so unhealthy after a few month's usage.
>
> That sounds more like buildup of junk, kind of like film on
> a bathtub it has to be cleaned up once in a while. Yet,
> there is still plenty of room for improvement.

Sounds about right.

> 1) Plenty of memory, 1GB is enough for some people but not
> others. While doing something demanding (afterwards) check
> Task Manager to get a peak memory load figure and add at
> least 256MB on top of that to get a minimal memory amount
> (needed).

1GB, I'm sure, is my minimum requirement. I've been stuck on 750ish in the
past, and it's not quite enough.

> 2) Motherboard with southbridge-integral SATA controller,
> NOT an SATA chip on PCI bus. You could just get an SATA PCI
> card but it will reduce performance some. It would be a
> reasonable choice for many people but I mentioned
> motherbaord replacement since emphasis was on HDD
> performance.

Do you have any recommendations for this mainboard? I quite like the sound
of the Asus K8V (I get confused between that and that KV8 and AV8 - too many
models, all similarly named!)

> 3) WD Raptor(s) for OS, and workspace.

Thanks for the recommendation - just been reading about them and they sound
absolutely perfect.

> 4) Large bulk storage drive (could be SATA or PATA) for
> other storage where utmost performance isn't necessary, yet
> a modern large drive will still be faster (most likley) that
> what you're currently using.

Or as another poster said, perhaps a USB2.0 external drive

Will

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"Ruel Smith" <NoWay@NoWhere.com> wrote in message
news:dwccd.922$Ag.914@fe37.usenetserver.com...

>> When I revamp my Xp2800 PC I want the best performing HD
>> setup possible. This motherboard can't do SATA - so what should I be
>> looking at? Would 2 discs in a Raid array be a good performance help,
>> with the addition of a 200gb drive for temporary backups of my photos
>> etc?

[...]

> If it were my upgrade to do, I'd go with 2 nice 160 GB or 200 GB HDDs in a
> RAID 0, using SATA if I had to add a PCI card to do it. Make sure you get
> at least 8MB cache. Then, I'd get a nice 300 GB USB2/IEEE1394 external
> backup drive like the Maxtor OneTouch series to back it up. That way your
> backup drive is transportable.

Sounds good. Am I right in thinking if one drive of my RAID-0 array fails,
the whole lot goes/fails?

Will

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 21:22:48 +0100, "Will"
<w@news.lukrative.com> wrote:

>> 2) Motherboard with southbridge-integral SATA controller,
>> NOT an SATA chip on PCI bus. You could just get an SATA PCI
>> card but it will reduce performance some. It would be a
>> reasonable choice for many people but I mentioned
>> motherbaord replacement since emphasis was on HDD
>> performance.
>
>Do you have any recommendations for this mainboard? I quite like the sound
>of the Asus K8V (I get confused between that and that KV8 and AV8 - too many
>models, all similarly named!)

Don't have enough experience with K8 boards to recommend one
over another.

>
>> 3) WD Raptor(s) for OS, and workspace.
>
>Thanks for the recommendation - just been reading about them and they sound
>absolutely perfect.
>
>> 4) Large bulk storage drive (could be SATA or PATA) for
>> other storage where utmost performance isn't necessary, yet
>> a modern large drive will still be faster (most likley) that
>> what you're currently using.
>
>Or as another poster said, perhaps a USB2.0 external drive

External drives are good for removable backup, portable
storage, or when there simply isn't room in the case for
another drive. Otherwise an internal is better, much faster
and either cooler running or quieter (or both). A good
compromise for a 3 drive setup might be 1 raptor, 1 250+GB
internal and 1 250+ GB external. Then again I have no idea
of your storage needs or how much "critical" data needs
backed up. A backup drive should not be left connected,
running the entirety of the time the system is running for
security reasons.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 21:25:26 +0100, "Will"
<w@news.lukrative.com> wrote:


>> If it were my upgrade to do, I'd go with 2 nice 160 GB or 200 GB HDDs in a
>> RAID 0, using SATA if I had to add a PCI card to do it. Make sure you get
>> at least 8MB cache. Then, I'd get a nice 300 GB USB2/IEEE1394 external
>> backup drive like the Maxtor OneTouch series to back it up. That way your
>> backup drive is transportable.
>
>Sounds good. Am I right in thinking if one drive of my RAID-0 array fails,
>the whole lot goes/fails?

Yes, a singe drive failure on RAID0 wipes out the array. It
is not such a great idea to run a RAID0 of two drives on a
PCI SATA controller. "PCs" do not benefit much at all from
RAID0, particularly when it's running from a PCI card.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Will wrote:

>> If it were my upgrade to do, I'd go with 2 nice 160 GB or 200 GB HDDs in
>> a RAID 0, using SATA if I had to add a PCI card to do it. Make sure you
>> get at least 8MB cache. Then, I'd get a nice 300 GB USB2/IEEE1394
>> external backup drive like the Maxtor OneTouch series to back it up. That
>> way your backup drive is transportable.
>
> Sounds good. Am I right in thinking if one drive of my RAID-0 array
> fails, the whole lot goes/fails?

Yes, and that's why backup is a must. Generally, your chances of something
going wrong is multiplied by the number of drives in the stripe. So, your
twice as likely to have a problem with a hard drive. However, I've been
running the same RAID o setup for 3 years now without a single problem, so
chances that nothing will go wrong are in your favor. Today's hard drives
are miles more dependable than the models that came before. Also, if you
decide to move the drives to another motherboard in a future upgrade, the
stripe (spanning of the 2 drives) will be broken and you lose everything as
well, requiring you to build a new stripe on the new board and start over.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

kony wrote:

> Yes, a singe drive failure on RAID0 wipes out the array.  It
> is not such a great idea to run a RAID0 of two drives on a
> PCI SATA controller.  "PCs" do not benefit much at all from
> RAID0, particularly when it's running from a PCI card.

Huh? Is this from personal experience?

I've been running RAID 0 for several years now and it's definitely faster.
The more disk access your use, the more obvious the speed increase. My
brother is running a SATA RAID 0 setup I put together for him based on the
ICH5R southbridge with (2) Maxtor DiamondMax 9 80GB drives with 8MB cache
and his benchmarking is off the charts.

It's definitely noticable and worth the money, IMHO.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 08:44:25 -0400, Ruel Smith
<NoWay@NoWhere.com> wrote:

>kony wrote:
>
>> Yes, a singe drive failure on RAID0 wipes out the array.  It
>> is not such a great idea to run a RAID0 of two drives on a
>> PCI SATA controller.  "PCs" do not benefit much at all from
>> RAID0, particularly when it's running from a PCI card.
>
>Huh? Is this from personal experience?
>
>I've been running RAID 0 for several years now and it's definitely faster.

Not much. Several 'sites have done benchmarks "in-use"
which bear this out.

>The more disk access your use, the more obvious the speed increase.

Not necessarily, the data has to be "created" or processed,
and there is an overheat to RAID.

>My
>brother is running a SATA RAID 0 setup I put together for him based on the
>ICH5R southbridge with (2) Maxtor DiamondMax 9 80GB drives with 8MB cache
>and his benchmarking is off the charts.
>
>It's definitely noticable and worth the money, IMHO.

That is an optimal arrangement for running a RAID0,
excepting that the drives aren't the fastest these days, but
even so the benefit is reduced by the other bottlenecks in
the system. "Worth the money" depends a lot on how much
it'll cost... buying two drives for a board already having
the feature isn't much of a cost if user needed the storages
space regardless, but on the other hand for every $ there is
a benefit somewhere, it'd be most useful on a system
constrained by HDD more than CPU or video/etc... each user
much evaluate their needs.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"Ruel Smith" <NoWay@NoWhere.com> wrote in message
news:RHtcd.1026$Ag.622@fe37.usenetserver.com...

>> Sounds good. Am I right in thinking if one drive of my RAID-0 array
>> fails, the whole lot goes/fails?
>
> Yes, and that's why backup is a must. Generally, your chances of something
> going wrong is multiplied by the number of drives in the stripe. So, your
> twice as likely to have a problem with a hard drive. However, I've been
> running the same RAID o setup for 3 years now without a single problem, so
> chances that nothing will go wrong are in your favor. Today's hard drives
> are miles more dependable than the models that came before. Also, if you
> decide to move the drives to another motherboard in a future upgrade, the
> stripe (spanning of the 2 drives) will be broken and you lose everything
> as
> well, requiring you to build a new stripe on the new board and start over.

Thanks Ruel. Just one final question - would 2x80GB drives in a RAID-0
array equal 160GB or 80GB? Probably sounds daft, but I know some arrays
limit the total available storage to the largest drive in the array, not the
combined total

Will

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Will wrote:

> Thanks Ruel. Just one final question - would 2x80GB drives in a RAID-0
> array equal 160GB or 80GB? Probably sounds daft, but I know some arrays
> limit the total available storage to the largest drive in the array, not
> the combined total

It'll equal 160GB, less space lost in formatting. My 80GB RAID array is
actually 74.54GB using (2) 40GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus drives.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 15:41:00 GMT, kony <spam@spam.com>
wrote:


>...and there is an overheat ...

Err, overhead.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Ruel Smith:
>> "PCs" do not benefit much at all from
>> RAID0, particularly when it's running from a PCI card.
>
> Huh? Is this from personal experience?
>
> I've been running RAID 0 for several years now and it's definitely
> faster.

Several months ago, maybe more, there were some benchmarks done based on
real world applications that found Raid 0 to be only a few percentage
points faster than a single drive for the average user. I didn't bookmark
the site but it seemed pretty thorough.
--
Mac Cool