hard drive decsion

[kratos401]

im looking into getting a new 10k rpm hard drive to keep up with my overclocked quadcore and i was wonder what the better option would be. i have a limit of $300 and i want to know if running 2 74gb raptors in raid would be that much better than having 1 300 gb raptor. the 74 gbs are only 1.5 gb and the 300 gb is the 3.0 gb sata connection.which is the best price/performance because i want something with great performance hence why im getting a 10k rpm hard drive but i also dont have any idea how good raid is. also im wondering if i should just get a 150gb 3gb sata now and save the rest and get another later. i already have a seagate barracuda 250gb for storage, which i dont need much storage because i only have music and games and also have a laptop with 250gb for storage as well so for storage im set. i do have quite a few games like bf 2142, bf 2, cs source, all hl 2, both crysises, cod4, sims 2 all expansion ( for gf), all the fear games, bioshock, ect.. i would like some opinions if the 74gb at $80 each or the 300gb at 240 or the 150 at 170 is the best

 

[kratos401]

btw my system is an xfx 780i, q6600 @ 3.0 ghz, 4gb ocz @ 1145, evga gtx 260, 250gb seagate, 850 zalman power supply, raidmax saggitures 2 case, and x-fi f4tality xtreme gamer sound card. thanks for the opinions guys

 

[dagger]

None of the above. Keep in mind game files are copied from hdd to ram on loading, and accessed from there in game. Basically, faster hdds will decrease load time, but give you exactly 0 fps increase in game.

Also, raptors are something of a paper tiger. The specs look impressive on paper, but real world benefits aren't nearly that great. See benchmarks for average read/write:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3-5-hard-drive-charts/Average-Read-Transfer-Performance,658.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3-5-hard-drive-charts/Average-WriteTransfer-Performance,659.html
It's still on top, but 7200rpm 1TB drives are close behind in performance, while giving far better value. Those things are really cheap:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150014%20103530090&bop=And&Order=PRICE

 

[Silverion77]

Edit: +1^^ dagger (posted b4 me )

do u rly need a 10k drive

I mean some ppl RLY think they need them and that their machine will Fail w/o them but the truth is is that they do not help frames in games. All they do is increase load times by like 2 seconds (from the last reviews i saw)

But i mean, 2 74GB drives just seems silly. There's like no storage there....just rings dumb to me. If u desperately want to spend the $300 then get the 300GB, but i gotta say. For $300 GET ANOTHER GTX 260
It will help ur gaming performance much more than a 10k drive

 

[kratos401]

i know a faster harddrive wouldnt give me more fps. I dont have a problem with my fps i play all but crysis on the highest with playable fps but i was wanting faster load times. i havent seen any of the performance of the 1tb drives didnt know they were fast in performance. im wanting a 10k drive or at least a fast drive so i dont have to wait to get in a game. i always end up in the middle of alot of people leaving the base when i want to be the first to get the jump on enemies. i think my cpu is really bottlenecking my graphics as it is but when i get a fps problem i will probably get another card. maybe i should get 1 74gb drive and another card maybe?

 

[Silverion77]

eh...the new 1 TB drives, or even the Western Digital 640 AAKS are very fast due to less platters (the 640 has 2 320 platters) which makes performance very good but again not AS good as a 10k drive. Imo they just arent worth it. On my older system i was usually the first in game w/ a 320Gb WD drive and my new system has the 640 in it which should be faster

Whats ur connection speed, cause if this is online gaming, it might be ur connection thats killing ur loading times into a map. Generally faster drives dont effect that that much once its all loaded on the Ram

 

[kratos401]

i have a 10 meg connection so its not a problem with connetion speed my pings to the server are usually the lowest or close to but its loading the map that takes so much time for me. I havent understood why when its the same map im the first in always but when loading the map im like middle to last in.

 

[Silverion77]

Well once the map is loaded its not using ur HD, its directly from ur memory which is much faster

How old is the drive, cause thats just weird on a 10meg line with that computer. I was usually first in on my old computer, but i havent tried my 640 yet

 

[kratos401]

the drive is just about brand new i got it with the rest of my components in april

 

[kratos401]

i was wanting to know about the hard drive because im going to reformat it soon and if i was reformating i was thinking i might as well put in antoher harddrive that has some speed and use that as data since it is taking to long but do you think if i had a terabyte harddrive and put all my games on first so they are on the outside that it will do better than a raptor that would get decently full by the time im done putting all my games on

 

[PsyKhiqZero]

Benchmarks show that a single 300GB velociraptor is as fast as 2 of the older raptors (74GB or 150GB) in a raid 0. The single velociraptor is the better choice. You'll get the boost in performance w/o the problems that can come with raid 0.

 

[kratos401]

thats what i was originally planning on but then i saw real cheap 74 gb and didnt know if raid would make a world of diff but since it doesnt im just gonna throw out the 74gbs...

 

[Silverion77]

wait were they the "old" raptors? or the 74 GB Velociraptors?

 

[PsyKhiqZero]

The velociraptor come in 150GB and 300GB flavors. I haven't heard of a 74GB one.

 

[Silverion77]

The velociraptor come in 150GB and 300GB flavors. I haven't heard of a 74GB one.

O lol, wow my bad XP

Good call, so yea go with the 150/300
or none and save for the future

Edit: I still love that Sonic avatar. Ever since the new game announcements i brought out the old Genesis

 

[Zorg]

Velociraptor is still king. The big difference is in the random access time.

Don't get the Raptor, it's a little long in the tooth and doesn't have PMR like the Velociraptor

 

[richardscott]

id just like to point out that i ahve 3x500gb samsung spin point t hd's in raid 0 and they out perform all raptors and even ssd's at 250mb/s read and 200mb/s write. so id say never go for raptors cos they suck considdering a raid 0 setup will give you more space and more speed.

 

[geofelt]

There is generally no real world(vs. synthetic transfer rate benchmarks) performance advantage to raid of any kind.
Go to www.storagereview.com at this link: http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=SingleDriveVsRaid0
There are some specific applications that will benefit, but
gaming is not one of them. Even if you have an application which reads one input file sequentially, and writes
it out, you will perform about as well by putting the input on one drive, and the output on the other.

I would vote for the 300gb velociraptor. It is noticeably snappier in everything I do.
It is also very quiet which may be surprising.

Go to www.storagereview.com and access their performance database. Pick some real workd application benchmarks. The synthetic ones (HDTACH--etc.) are easy to run, but they don't tell you squat about how YOUR system will run. Performance is very much dependent on access patterns, and locality of reference.

 

[Zorg]

id just like to point out that i ahve 3x500gb samsung spin point t hd's in raid 0 and they out perform all raptors and even ssd's at 250mb/s read and 200mb/s write. so id say never go for raptors cos they suck considdering a raid 0 setup will give you more space and more speed.

Post back when your RAID0 fails. Make sure you keep your data backed up, because data recovery from a RAID0 can be troublesome to say the least.

 

[geofelt]

id just like to point out that i ahve 3x500gb samsung spin point t hd's in raid 0 and they out perform all raptors and even ssd's at 250mb/s read and 200mb/s write. so id say never go for raptors cos they suck considdering a raid 0 setup will give you more space and more speed.

Would you do an experiment for me--please?

Find a folder with perhaps 10gb in it, and copy it. Tell me exactly how many bytes were in the folder, and how long the copy took. If your numbers are correct, it should only take about a minute.
Anyone else with a good raid-0 system, give this a try. Thanks.

 

[kratos401]

thanks for all the feedback guys its giving me a good idea of what to go with

 

[richardscott]

im not interested in backup as of yet but am looking to get a 4tb nas to backup to i bought my drives for speed not safety.

 

[dagger]

Forget the old Raptors.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3-5-hard-drive-charts/Average-Read-Transfer-Performance,658.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3-5-hard-drive-charts/Average-WriteTransfer-Performance,659.html

Average read/write performance is 74/74 for Raptor, 92/91 for 1TB 7200rpm drive, 102/101 for VelociRaptor.

1TB drives are cheap, 2 of them in RAID will still fit in your $300 budget with room to spare, and will obviously outperform 2 old Raptors.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150014%20103530090&bop=And&Order=PRICE

And there is always the new 1.5TB drive for some real storage. How does that compare to 74gb Raptor?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337

 

[richardscott]

geo felt that would only work idd i had 2 diffrent raid0 arrays with diffrent drives cos other wise it will copy to ram and then write back to hd. when i copyied a 13gb film from one folder to another it could only reach 100mb/s.

 

[geofelt]

geo felt that would only work idd i had 2 diffrent raid0 arrays with diffrent drives cos other wise it will copy to ram and then write back to hd. when i copyied a 13gb film from one folder to another it could only reach 100mb/s.

Interesting.
How long did that 13gb copy take? Is that how you got 100mb/s?
I would agree that the best performance would come from two raid-0 arrays, but that would involve 4 drives. Those who are considering raid-0 have two drives to work with. If their work is of a sequential copying nature, is it better to use them as a single array, or as a separate input and output configuration? I think this discussion deserves it's own topic. I will do that tomorrow, after I can do some testing on my own.