4x Raptors for a RAID 0, Is it worth it?

[DJPHS]

I'll be building a new PC soon as was pondering on the idea of 4x 74GB Raptors for a RAID 0 array as opposed to 2x 150GB's. Price wise there's not a lot in it & i'm not concerned about storage capacity or the increased failure risk but i'm after maximum performance.

Anyone had any experience of a 4 drive array?

Thanks.

 

[BushLin]

Yeah, I use a 4 drive RAID 10 and I do this rather than RAID 0 because once the PCI bus is my bottleneck and it means a single drive failure doesn't lose me data.
IF you want to run a 4 drive RAID 0 you'd better do it on a PCI-Express or PCI-X controller as just about everything else will be a bottleneck to the bandwidth those drives can churn out but even without such a card 4 drives will still be faster than 2.

 

[PCcashCow]

I'll be building a new PC soon as was pondering on the idea of 4x 74GB Raptors for a RAID 0 array as opposed to 2x 150GB's. Price wise there's not a lot in it & i'm not concerned about storage capacity or the increased failure risk but i'm after maximum performance.

Anyone had any experience of a 4 drive array?

Thanks.

If you want to go as fast as you can go for it, but raid 10 or 0+1 will better your odds and give you better performance than single drive configurations will. If storage is not your concern, then why 4 drives? You could lower your odds of failing in two raid arrays of 0.

Most people with WISELY use a raid 0 set up do some type of pro-active backup solution like Veritas, Ghost, or something along those lines to have a valid archive of data.

IF you want to run a 4 drive RAID 0 you'd better do it on a PCI-Express or PCI-X

I'm not sure what your getting at here, most PCI-X cards for sata are expensive and not used in home systems. PCI-X interfaces are Intel server based and run at 66/100/133hz, where the PCI-e runs similar for 2.0, only at 1x 4x 16x and so on. PCIe would be the way to go for a raid controller in this instance though, HOWEVER I assume on board would be what will be using.

 

[BushLin]

IF you want to run a 4 drive RAID 0 you'd better do it on a PCI-Express or PCI-X

I'm not sure what your getting at here...

Simply that a PCI controller will be limited by the PCI bus when using a 4 drive RAID 0 especially if the drives are 10,000rpm. I'll not even touch on onboard controllers.

 

[rexter]

If you will be using your drive for your important files then raid 10 or 0+1 will be a wise choice but if you’re only using it for gaming then Raid 0 would be fine.
Anyway you do it, make sure you have good fan blowing on them 'coz they'll generate a lot of heat.

 

[yourmothersanastronaut]

Not necessarily. If your case has a front fan like mine (Lian Li PC-60 plus II, black), then you're fine. If it doesn't have a front intake fan to blow over the hard drives, just space them out if possible. You'll be fine.