Raid 0 Performance - Apps and Games

[jameyd]

Okay so here's my master plan:
I have 4 hard drives total:

2 x 250GB Sata I on raid 0

2 x 250 Sata II(3gb/s) on another raid 0

I was planning to install my operating system on Sata I raid, and leave my Sata II raid for all of my games and applications.

Would this be efficient? Or does anyone else have any other suggestions?

 

[jedi940]

I wouldn't worry about putting OS on sata 1. In raid 0, that will give you 500GB of space. your os will only take up about 1-2 GB. What are you going to do with the rest of the space??? it will be wasted. Just put everything on one raid set. use the other drives for Raid 1. That would be better. If your board supports it, you could do raid 0+1

 

[jitpublisher]

My 2 cents....buy a 74gig Raptor to load your OS. The fast seek times will make the OS feel much faster than a RAID setup. Then use the RAID 0 array for your games and apps, to take advantage of the higher sustained transfer rates for larger files.
I am not condeming or endorsing your RAID 0 decision, just feel like if you want to do something along the lines of your thinking, this is a good way to go.

 

[jedi940]

true, also a good solution if you haven't already bought the HDDs. Scrap 2 of them and get the 74GB raptor

 

[jameyd]

Much appreciated for the replies, thanks.

 

[WolfX]

My 2 cents....buy a 74gig Raptor to load your OS. The fast seek times will make the OS feel much faster than a RAID setup. Then use the RAID 0 array for your games and apps, to take advantage of the higher sustained transfer rates for larger files.
I am not condeming or endorsing your RAID 0 decision, just feel like if you want to do something along the lines of your thinking, this is a good way to go.

So when you say to use RAID 0 array for your games and apps. So then you woud install them there and they will live on those drives? I thought that you did get good performance like that? Also where would the page.sys file live?
Thanks.

 

[choirbass]

raid 0 performance tends to be a very touchy topic if youre not careful. but, the general consensus is that raid 0 is most ideal for transferring large files, or anything similar that can really make use of high STRs.

for most games, you start getting into access and seek times mattering more, from a performance perspective... 'all' raptors have the lead in overall smoothness and consistancy of performance, for both the os and applications (again, faster random access/seek times due to rpms, and a smaller 2.5" platter are the reasons for that). for a close second on the desktop, you have hdds with much denser platters offering similar application performance to that of a raptor (the higher densities from PMR allow for more data to be accessed in less time, which is essentially like reducing seek times for all practical purposes you would need). the random access times however, are not improved at all, due to having a larger 3.5" platter, and slower rpms, which is why data fragmentation tends to have a more severe impact on 7200s than it does on raptors, it still takes the same amount of time as older smaller 7200s to find that random piece data thats scattered somewhere on the platter (usually at least ~14ms compared to a raptors 8ms).

higher STRs from raid 0 however, provide very little improvement here usually, and occasionally worse performance even (for instance, your seek times are slightly worsened instead of improved due to dealing with multiple hdd heads needing to all be aligned before the data can even be accessed, resulting in a slim to no performance increase most times, where its wanted anyhow for gaming). the main benefit from raid 0 that youll experience usually without an ideal use for it, is os and application performance being smoothed out some most times, rather than improved really (that may sound vague, but thats the typical performance experience most desktop users have).

ssds however (still pretty expensive), or the newly mentioned fusionIO (not at all affordable), would increase your game and os performance dramatically, simply due to virtually nonexistant access and seek times (no moving parts to slow them down)