kimokalihi

Distinguished
Aug 17, 2006
38
0
18,530
What would be a faster/better setup. Two raided 80 GB 7200 RPM drives or one 10,000 RPM drive? I've never done RAID before nor have I run a 10,000 RPM drive.

Also, I want to run another larger drive to store my music and movies. Like 120 GB drive. Will this slow my performance down any? It shouldn't because it will only be accessed during music and movies.

Thanks
 
RAID's don't necessarily improve access speeds, and conversely, 10K RPM drives don't give increased data stability. Its kind of a apples to oranges deal, although you could RAID Raptors and have access speed and data stability.
But you already know that, and already know that you need two (or more) equal drives to setup a RAID.
So I'd recommend going with 2 x 120GB 10,000RPM WD RAPTOR X, in the RAID of your choice. Speed and stability. Gotta love it.
 

UAL3312

Distinguished
Nov 14, 2006
161
0
18,680
wasnt aware WD made a 120 gig 10k spinster. i have 2 150's in RAID0 and it is very fast you will see better performance in 1 10,000RPM Raptor then 2 7200RPM's in RAID0
 

mkaibear

Distinguished
Sep 5, 2006
678
0
18,990
"Faster" except in certain scenarios will be the Raptor.

You'll get a better sequential transfer rate from the striped pair of 7200s. This will have an effect in certain applications, but mostly the Raptor will be the fastest.

Having a second hard drive will not slow your computer down :)
 

Flakes

Distinguished
Dec 30, 2005
1,868
0
19,790
follow the advise above its good stuff, i was just wondering why a 120GB for games and movies? for the price difference just get a 200 or 250GB. personnally i wouldnt be able to fit all my games on a 120 drive never mind the movies.
 

kimokalihi

Distinguished
Aug 17, 2006
38
0
18,530
Alright, well that sounds REALLY expensive. I was just in bestbuy and I think it was like 150 for a 80 gb 10,000 rpm WD drive. But I'll be purchasing the whole thing off newegg, of course. So I'll count on it be much cheaper. Plus they ship to my house in 2 days most of the time.

So do you think running an extra 120-200 gb 7200(cheaper) drive will slow me down any? In addition to the raided drives? Like I said this is just to store my movies and mp3s.
 

niz

Distinguished
Feb 5, 2003
903
0
18,980
RAID's don't necessarily improve access speeds, and conversely, 10K RPM drives don't give increased data stability. Its kind of a apples to oranges deal, although you could RAID Raptors and have access speed and data stability.
But you already know that, and already know that you need two (or more) equal drives to setup a RAID.
So I'd recommend going with 2 x 120GB 10,000RPM WD RAPTOR X, in the RAID of your choice. Speed and stability. Gotta love it.

There's no such thing as 120GB raptors. they're 150GB. I can't fault them they are excellent drives but I'd strongly reccomend not getting the X ( the one with the window) but getting the regular windowless drive.

Its the same drive other than a widow so has the same performance, it is significantly quieter because instead of a window it has a sound-dampening lid, its $50 cheaper, and has higher speced MTBF for what its worth.
 
What would be a faster/better setup. Two raided 80 GB 7200 RPM drives or one 10,000 RPM drive? I've never done RAID before nor have I run a 10,000 RPM drive.

Also, I want to run another larger drive to store my music and movies. Like 120 GB drive. Will this slow my performance down any? It shouldn't because it will only be accessed during music and movies.

Thanks
I would go for the upgrade path. Buy 1 raptor now and later when you can buy another for RAID.
 

croc

Distinguished
BANNED
Sep 14, 2005
3,038
1
20,810
Raptors are noisy, and also add to case heat. And two raptors in raid 0 demands that you have a good backup strategy, as any failure in one will mean a complete re-install. They are expensive, as you have noted.

That said, if you are willing to put up with the extra noise, heat, and the reduced data integretiy, and have the money, go for it.

The second (third) drive should not slow you down.

my 2p.
 

pshrk

Distinguished
Oct 15, 2006
518
0
18,990
follow the advise above its good stuff, i was just wondering why a 120GB for games and movies? for the price difference just get a 200 or 250GB. personnally i wouldnt be able to fit all my games on a 120 drive never mind the movies.

Biggest raptor (that i know of) comes as 150. Your primary windows partition shouldn't be that big anyway, I like to keep mine around 80G. I try to store those movies, disk images, and other things that don't matter too much on one or more slower higher capacity drives

I think a raid 5 array with 4 150G raptors would be nice, 450G fast and reliable. Have to win the lotto first :wink:
 

BuffaloFan

Distinguished
Dec 16, 2006
16
0
18,510
Hi,

I would have to see some test documentation before I would accept any claims that one 10,000 rpm Raptor is faster than two 7200 rpm drives in RAID-0, or vice-versa. The Raptor's specs are sweet, to be sure. But here is my anecdotal experience with Raptors compared to other 7200 rpm drives:

Back when the first 10,000 rpm Raptors were around 40Gb, I ran two Raptors in RAID-0. I got a very good boot time and load time for apps and games, but it was not a "wow" experience. I remember feeling buyer's remorse because I had spent a ton of money on the Raptors.

Now, I am running two 7200 rpm Seagates in RAID-0. I really cannot tell much difference between the two setups. I have not looked at charts to compare milliseconds of seek times and all of that. However, everyday usage with the two Seagates in RAID-0 is fast and satisfying.

Purely as an experience-based opinion, this may be one of those areas where a user's real-world gains may not be as exciting as the specs would make one expect.

best wishes,
mike
 

pat

Expert
What would be a faster/better setup. Two raided 80 GB 7200 RPM drives or one 10,000 RPM drive? I've never done RAID before nor have I run a 10,000 RPM drive.

Also, I want to run another larger drive to store my music and movies. Like 120 GB drive. Will this slow my performance down any? It shouldn't because it will only be accessed during music and movies.

Thanks

Big file to work with (video editing,..)? RAID0
Lot of small files to with(pictures, MP3) Raptor

Both has pro and cons, depend of what you do
 

Sagekilla

Distinguished
Sep 11, 2006
178
0
18,680
IMO, it's not even worth the price premium to pay for a 150 GB raptor, much less even two of them. Unless you intend on doing intense video editing or if you feel like regularly throwing gigabytes of data to and fro hard drives, don't bother with the raptors. You're better off getting a 320 GB Barracuda 10 or two. For $200, you can get 640 GB of storage, and RAID if you want, instead of just a single raptor.

Honestly, it's really not worth it. As I've said before unless you intend on doing professional video editing, don't even get a raptor.
 

sailer

Splendid
My bad. I meant 150GB. Easy to screw up the numbers isn't it. :oops:

My fingers hit the wrong keys all the time. Blame it on partial paralysis of my right hand. Got to keep up on reading what is written before tis posted. Even then, some things escape me.
 

exisnet

Distinguished
Dec 2, 2006
94
0
18,630
I agree, my RAID 0 2x 74G raptors are fast but with new HD technology advancing with Flash and such, it maybe worth buying the 7200 drives and RAID them, then upgrade to the new HD standard when it (if) comes out. The 7200 HD’s then can be use for music and storage. Pure speculation on my part.
 

kimokalihi

Distinguished
Aug 17, 2006
38
0
18,530
I'm going to do a lot of gaming on this computer and I watch a lot of movies. I'm going to buy a projector for the movies so by the time I get this computer built I'll probably just burn all my movies on dvds so I won't need to watch them off the pc. They'll probably be in seperate rooms anyway.

So basically gaming and music.

Maybe I'll just go with 7200 RPM drives because I put two 150gb raptor 10,000 rpm drives and 2 gb of pc 6400 ddr2 together on a list on newegg and it was like 740 bucks...
 

ChetCV

Distinguished
Dec 9, 2006
32
0
18,530
I was in a similar situation when I had to decide on my HD setup. I chose to get a 74GB raptor and a 400GB Seagate 7200.10. Going to wait for those hybrid HD to come out and raid those using the raptor later as a swap file and video encoding drive.
 

x3m

Distinguished
Oct 25, 2006
33
0
18,530
Get three Seagate Barracuda 250's for the price of one Raptor 150 and RAID 5 them. :wink:

I'm with 69camaroSS on this one, that would be sweet... just to show off a little... :twisted:
 

gahleon

Distinguished
Jan 7, 2006
347
0
18,780
Alright, I would certainly say go with the Raptor. To the dude who said they are "noisy" just get a zalman heatpipe hd cooler which has rubber nipples and mount it to the bottom of the case via some newb moddage. It will keep it cool and plus help with the noise too. Mine works really nice and quite plus keeping it cool will help with stability. Every uber noob knows that heat is a comp killer.