Help me. I was sure my first build would be 2 Raptors in Raid1 and WD Cav 750 to do the heavy lifting. It made sense. The reviews said it made sense. So why did I click on Tom's Hardware, latest charts, hard drives. My 750 is rated 15th. And the Raptors are no where to be found. Hitachi 160 GB 8 (not 16MB) is in second place? And the Segate (?) Barracuda 400 GB, 16 cache is in first place. Am I not reading this chart right? Do you choose your HD's based on this graph? Sober me up!!
WD Cav 750 ranked 15
- Thread starter cptmac
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qwertycopter
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Raptors are on there. 16MB provides little real-world benefit over 8MB. You are only looking at one benchmark (interface performance). You should have noticed a drop-down list that lets you choose between 17 different benchmarks.
Get some glasses?
Get some glasses?
choirbass
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yeah, interface performance has very little do to with actual performance. and as was said, even larger caches beyond 8MB play little role in typical uses either.
it is your decision, but why would you use the raptors in raid 1? a single raptor even, is faster than the 750GB for practically all things you might do (even if only slightly), let alone 2 in raid, which could even be pointless, depending on your uses. as far as redundancy is concerned, just go with seperate hdds (as raid isnt really intended for data backup at all even), UNLESS, youre running a server of some kind, and even then, raid is only good for reduced downtime really, long enough for you to swap out and replace the failed hdd.
it is your decision, but why would you use the raptors in raid 1? a single raptor even, is faster than the 750GB for practically all things you might do (even if only slightly), let alone 2 in raid, which could even be pointless, depending on your uses. as far as redundancy is concerned, just go with seperate hdds (as raid isnt really intended for data backup at all even), UNLESS, youre running a server of some kind, and even then, raid is only good for reduced downtime really, long enough for you to swap out and replace the failed hdd.
My brother introduced me to RAID. I thought a powerful machine had to have RAID. The more cache a hard drive has, has got to be better? 17 different benchmarks, interface performance begs the question, interface with the CPU, RAM? Interface has little to do with performance? Before you slam me, have patience and call this first build 101. Look at all the choices you have to choose from. The case, MOBO, power supply, RAM. I am thinking HD's. If you were to choose hard drives in a monster machine, which would you choose and how would you set them up? I want to have fun with this first build. Where did I put my eye glasses?
qwertycopter
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First of all, RAID 1 in layman's terms is disk mirroring. You replicate data on one drive to a second drive, thus providing a level of redundancy. If one drive fails, you still have the second drive with all your data. It provides a very small performance boost on data reads, but data writes actually take a performance hit since the data is written twice (once on each drive).
If you want to have a noticable performance boost, you need to look at RAID 0. This is where data is not mirrored but rather striped between 2 or more drives. The main disadvantage here is that you get no data redundancy. In fact, your data is at higher risk. A single drive failure effectively means complete data loss. A RAID is supposed to provide redundancy, therefore RAID 0 is technically not RAID at all. It will, however, improve game load times. Windows will load a bit faster as well. That is probably what your brother was talking about. Do you need it? Probably not. It's nice, will help slightly on load times, but won't give you better FPS or anything like that.
For the third time, 8MB cache is usually on par with 16MB cache. Just check out the benchmarks (yes, there are 17 available at Tom's). In the real world, you won't be able to tell the difference, I promise.
Interface Performance: We're talking about either SATA or IDE transfer speeds here. This isn't a good measure of overall disk performance. The biggest bottleneck is the seek times involved with reading/writing. So despite your interface speed, the seek time is what determines overall performance.
If I were building a monster machine and had cash out the a$$, I would build a RAID 0+1. This is disk striping with mirroring, so you get the speed boost and redundancy. This requires 4 drives, and I would probably go with the newer Western Digital (not raptors) drives as they are fast, quiet, priced right, and have a 3 year warranty. The raptors are loud and hot! I would want a quiet monster machine.
If you want to have a noticable performance boost, you need to look at RAID 0. This is where data is not mirrored but rather striped between 2 or more drives. The main disadvantage here is that you get no data redundancy. In fact, your data is at higher risk. A single drive failure effectively means complete data loss. A RAID is supposed to provide redundancy, therefore RAID 0 is technically not RAID at all. It will, however, improve game load times. Windows will load a bit faster as well. That is probably what your brother was talking about. Do you need it? Probably not. It's nice, will help slightly on load times, but won't give you better FPS or anything like that.
For the third time, 8MB cache is usually on par with 16MB cache. Just check out the benchmarks (yes, there are 17 available at Tom's). In the real world, you won't be able to tell the difference, I promise.
Interface Performance: We're talking about either SATA or IDE transfer speeds here. This isn't a good measure of overall disk performance. The biggest bottleneck is the seek times involved with reading/writing. So despite your interface speed, the seek time is what determines overall performance.
If I were building a monster machine and had cash out the a$$, I would build a RAID 0+1. This is disk striping with mirroring, so you get the speed boost and redundancy. This requires 4 drives, and I would probably go with the newer Western Digital (not raptors) drives as they are fast, quiet, priced right, and have a 3 year warranty. The raptors are loud and hot! I would want a quiet monster machine.
And this, gentlemen (and of course the lovely ladies), is the root of all evil in the world of hard drive storage.
No, a powerful machine does not have to have RAID. RAID was created for a very specific reason. Most of it goes to redundancy (in the end that's what R stands for), and the need to run servers with as little interruption as possible. Please understand two things before attempting to put a system together:
1) Your needs
2) The tools that are available, including all benefits and drawbacks.
You probably don't need a redundant RAID1 (what with the five year warranty and enterprise-level quality of Raptors in the first place). And as choirbass said, RAID1 is not necessarily the ticket to 0 data loss, just a tool to minimize the risk. Very very expensive, though, particularly with Raptors...
royalcrown
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cptmac, raid ) does not make a big difference on a desktop machine for regular use at all...not unless you transfer files back and forth, so a raid ) for a gaming and general usage machine is a waste, save your money or buy more ram or a second video card, software, etc...
I will find you a link:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101
I will find you a link:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101
royalcrown
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royalcrown
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More cache on the hardrive means little anyways because: if you have sata 150 and 8 megabytes of cash, that cache will be emptied in about 1/18th of a second (based on speed) after the cache is empty, then the data gets read from the platters (disk itself) into the buffers and then to the computer.
The best drives for desktop (reasonable cost) only can sustain a maximum of 90 megs per second MAX, usually they average 50 to 60, and hit about 45 minimum. most of the time when you are using your drive, youlll probably average in the 55-60 meg per second sustained transfer rate because the buffer empties out and it is whatever is coming right off the platters is most of what you get when you load stuff (like windows, games and whatnot.) That is why the cache doesn't help; it's like driving 150 mph for 1 second but doing 55 the rest of the trip, it ain't gonna make you get there much faster.
Hope this clarifies stuff, any ?s, let me know.
The best drives for desktop (reasonable cost) only can sustain a maximum of 90 megs per second MAX, usually they average 50 to 60, and hit about 45 minimum. most of the time when you are using your drive, youlll probably average in the 55-60 meg per second sustained transfer rate because the buffer empties out and it is whatever is coming right off the platters is most of what you get when you load stuff (like windows, games and whatnot.) That is why the cache doesn't help; it's like driving 150 mph for 1 second but doing 55 the rest of the trip, it ain't gonna make you get there much faster.
Hope this clarifies stuff, any ?s, let me know.
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