Seagate 7200.10?

[Tang]

Two questions:

Is Seagate the only manufacturer making the perpendicular recording drives?

The primary purpose of my computer is to play graphics intensive games. I don't really want to pay for two 150 Raptors, and I like storage space. I'm looking at buying two Seagate 7200.10, 400GB, 16MBcache then setting up RAID 0. Is this the best performance setup(without getting Raptor x2, SCSI), or am I overlooking a better way?

I'm a newbie, pls don't flame me 8O

 

[1Tanker]

Two questions:

Is Seagate the only manufacturer making the perpendicular recording drives?

The primary purpose of my computer is to play graphics intensive games. I don't really want to pay for two 150 Raptors, and I like storage space. I'm looking at buying two Seagate 7200.10, 400GB, 16MBcache then setting up RAID 0. Is this the best performance setup(without getting Raptor x2, SCSI), or am I overlooking a better way?

I'm a newbie, pls don't flame me 8O

At the moment, yes...for desktop drives(3.5 inch). I read a week or two ago that Hitachi or Toshiba(can't remember which..right now) is coming out with a PRT notebook drive(2.5inch) in Q1 07. Two Seagate 7200.10's(16MB) in RAID 0 should fly. GL

 

[Tang]

Thanks for the help 1Tanker

 

[speedemn]

I don't really want to pay for two 150 Raptors, and I like storage space. I'm looking at buying two Seagate 7200.10, 400GB, 16MBcache then setting up RAID 0. Is this the best performance setup(without getting Raptor x2, SCSI), or am I overlooking a better way?

Why not the Western Digital Raid Edition 2 - WD5000YS for example? I have been posting on forums and the consensus seems to be that this would be better than the Seagate in RAID applications.

 

[MadHacker]

Why not the Western Digital Raid Edition 2 - WD5000YS for example? I have been posting on forums and the consensus seems to be that this would be better than the Seagate in RAID applications.

why? I just bought 4 of them cause they were better priced...
but why are they better for raid? what makes them better?

 

[speedemn]

Why not the Western Digital Raid Edition 2 - WD5000YS for example? I have been posting on forums and the consensus seems to be that this would be better than the Seagate in RAID applications.

why? I just bought 4 of them cause they were better priced...
but why are they better for raid? what makes them better?
I am new to this in the market too but from what I have read, the WD RE2 drives are enterprise class drives for enterprise severs. This drive is supposed to be better than the desktop equivalent of itself even, because it has time-limited error recovery ... so the time that the drive takes to pause for error recovery is minimized. It allows the raid controller to handle it and does not drop the physical drive out of the array in the case of a major fault.

It is hard to find any direct comparisons of the WD RE2 to the 7200.10 but I have been hunting for the past 2 days... and so far the signs seem to lean towards the WDs as a better RAID option.

Of course it has the benefits of NCQ and 3Gb/s as well.

 

[MadHacker]

I am new to this in the market too but from what I have read, the WD RE2 drives are enterprise class drives for enterprise severs. This drive is supposed to be better than the desktop equivalent of itself even, because it has time-limited error recovery ... so the time that the drive takes to pause for error recovery is minimized. It allows the raid controller to handle it and does not drop the physical drive out of the array in the case of a major fault.

It is hard to find any direct comparisons of the WD RE2 to the 7200.10 but I have been hunting for the past 2 days... and so far the signs seem to lean towards the WDs as a better RAID option.

Of course it has the benefits of NCQ and 3Gb/s as well.

the Seagate 7200.10, 400GB also has NCQ and 3Gb/s as well...

but Seagate also makes server versions of the 400 gig drive
Seagate Nearline NL35.2 Series 400GB SATA2
Only 8 meg cache though....
but I don't know the difference between the two...

 

[blue68f100]

Once I setup a raid5 array, I remove it from service and use SpinRite to do a maintance scan on all the drives. This way it will have done a complete surface scan locking out all bad sectors. This will minimize the seek errors that accour. And the SMART Tech used to auto repair will be a minimum, which contribute to those (timing) errors.

 

[dean7]

I don't really want to pay for two 150 Raptors, and I like storage space. I'm looking at buying two Seagate 7200.10, 400GB, 16MBcache then setting up RAID 0. Is this the best performance setup(without getting Raptor x2, SCSI), or am I overlooking a better way?

Why not the Western Digital Raid Edition 2 - WD5000YS for example? I have been posting on forums and the consensus seems to be that this would be better than the Seagate in RAID applications.
But it depends on a lot of factors. I've had great luck w/ Seagate, and the last time I researched it their MTBF was better than WD.

Also, I've had horrible luck w/ WD drives so there is a "trust factor" for me (and for a lot of the enthusiast crowd that have been into this for a while because WD used to make horrible drives). Anyway, Seagate seems to produce some solid products (I still have a Seagate 20gb drive that I have been using for years with no problems), and they seem to still be cutting-edge (e.g. they are the fore-runners of perpendicular recording).

 

[4745454b]

I say this in all threads where I see people wanting to setup AID0. Take a look at REAL WORLD benchmarks between AID0 setups and their single drive counter parts. Add in the problems that can be had with AID0 (driver loss, drive failure, etc) and AID0 doesn't make much sense for a gaming machine.

 

[Statross]

Is Seagate the only manufacturer making the perpendicular recording drives?

hitatchi and fujitsu do, samsung probabl do, also

 

[speedemn]

I don't really want to pay for two 150 Raptors, and I like storage space. I'm looking at buying two Seagate 7200.10, 400GB, 16MBcache then setting up RAID 0. Is this the best performance setup(without getting Raptor x2, SCSI), or am I overlooking a better way?

Why not the Western Digital Raid Edition 2 - WD5000YS for example? I have been posting on forums and the consensus seems to be that this would be better than the Seagate in RAID applications.
But it depends on a lot of factors. I've had great luck w/ Seagate, and the last time I researched it their MTBF was better than WD.

Also, I've had horrible luck w/ WD drives so there is a "trust factor" for me (and for a lot of the enthusiast crowd that have been into this for a while because WD used to make horrible drives). Anyway, Seagate seems to produce some solid products (I still have a Seagate 20gb drive that I have been using for years with no problems), and they seem to still be cutting-edge (e.g. they are the fore-runners of perpendicular recording).
I agree... trust is a big factor and so is brand reputation. Seagate has been rock solid for years now... WD has come up through the years. Technology changes and manufacturers get better. My first xx GB HDD was a Seagate and I have nothing but good things to say about Seagate, but in the intensely competitive market where we demand top notch performance at lowest cost, I am trying to find the best match, with the best priceerformance ratio. The WD RE2 seems to have that overall, on the Seagate... and those drives have a 5 year warranty like the Seagate too.

Look at the car industry... when a pos car manufacturer like Hyundai is beating out Toyota and Honda in a bunch of tests today that is the true testament to give the underdog the benefit of the doubt. Of course due diligence needs to be carried out but I think after reading all the reviews and posting on a bunch of boards, the WD RE2 might have a slight edge on the 7200.10 (at least that is the conclusion I am coming to today... after really flip flopping between the 2 drives yesterday).

 

[MadHacker]

thanks... I'll check out Spinrite tonight when i set up my Array
(edit spelling)

 

[jt001]

I say this in all threads where I see people wanting to setup AID0. Take a look at REAL WORLD benchmarks between AID0 setups and their single drive counter parts. Add in the problems that can be had with AID0 (driver loss, drive failure, etc) and AID0 doesn't make much sense for a gaming machine.

There seems to be a lot of controversy surrounding raid 0, I've been running raid 0 for about 2 weeks now and i can definitely faster all around. However, the difference isn't earth shattering. There's probably better things to upgrade that would give more of a performance increase than raid 0 though, but if the rest of your system is decent I'd say go for it. One thing to keep in mind is in raid 0 you have more than 2x the chance of data loss so backups of critical data are a must. On the subject of drive reliability I'm probably not much help here, but I've had 6 WD drives in my system for about 2 years now that are still running flawlessly, and a Seagate 7200.9 I got about a year ago that has been showing smart errors and been generally buggy.

EDIT

I'd also like to add it'd be best to get 2 smaller drives for the raid 0 and then a bigger seperate drive for storage/backup

 

[dean7]

I say this in all threads where I see people wanting to setup AID0. Take a look at REAL WORLD benchmarks between AID0 setups and their single drive counter parts. Add in the problems that can be had with AID0 (driver loss, drive failure, etc) and AID0 doesn't make much sense for a gaming machine.

Um, RAID 0 can give you a great performance gain if you have a nice RAID controller. Reading/Writing to 2 drives at once is going to be faster, man. It's like a dual-core CPU that splits the load equally all the time.

 

[blue68f100]

On mine raid5 setup, 3 drives tested clean with SpinRite. But my #2 drive used up 50% of it's spare sectors. So I am expecting a early failure on it. If I had a spare I would be tempted to swap it out. But since Seagate has a 5 yr warranty I will use it when it happens.

WD, Hatichi, and Samsung gives you advanced (Acustic) that Seagate does not.

 

[speedemn]

I say this in all threads where I see people wanting to setup AID0. Take a look at REAL WORLD benchmarks between AID0 setups and their single drive counter parts. Add in the problems that can be had with AID0 (driver loss, drive failure, etc) and AID0 doesn't make much sense for a gaming machine.

Um, RAID 0 can give you a great performance gain if you have a nice RAID controller. Reading/Writing to 2 drives at once is going to be faster, man. It's like a dual-core CPU that splits the load equally all the time.
That's the other dilemma I currently have... it seems like I only have one or two choices for hardware RAID controllers... and they are both from Adaptec...

http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/raid/sata2/AAR-1430SA/
http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/raid/sata2/AAR-1420SA/

The 1430SA and the 1420SA ... the 1420SA looks to be a better option for my 4 SATA2 WD RE2 drives that I plan on buying... do I have any other options?

 

[Whizzard9992]

I just set up a computer with 2 7200.10 Drives on an ICH8R.

With IOMeter using 32K sequential reads, I got ~1300 IO/s and ~70MB/s.

I'll rerun the benches when I can, but these things BLAZE in RAID 0.

I was able to install > 60 updates from windows update, including IE7 and WMP11 in < 20 minutes. It was stupid fast.

 

[CompuTronix]

I've been running RAID0 for the past 3.5 years through 4 total rig upgrades. I've kept a detailed record of benchmarks from pre-RAID0 single PATA drives, through my current SATA Raptor 150's in RAID0. The debate goes on, but I can tell you that it's a matter of benchmarks, perceptions and perspectives.

The storage subsystem is by far, the slowest critical component in todays fast PC's. Small improvements over the years in HDD's and interfaces, have added up to make a significant difference in overall computer performance. How would a PIII 1Ghz or Athlon 1Ghz point & click on RAID0? 8O My benchmarks have increased from 800's on a 7200RPM 15GB ATA 100 of a few years ago, to 3500's on my present rig, more than a 425% improvement.

I'll take whatever I can get

 

[dean7]

Well, in terms of PCI controllers, I think Adaptec is good. Here are some other options:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Category=15&N=2010150410+119340957+1193218488&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=410

Plus, if you are buying a new system you can just buy a motherboard with an integrated RAID controller.

Hope that helps!

 

[jt001]

I have 3 of These in use in my computers and for the price they can't be beat. Hardware XOR, 64MB cache, and 66mhz pci support for $39.99 on sale 8O . Plus if you have a windowed case all the flashing lights on the bottom look cool . But you can put your os on 2 striped drives, then later migrate to a raid 3 if you wanted redundancy. The setup I have is raid 0 boot and raid 3 storage on one card, another raid 3 storage, and a raid 0 scratch on the other and everything works flawless. I used to use scsi but the noise was getting to be too much. As far as drives go I would reccomend WD, though the perp. Seagate drives have been getting good reviews. Of course there's always the route of a single raptor which will give you better latency but less STR, it really depends how you use the system. But with my past experiences with onboard raid I would highly reccomend against using it and getting an add in card.

 

[blue68f100]

Raid 0 have longer seak times, than a single drive. + twice the failure rate. With HW raids if you have a controller problem, alot of times you have to find the same card and firmware in order to read your raid array. In this respect software raid are better.

If you want speed set up some 15k scsi array.

 

[jt001]

Blue may actually have the best suggestion yet, scsi drives come cheap on ebay lately, pick up a small 15k for boot and a large sata drive and have the best of both worlds

 

[Tang]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I'll be keeping all this info in my mind when I build my next rig. Right now I'm using the Newegg wishlist to compile the parts I want, trying to stay around $2-2500USD. I've never bought an ATI grapics card, but I want to wait to see what they will offer to the enthusiast. That and me being in Iraq is kinda holding up my building process. :lol: Thanks again!

 

[Whizzard9992]

Blue may actually have the best suggestion yet, scsi drives come cheap on ebay lately, pick up a small 15k for boot and a large sata drive and have the best of both worlds

Indeed a 36GB 15K SCSI should whollop a Raptor X, and you can get a nice Seagate for $190. The only thing keeping SCSI from going mainstream is the price of a good controller. They just don't make good SCSI raid for PCIe yet.