SataII or RAID 0,1 or 5 for my new gameing PC?

[fipeso]

Hi,

My first post here :lol:

My old PC died, and I am now trying to get a new one.
Trying = so many options my head is spinning.

Now the modern MOBO's has 4 SataII connectors, and it is possible to run RAID at home?

I dont need redundancy, I only want speed.

So for playing games what is the fastest disk system for reasonable sum of money ?
Fast = somthing that I realy would notice, not just benchmarking.

First I was thinking 4 disk Raid 0, but now I start to think that one big disk is even beter ?

 

[clue69less]

Now the modern MOBO's has 4 SataII connectors, and it is possible to run RAID at home?

I dont need redundancy, I only want speed.

So for playing games what is the fastest disk system for reasonable sum of money ?
Fast = somthing that I realy would notice, not just benchmarking.

First I was thinking 4 disk Raid 0, but now I start to think that one big disk is even beter ?

Yes it is possible, even easy to run a RAID at home. Hell, if i can do it, anyone can. But do you NEED it? You can get a 74GB Raptor for ~$130 right now and that's a fast drive. I personally would not run a 4-disc RAID0 to get speed on a gaming rig. Now if you did huge I/O, that's a different story and there might be a payoff - as long as you were religious with your backups.

 

[Codesmith]

For best gaming perfomance you want fast GPU, CPU and RAM.

Hard drives barely impact gaming. Loading time is mostly spend decompressing the levels, not copying them off the hard drive.

Get a single Seagate SATA. Make your decision based on size and price. Put the money you could have spend on two drives or a Raptor into your video card.

 

[fipeso]

So maybe I just need to forget the RAID and just buy a single SATA2 drive?

Or 2 drives but not configure them with RAID?

Is there any _real_ benefit if I say install windows on c: and put the swap file on d: ?

Putting the money on beter CPU/GPU/RAM sounds smarter.

Just a shame not to use the raid lol

 

[Codesmith]

There are no SATA I or SATA II drives.
Stop using those terms they confuse people and propogate myths that cause people to make bad purchasing decisions.

Read my thread on the subject if you don't belive me.

The interface speed of a SATA drive has no importnance or significance. Just block out the 150 or 3.0 completely and let them in no way influence your purchase.

Is there any _real_ benefit if I say install windows on c: and put the swap file on d:

No Harm and no benifit.

Your Page File is for pushing things RAM unto your hard drive when it won't be used for awhile, and for virtual memory when you are doing something that requires more memory than you have.

It doesn't happen often and most likely your HD will be idle when it happens.

What is usefull is to keep all installed programs on C: and all your data personal files and folders on D:

 

[Codesmith]

What I like to do is
one partition for installed software
one partition for personal documents

Keep OS and data seperate. Backup OS and data seperately.
I move my mozilla profile, my documents and desktop folders to D:.

So if my OS acts weird, 15 minutes latter I have restored from a backup and yet all my email, bookmarks, personal documents ... is exactly as I left it.

Doesn't have to be on two drives, but if you got em use em.

My preference is for drives with 5 year warranties. It is my opinion that manufactures don't offer to replace a drive for 5 years unless you really expect the vast majority to last at least that long.

Off the drives offering 5 year warranties

The 74/150 Raptor is the fastest, but you pay for that extra performance.
The WD RE drives are the best choice for RAID arrays
The Seagate drives are the best bang for your buck.

Personnaly I use a 74 GB Raptor for my OS and two 400 GB WD RE2's in RAID 1 for storeage. But these drives were the last items on my upgrades wish list.

Usually recommend a Seagate to most people and spend the money saved on other components.

If you do with the Raptor, research it real world effects, so you won't have too high of expectations and get dissapointed. Its fast, but HD speed doesn't matter as much as most people expect.

If you want to do research here are two places to get some performance numbers. (Use both as neither site has benchmarked all the top drives)

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html
http://www.storagereview.com/comparison.html

 

[clue69less]

What I like to do is
one partition for installed software
one partition for personal documents

Keep OS and data seperate. Backup OS and data seperately.
I move my mozilla profile, my documents and desktop folders to D:.

Me too. Good general plan. Customize to fit!

If you do with the Raptor, research it real world effects, so you won't have too high of expectations and get dissapointed. Its fast, but HD speed doesn't matter as much as most people expect.

Well, maybe that's because many people don't spend a large part of their computer time doing reads and writes. As soon as you start doing stuff where the read/write time is a significant part of your work (or play) then you'll find that even trimming 10% off of your wait times is a real advantage. I've seen people dis on RAID in a major way, then begin doing a R/W-intensive activity and next thing you know, they are asking you questions about setting up a RAID. Waiting long periods of time on a repeated basis tends to change one's perspective.

 

[industry7]

think about it this way... right now you can get two 36gig raptors at basically the exact same price as a single 74gig raptor. given that, i can't see why anyone that already has raid on their motherboard *wouldn't* go for a raid setup. plus the smaller raptors are actaully faster to begin with.

so while it's true it won't have an impact on your framerates, you will notice your system *feels* faster in general with raid.