Triple WD Raptor's in Raid0 :: Too much?

[icewolf69]

Hey all, I'm building my new PC, and i'm thinking of getting 3 WD 74GB Raptor's in RAID0 (strictly for OS and games, everything else will be on separate HD's). But am i thinking too much into it? Is there a noticeable difference in speed with 3 HD's in raid0 or should i just stick with 2?

thanks for your help.

 

[JamieMole]

send me them and ill let ya know

 

[choirbass]

ill admit... for a short time i tried to advocate against using raid 0 (i tried to for a few days anyhow, lol)... because the benefits of 2 drives compared to a single drive for a desktop user, didnt exceed 15% in most cases, and in other cases not even a 5% boost was experienced, and as low as 0% othertimes... (it all depends on the application involved), the cost of assembling a raid 0 array outweighs the performance gains also, particularly outweighing the performance with the more drives you add to the array, not to mention the unlikely event that a drive will fail, causing all the data to be lost, it can happen, but its still just as unlikely as with 1 drive... that seems to be the main reason people fear using it though... regardless of that though, backing up data is something you should do regularly anyhow, lol

but...

i did decide to hook up my 3*36GB raptors running in raid 0 (yet again, just as of yesterday actually), and a fourth non raided 36GB raptor hosting the pagefile and some backed up data (2 of the raptors were sitting unused for awhile due to case ventilation problems, so for a long time i only had 2 raptors in use, in raid 0... ive since remedied the ventilation problem too, so, heating isnt an issue, neither is noise for that matter)... but, windows does appear to do some things smoother, i cant deny that, but i also cant say you will see a lightning speed jump going from 2 to 3 either... again, in the margin of 5-15% for 'most' desktop uses in your case

where you will see the largest boost however, in general, are in large sized file transfers (such as large game maps most likely)... what you should do also, is set the raided stripe size accordingly... ...since i would imagine youre mainly concerned with game loading times (over windows performance), set the largest stripe size you can (for me the largest is 128KB)... ...most windows file sizes are small to medium (only a few KB), so you wont get a significant boost there either way, regardless of stripe size

the performance boost involved wont be as significant going from 1 to 2 raptors (where the potential is to reduce transfer times by as much as 1/2), adding a third raptor theoretically will add a 33% boost (im sure my math is off there, lol, but, adding a third drive, will potentially reduce transfer times by 1/3, compared to 2 drives, where its potentially 1/2, so, yeah), im sure that makes sense either way

for a short time, awhile back, i tried only using 1 raptor (and had 3 sitting unused)... i will tell you, never again, lol... a single raptor just does not feel as fast, for anything, lol... also, the reason for the 'pagefile raptor', is because that raptor has strangely subpar performance; somewhat slower STR, and slightly slower access times, which ended up slowing the whole array down when it was included also (the STR increased with 4 raptors, but the access times were slower)... either way, having your pagefile on a seperate physical drive is ideal anyhow, that way the accessing of your pagefile wont hinder the simultaneous accessing of data on your main drives

anyhow, i hope this helps

 

[icewolf69]

I decided i'll stick with just 2 raptors in RAID0 instead of 3. probably not worth the extra $150, so I'll use it towards my other 8800 ^^

thanks for your help guys.

 

[choirbass]

yeah, it is somewhat faster... but not $150 worth, by any means... ...sli though, if thats what youre doing with the other 8800, has matured quite a bit, itll definetly give you more of an overall boost in general (at higher resolutions anyhow)