What is the fastest HD configuration?

  • ONE Raptor

    Votes: 1 25.0%
  • Two 7200 SATA drives in RAID 0

    Votes: 3 75.0%

  • Total voters
    4

niklas1978

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Dec 18, 2005
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I have what I believe to be a pretty simple question, yet I have been unable to find a satisfying answer in the forums or in any reviews on the net.

Early in the new year, I’m going to get myself a brand new pc. I want performance! I’ve decided on a ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard with 2 gigs of RAM and a Athlon 3800+ X2 CPU. But what should I choose for storage? Theres no doubt, that both a Raptor and/or RAID 0 will increace performance. But if I can only afford one of these things, which one is best? Due to my budget and needs, I have given myself 2 options (for the record, I don’t give a damn about data safety, cause I backup quite often).

Either ONE raptor WD740GD 74 GB (later I will get a second HD for storage) OR two modern SATA drives in RAID 0 (Seagate 7200.9 or similar). My questions are:

1) Which configuration will give me the best performance in each of these 4 different scenarios: a) windows startup, b) windows general usage, c) game loading and d) video editing?

2) How much performance will I gain in either configuration (%) compared to a configuration with just one modern SATA drive (Seagate 7200.9 or similar)

3) Which drives should I choose if I decide on the RAID 0 configuration, any recommendations? (Just so you know - I love a silent drive!)

(4) Two Raptor WD740GD 74 GB drives in RAID 0 are not really realistic…, but still, I’m a dreamer (like Ozzy) so tell me; how great would they really be??)

I would be really thankful if someone could give me some good advice…
Link to any reviews of the matter would be nice (read the one on pctats.com)

And merry x-mas to you all – from a very cold, dark and grey Copenhagen, Denmark.
 

niklas1978

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Well "RichPLS" I knew that already, so that's not really an answer to my question... For me its either ONE raptor or TWO 7200 SATA drives. So, which is best? Simple really, isn't it?
 

fishmahn

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1) a) Raptor by a few secs over 2x7200rpm RAID0; b) Raptor by an imperceptible amount over a 2x7200s; c) Raptor same as a); d) Raptor same as b).

2) a) maybe 25% less boot time; b) maybe 2-3% - not really noticeable; c) maybe 10-25% less game/level load time; d) up to 50% while saving/retrieving/encoding, almost nothing while doing manual work (cutting, pasting, etc.).

3) Not the Raptor (its definitely not silent). I like Seagates for quiet, others say WD or Maxtor...

4) 2x7200 in RAID0 is almost as fast as a single Raptor. 2 Raptors are noticeably faster. Definitely a worthwhile dream. :)

If silence is important, and price/gb is important (if you're on a budget and you do video editing, price/gb is important, IMO), get 2 seagate 7200.7's or 7200.8's (the .9's aren't benching out reall well that I've seen so I'd avoid them) and raid 0 them. $/gb is around the 250 or 300gb capacity

Mike.
 

niklas1978

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thx fishmahn!

hmm, so, two 7200 drives in RAID 0 are almost as fast as a single Raptor. If thats so, then this should be my choice...

But how much do I really gain i RAID 0 compared to just ONE drive. Not much, as far as I can tell from the few benchmarks in reviews I've seen. Or is it just because I haven't got the right information?

If someone has any recommandations on the best two 7200 SATA drives for RAID 0 it would be most welcome. Both performance and silence are important factors for me (and I am very confused as to how much noise the raptors really make, reviews and people in general give very very different answers to this question).
 

kool_moo

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Dec 19, 2005
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Sorry for the bad news niklas1978, but the Raptors are quite loud. I just built a new PC with a 36GB Raptor and a 160GB Maxtor 7200. My Raptor makes a sort of grinding, grunting sound. I can't really hear my Maxtor however because of the 5 case fans I have, lol. :D If anyone wants a recording I guess I could try sometime. rofl...
 

RichPLS

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Well then the 74giggers must be quiter, my Raptor is no louder than my Maxtor 250gigger, and not even as hot!

Anyway, re: RAID0 on 74gig Raptors, by Friday I will be assembling a dual Raptor RAID0 rig with an Opteron 175 and HIS X1800XT and will report benchies!!! :wink:
 

niklas1978

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Thx for all the information about the raptors and noise. Now, it looks like people are really recommending that I should by two 7200 SATA drives and put them in RAID 0, instead of one single Raptor. So, which two drives should Í choose for the RAID 0 (no raptors!)? Best price/gb/sound tradeoff...
 

TunaSoda

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Well then the 74giggers must be quiter, my Raptor is no louder than my Maxtor 250gigger, and not even as hot!

Anyway, re: RAID0 on 74gig Raptors, by Friday I will be assembling a dual Raptor RAID0 rig with an Opteron 175 and HIS X1800XT and will report benchies!!! :wink:

Would'nt it be nice to run the strip0 accross FOUR of these? :D
 

t1n0m3n

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Depends on which 7200rpm drives you are talking about. The new maxtor 500 gig in raid 0 would absolutely run circles around a single raptor. a 40 gig 7200 in raid 0 not so much.

It all has to do with the data density of the platters. 7200rpm on a tightly packed platter yields more data per rotation. So if it were me, for performance, I would look for the greatest capacity per platter drive I could get and be happy.

Your random seek times and small file access will not be as good with 7200 rpm (it takes longer to get around to the data) but once you get there it will load the data quickly. I would think that the higher density drives would be even more important to keep defragged for performance too..
 

t1n0m3n

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Well then the 74giggers must be quiter, my Raptor is no louder than my Maxtor 250gigger, and not even as hot!

Anyway, re: RAID0 on 74gig Raptors, by Friday I will be assembling a dual Raptor RAID0 rig with an Opteron 175 and HIS X1800XT and will report benchies!!! :wink:

Would'nt it be nice to run the strip0 accross FOUR of these? :D


I don't know about that.... Mine maxes out my SATA 150 at about 130MBs, I can't imagine you getting much more performance from 4 raptors as opposed to 2 with the SATA150 limits and all... possible maybe but I am not holding my breath.
 

t1n0m3n

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Oh, and one more thing... Performance really depends on where your SATA bus connects to your computer. A link directly to your Southbridge (or ICH on intel) is going to have a LOT of impact on your data thruputs.

For example: My motherboard is a Asus A8V Deluxe. It has 2 sets of SATA controllers. A promise controller and a VIA controller. The promise controller connects to the PCI bus. The VIA connects to the southbridge (bypassing the PCI bus) I get almost 2x the performance (I have a lot of PCI cards installed) by connecting the drives to the VIA as opposed to the Promise controller.
 

dylanamus

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The 34gb and 74gb raptors aren't just the same drive with different capacities. The development of the 74 brought along a number of new technologies. Compare them head to head and the 74 destroys the 34gb.

Also the 74gb variants have the new bearing system that renders them next to silent in normal operation conditions. I have a single 74gb raptor myself and I'm quite content. I'll probably just get another one and run them in RAID0 if I ever feel inclined to upgrade.
 

RichPLS

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Mine maxes out my SATA 150 at about 130MBs, I can't imagine you getting much more performance from 4 raptors as opposed to 2 with the SATA150 limits and all... possible maybe but I am not holding my breath.
Roptors only average about 60MBps and two is not double this, there is a loss from overhead, but two should average around 100MBps, whereas 4 would average somewhere below 200MBps to that theory.
Plus, 4 drives, even on a SATA1 channel, would beat two due to i/o operations of small files like a file server would use, even if transfer rate did not rise.