RAID 0 --> (2) 74GB RAPTORS or... (2) 100GB WD HDDS?

shadow88

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I have the option of getting two 100gb WD hdds and set them up in raid 0. Or, the possibility of buying two WD740s and set them up in raid 0.

I cant find any benchmarks on the internet that show anything like this. How much difference in performance am I going to see? I'm not a hardcore video editor, I play games like HL2, Source, DOD source and I do a lot of photoshopping.

Is it worth the extra $300 cdn? What do you guys think?
 

Codesmith

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No one can answer that question without knowing more about your other components, your budget, your expectations and maybe your planned upgrade path.

Right now whats best for me is a single 74 GB Raptor for my system partition, and use mirrored WD 400 GB RE2 for storage.

To give you an example I my system has been evolving over the past 4 years and here is roughly the priorites.

1) A good monitor (19" Mitsubishi Diamontron)
2) A 2nd dispaly (make software dev/web design easier)
3) A big comfortable desk (corner desks are great for dual monitors)
4) A big comfortable chair.
5) A 27" TV that accepts 1024x768 from my PC.
6) Decent Home Theater Reciever and Speakers
7) XFi ExtreemMusic connected to my home theater system
8) NF4 Motherboard, AMD64 CPU, X800XL GC, 2x512GB PC4400
10) Sony MDR V6 Headphones (very acurrate, great for 3d gaming)
11) Logitech MX1000 Laster Mouse, MS Natural Keyboard
12) 74 GB Raptor
13) Quiet Seasonic 600 Watt PS
14) 2 400 GB RE2 Hard drives in RAID 0.

I am not considering a 2nd Raptor, because my backup softare doesn't like to restore to RAID 0 arrays.

I experiment with new software a lot and being able to have my system up and running the way it used to in less than 10 minutes is an absolute must.

I also have friends how don't tinker with their software as much and so they can go years wihtout having to reinstall or restore from a backup.

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Anyway mostly what you are going to get out of a faster hard drive is faster installations and shorter load times for both applications and games.

Moving from level to level in a game will be a bit faster, but it usually won't be a night and day difference.

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If everything else is top notch and all your other priorties are met buy the Raptors without a 2nd thought.

If you are paying games in an uncomfortable chair with a 17 " monitor on a rickety table with a mouse whose cord drives you nuts, trying to find out where those gunshots are comming from using $5 headphones then those Raptors begin to lose their luster.
 

shadow88

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If you are paying games in an uncomfortable chair with a 17 " monitor on a rickety table with a mouse whose cord drives you nuts, trying to find out where those gunshots are comming from using $5 headphones then those Raptors begin to lose their luster.
lol!

No one can answer that question without knowing more about your other components, your budget, your expectations and maybe your planned upgrade path.
My "Other components"
Case ::: Thermaltake Armor
Power Supply ::: Libert 620W
Motherboard ::: A8N32-SLI DLX
CPU ::: Athlon X2 4400+
RAM ::: OCZ 2gb Platinum
GFX Card ::: XFX 7800GT 256MB
Monitor ::: Hyundai L90D+
Mouse ::: Logitech MX518
Keyboard ::: G15 Gaming Keyboard
OS ::: XP 64 Pro

My budget is on the high side. $3grand CDN.
My plans to upgrade are another XFX 7800GT
I expect it to be fast haha

I just want to know whether your really gonna notice the difference. RAID 0 is way faster than an ordinary SATA Hard Drive. But whats the difference between the two sets of raids and is it worth the extra $300 cdn :p
 

Scottz

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For what your doing, no.
Your going to see an improvement with RAID 0 with the 100Gig drives over a single drive already.

If you have the cash to burn and want your levels to load up even a few seconds faster, then yes.

How much faster? Pick one of your favorite games and go check on a forum for that game. I've seen the discussion about RAID 0 on almost every game forum there is.
 

dakiwi

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Well i am running two SATA Western Digital 36Gb 8Mb cache Raptors as a RAID0 in my system as the operating system drive and they are running quite zippily with a benchmarked burst speed of around 90Mb/s

My SATA II 250Gb 16Mb cache Western Digital Benchmarks at around 133Mb/s so it is a little faster but then again it is just a data drive

You do definately notice a difference between a 10k rpm drive to a 7200 rpm drive for sure.
 

corvetteguy

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is that stuff what you already have or what your going to buy out of that 3 grande, cause if you already have it i can't see many ways to spend 3000 other than getting 2 x1900xt's and z5500 speakers, an amazing sound card, and i don't know... 30 in lcd lol
 

corvetteguy

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well in that case i wouldn't even get RAID, i would get the western digital se 16 250gig 7200rpm. I really don't think that loading times are THAT big of a problem that you need to spend all that money, and since your getting that good RAM like i'm getting and 2 gigs like me, your comp won't always be going back to the HD while playing so the hd speed isn't that big of an issue.
 

shadow88

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what about initial loading time? boot up time? I'm picky I like it quick. I am getting one or the other. The question is how much am i really really gonna notice between the raptors and normal satas.
 

corvetteguy

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no enough to worry about getting raptors, or pay more money, or listen to all the noise they make, in my opinion.

personally, i don't know why boot time is such a big deal since you only do it once, unless you turn it on/off frequently. load times are a bit more of an issue but that nush unless it takes 5 minutes to load a game
 

shadow88

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well, i turn off my computer at night and when i go to school. I'd like my computer to turn on faster than the one i have right now. It takes at least 4min to bootup and load into windows etc etc. I just want something much faster.

loading times for anything really annoy me. I don't know why but they just do. Like photoshop, i hate how my current computer takes like 1min to get in.

I also don't want the hard drive to bottleneck such a nice system I'm planning to have by the end of the week.
 

Codesmith

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All I can tell you is that in single drive operation I definately notice a difference when I upgraded to a Raptor and I personally feel the extra price is worth it.

Anyway my vote if for you to go with the Raptors, at the very least you will be able to show people your HDTach scores and make them drool :)
 

Covered_in_bees

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I currently have Raptors, and previously had them in RAID 0. I no longer have the RAID array set up, and haven't noticed that much of a difference tbh.

The reasons I chose not to do RAID this time are:

1. Had problems installing winxp on them
2. Read some reviews where the loading times for certain games were not reduced by having RAID 0 (can't remember why or where those reviews were, unfortunately). The winxp load time is reduced, however.

However, I would strongly recommend the 'raptors'. They are not noisy (I have 4 and don't notice the noise at all), and the performance is great.

I've also heard some people suggest that the new 150GB Raptor X performs even better (some even say it should perform better than 2 x 74GB raptors in RAID 0, although I have no info to support that claim).
 

admiral25

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For what your doing, no.
Your going to see an improvement with RAID 0 with the 100Gig drives over a single drive already.

If you have the cash to burn and want your levels to load up even a few seconds faster, then yes.

How much faster? Pick one of your favorite games and go check on a forum for that game. I've seen the discussion about RAID 0 on almost every game forum there is.

1 raptor 150 will blow those 2 drives away easy, get 1 raptor 150 dont do raid 0 with 2 74 gig raptors.
 

Covered_in_bees

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I've also heard some people suggest that the new 150GB Raptor X performs even better (some even say it should perform better than 2 x 74GB raptors in RAID 0, although I have no info to support that claim).

1 raptor 150 will blow those 2 drives away easy, get 1 raptor 150 dont do raid 0 with 2 74 gig raptors.

Now I have found one of the people who suggested that :lol:
 

Codesmith

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Strange everything I read suggestst the exact oposite. 2 74's beat a single 150 to a bloody pulp.

Some Benchmarks

Accourding to HD Tac 2 74 GB Raptors blow away a single 150 GB Raptor.

2 74 GBs RAID 0 Access Time 7.8 Sustained Transfer 131.5
150 GB Raptor Access Time 8.1 Sustained Transfer 77.9
2 150's RAID 0 Access Time 8.3 Sustained Transfer 156.2

The benchmarks have spoken!

And from HD Tacs Library
2 Seagate 120's Raid 0 13.1 ms & 64.4 MB/s

Note the 74GB raptor has a better access time than the 150's.
 

admiral25

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Strange everything I read suggestst the exact oposite. 2 74's beat a single 150 to a bloody pulp.

Some Benchmarks

Accourding to HD Tac 2 74 GB Raptors blow away a single 150 GB Raptor.

2 74 GBs RAID 0 Access Time 7.8 Sustained Transfer 131.5
150 GB Raptor Access Time 8.1 Sustained Transfer 77.9
2 150's RAID 0 Access Time 8.3 Sustained Transfer 156.2

The benchmarks have spoken!

And from HD Tacs Library
2 Seagate 120's Raid 0 13.1 ms & 64.4 MB/s

Note the 74GB raptor has a better access time than the 150's.

I mean beats it like, if one fails then your jacked and can't recover your data(raid 0 blows, get 3hdds and raid5).
 

corvetteguy

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maybe you can get a single raptor, or if thats not enough capacity, then get a shitty 250gig for storage, but don't get a single 150gig raptor, cause its almost the price of 2 74gig raptor, but seriously, that wd se 16 250gig will load very quickly, maybe a few seconds longer in games, check the hard drive chart for xp loading times, or maybe i will after i check my other threads.
 

corvetteguy

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ok

i looked at the hd chart, and i'd still say go with the 250gig one i said, cause the price performance is almost exactly the same, and random access time is measured in milisecond, and of course the raptor won , but was only ahead by about 5ms, big whoop. The surface temp doesn't seem to be a big deal for the raptor, 46 for the 250, 51 for raptor, but where the 250gig obviously wins is in cost per gig.

the xp load you were concerned about shouldn't take 4 minutes, more like 1 minute with 250gig, 40 seconds with raptor, and according to mpjesse, 16 seconds with dual raptors, however, are those few seconds worth all that money you could put into something else like a video card?
 

leadtrombone

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I agree with admiral25 I think you should go with three drives and go with raid 5. Personally I would go with 3 wd 320 sataII drives

western digital 320 gig cavier se16

____________________________________________________________
Athlon 3800 x2
Asus a8n-e
2gigs ocz platinum
xfx 7800gt 256mb
hiper-x 580
4x 250 wd sataII
 

corvetteguy

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wait are we talking american dollars, cause even if we're not thats still expensive for three of those, and does, he really need 960gigs of space, almost a terabyte, i don't think so, save yourself some money and get a sinlge wd se 16 250gig 7200rmp 16mb cach hd.

by the way, is my sig picture showing, mine shows up as an x
 

admiral25

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3 250 gig hdds in raid 5 gives you 500gigs, if one fails your data is safe. vs raid 0 one hdd crashes all your data is gone and thats it.
 

corvetteguy

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right, i forgot he said RAID 5, but he also said 3 320gig, so thats 640gig, and the same price, about 400 usd,i think, we're talking in american, which is expensive, and i don't think drives fail as often as people say, especially wd and seagate, cause they are quality ones.