Ideal HDD Gaming Set Up

[Cyberbabe]

Hi
As i am soon to start ordering components for my gaming build i need to ask what is the ideal HDD set up one HDD two HDDs ? partitioned or not ?, any help or advice very much appreciated, thank you

Babe

 

[4745454b]

The "ideal" gaming harddrive is a fast single harddrive. This would be a Raptor or a 15K RPM SCSI. With enough RAM, you shouldn't have to worry about having a seperate drive for swap files, etc.

Now a word of warning. Get these only if your budget allows for it. Don't get a raptor and a 7600GT. Get a Seagate 7200.10 320GB drive and a 7950GT. The 7950GT setup will provide better frame rates then the Raptor setup because the video card is stronger. (video cards will effect gameplay more then then harddrive.) The only way I would buy a Raptor and a lower video card is if I knew I would be getting more money soon and would only be using the 7600GT for a short period of time.

 

[Cyberbabe]

4745454b
Thank your for your reply and advice i hope to be running Crossfire so i would be best buying say a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB ST3500630AS SATA-II 16MB Cache ?

Babe

 

[telim]

This is a tough one. Do you have a different PC you can use as a fileserver? How much money do you really want to spend on hard drives? How much storage do you need? What secondary applications will you be using? Is it JUST for gaming? Or is this one PC going to be your media storage box as well? Will you be encoding large files? Etc.

Ideally you'll want a RAID0 (stripped) array with a small chunk size (so OS files are fast) of as many Raptors as you can afford. 2 is great, 4 is better.

4x 150GB SATA 10k RPM WD Raptors = probably the fastest solution for encoding/gaming, but it is very expensive. (Other than SCSI setup, which is beyond the purview of a "Gaming PC")

Your best bet (without infinite funds) is to get 1 Raptor, use that as your system drive, and 1+ Seagate 320GB hard drive(s) for storage.

There is some argument as to whether RAID0 of Raptors (2+) is better for gaming. It is *for sure* better for pure-speed applications like uncompressing stuff or encoding video files....

Hard Drives should be a secondary concern if you're strapped for funds. One Seagate 320GB SATA2 is fine in a pinch. Make sure you get good ram, motherboard, processor, video card and powersupply first. Hard drive is a really simple upgrade later if you're dissatisfied with a cheap(er) hard drive.

 

[brick88]

it depends on ur budget. tomshardware did a recent review and getting two cheaper hard drives and putting them in raid can yield better performance than a single raptor drive. personally if the difference between me spending for a raptor or not was holding me back from getting a 8800. i would go with the 8800 and cheaper (slightly slower) hdds. the 53 dollar western digital 160gb aajs model performs very well at a third of the cost as its based on a single platter design. the raptor hard drives are like a navigation system on a car. you can go without it.

 

[Cyberbabe]

Hi telim

This build will be just for gaming and on line nothing ells as for budget i can handle mid range crossfire on a Abit AW9D-MAX Intel 975X , DUO E6600 and thinking Team Xtreem 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 Dual Channel Kit so i would be better with Raptors instead of Seagate, thank you for your help

Babe

 

[Cyberbabe]

brick88 Hi

Thank you i think i understand i can go a single raptor drive or two or a saegate. thanks

Babe

 

[telim]

Whoa whoa this is for a mid-range budget gaming system?

Definitely get two WD 160GBs or Seagate 250GBs (or 320GBs) and raid them together. It'll be cheaper and much larger and faster.

The raptor (s) are only if you have cash to burn.

Two 160GBs in a raid0 will destroy 1 raptor and the 2 drives will actually cost a LOT less.

-tel

 

[Cyberbabe]

Hi telim

Yes i think its mid range two Connect3D ATI Radeon X1950 XT-X ice-Q3 SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR4 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) Master and slave on a Abit AW9D-MAX Intel 975X , DUO E6600 CPU. ?

 

[telim]

Get:

2x SEAGATE 320Gb 7200rpm 16M SATA2 U300 (# ST3320620AS) 5-YR MAN Warranty $100.99

or

2x WD 250G 7200RPM 16M RAID SATA3 (WD2500YS) -- NEW $82.50

or
2x SEAGATE 250Gb 7200rpm 16M U150 SATA2 (# ST3250620AS) 5-YR MAN Warranty $83.99

----
Any of those will be FASTER, much much larger and much cheaper than
1x WD 150GB 10000RPM SATA (U150) 16M - RAPTORS SERIES (# WD150ADFD) $258.00

-tel

 

[brick88]

very off subject but i think that you would be better served with an 8800gts instead of the x1950xtx unless i read wrong and its sli and in that case it might be better for ur electrical bill for a single 8800gtx instead.


EDIT: for the partition question. ntfs is pretty efficient so theres really no need to partition. one thing i do suggest is create a partition for ur swap file. the size should be twice as much as all the available ram. this helps in that because the system knows where to write all its swap file and that lessens fragmentation somewhat. unless u disabled the swap file then the point is rendered moot.

 

[choirbass]

yeah, raptors are no doubt less cost effective per gigabyte... at the very least, it would make a for a responsive system when used as an OS & app hdd...

for example, the cheapest current raptor is $100, for the 36GB 16MB ADFD model (its the same speed as the 74GB ($150) and 150GB ($200+) ADFDs, mainly due to them all having the same sized 74GB platters)

but, that will certainly make your system more responsive (and offer most likely better performance for most desktop situations) than going with raid 0, for *possibly* less money

then just have a larger slower hdd for storage, media, and anything else

 

[Cyberbabe]

OK telim, brick88, choirbass

Seagate it is then thank you do i go to the graphics bit to ask about cards ? er i will anyway thanks

Babe

 

[4745454b]

I knew it would turn to this sooner or later...

You can use AID0, but I don't suggest it for a gaming machine. First, there is little REAL WORLD benefit to using AID0 on the desktop. Second, I do not suggest using an AID0 array as your OS drive, as WHEN the array fails, you'll have to reinstall EVERYTHING. This is why I said your best buy is a fast, SINGLE drive. If you have the $$$, get a Raptor and ignore AID0. Because these drives are so small, get a larger harddrive for storage. This will give you speed if you need it, and the space to store things.

 

[cb62fcni]

It's the darn article Tom's wrote. AID0 (am I one of the few here that will realize that that ISN'T a typo?) is not going to do much for gaming at all. In some cases it will increase load times. I use a 74GB raptor for my OS and whatever game I'm playing at the moment, and I use the WD AAJS series in RAID1 series for storage.

As far as cards for gaming, right now I'd purchase an 8800GTS, the prices have come down quite a bit. The 640MB one would be ideal, the 320MB one isn't a bad deal, it doesn't hurt your performance much until you get into the crazy high resolutions. If that's too much for you, I'd wait for the 8600 series, they should be released very soon.

 

[4745454b]

Toms isn't the only violator either. Even storagereview only shows synthetic benchies when they test drives. (at least the last time I looked.) I wish places would show more then just the synthetic benchies that make AID0 look like hot $h!t. Window might load a few seconds faster, and your game MIGHT load one to two seconds faster, but it shouldn't change your FPS. If you want speed, spend it on your GPU, CPU and RAM. Worry about soundcards and RAID arrays once you've maxed those three out.

 

[cb62fcni]

Hahaha, even the much abused Killer NIC has FAR more impact in gaming than any RAID configuration.

 

[choknuti]

It's the darn article Tom's wrote. AID0 (am I one of the few here that will realize that that ISN'T a typo?)

The lack of the R in AID0 is just why no body in their right minds should set such an array up. go for RAID1 instead. for 200$ u'll get 320GB (thats 320 "marketing GBs") With the added redundancy of a RAID1 array.

 

[4745454b]

Actually, I'm not a big fan of RAID1 either. I'm starting to see too many people think that RAID1 is a backup solution, and its not. When looking at only data, RAID1 copies everything exactly. This includes any deleted files. RAID1 was invented for increasing uptime for servers. If you have a drive die due only to machanical failure, then the second drive will take over. Harddrives aren't as hit or miss as they used to be however. If you have something that will machanically take out a drive these days (power spike from a poor PSU?) it will more then likely take out both drives in the array and possibly the motherboard also. Add in the the most common problem I see with RAID (windows dropping the driver requiring a complete rebuild of the OS.) and I can't see any use for it as my OS drive.

I could see using a nice 4+ RAID5 on a database server or a video editing machine, but home uses for AID or RAID are few and far between.

 

[choknuti]

Actually if you want integrity nothing beats RAID 5. The reason I suggested raid 1 was because so many people were recommending the that OP gets 2 HDD and sets up a (R)AID0 array. Even with the infallibility of todays drives sthat is something that nobody should do. Alo there is a slight (and I mean slight) performance gain with RAID1 too.

 

[Cyberbabe]

Its all very confusing to me :?

Babe

 

[choknuti]

I am sorry we do tend to get carried away forgetting the original question

To answer your question go for a single drive (those new Seagates are looking good. they cost about 100$ for 320 GB here) unless your data is very important and you require redundancy (which I doubt) you don't need raid or 2 drives.

No need to go for an extreme solution (like the WDs or SCSI) since I guess you are not totally hardware crazy like some of us are

So to answer your question in your case I would go for a 300-320GB (they have the best value per GB currently) and split it up into 2-3 partitions.

If you want to do extra reading on RAID the wikipedia article is a good place 2 start.

 

[Cyberbabe]

choknuti

Thank you thats exactley what i needed to know

Babe

 

[proof]

Serial Attached SCSI 15k (x4)
Set those boys up in a Stripe and let the good times roll...

 

[choknuti]

You are welcome