Looking for fastest storage setup

[deathtopigeon]

I am thinking of building a new computer and have been wondering what would be the fastest HDD or SSD setup. Raid or just plain drives I am looking for the fastest setup for gaming which I would assume would rely heavily on read operations. I know that there is a price curve for new tech. So I am wondering what would be the best with no price limits, and what would be best with minor price restrictions. I was looking for a post specifically on this but wasn't sure what to search for. So if anyone has an answer or a link to a thread already covered by this it would be appreciated.

Also if raid, I would like some data security if possible, preferably not raid 1, but something like raid 5, as I just had a raid 0 HDD failure.

Thanks

 

[Twoboxer]

Without questioning your assumptions, here's a good read:

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTY1OCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

 

[Onus]

Excellent article. I'm still waiting for the prices on SSDs to come down and capacities to go up. I perceive a few of them (NON-JMicron!) in my future, I hope not too far off.

 

[BoBzzz]

This should fulfill your needs: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/03/09/video-samsung-ssd-ra.html

 

[deathtopigeon]

omg, now i just need to get like $23k+, freaking amazing

 

[MRFS]

Check out some of these:

Fusion-io ioDrive & ioDrive Duo

OCZ Z-Drive

Super Talent RAIDDrive

+ lots of discrete SSDs
to choose from now

+ Gigabyte i-RAM & i-RAM Box

and ACARD ANS-9010

for some SDRAM-based products.


A really cheap and very cost-effective
solution is to bulk up on lotsa RAM
(that's a brand name -- "lotsa"
and install RamDisk Plus from
http://www.superspeed.com

We've installed several copies
of RamDisk Plus and have had "lotsa"
success moving our browser caches
to ramdisks ~ 3.0GB/second measured!

Version 9.0.4.0 also utilizes
unmanaged memory under
Windows XP 32-bit version -- NICE!

Our client just installed it on an
8GB AMD PC and his ramdisk is 2GB --
VERY NICE!!


MRFS

 

[spinning rust]

http://www.emc.com/products/detail/hardware/symmetrix-dmx-4.htm

well, you did ask for the fastest....
hope you already have a brocade, HBAs, etc.

 

[sub mesa]

I am thinking of building a new computer and have been wondering what would be the fastest HDD or SSD setup. Raid or just plain drives I am looking for the fastest setup for gaming which I would assume would rely heavily on read operations.

Have you considered an SSD? If that's too expensive a single Velociraptor is a good alternative. Pair this with some huge data disks (like two 1TB WD Green drives) and you have both speed, storage and data security if one of the TB drives acts as backup.

About the iRAM: its nice but it totally fails:

- still bottlenecked by 3Gbps SATA, byebye 2GB/s speeds!
- it uses DDR1 memory instead of DDR2
- battery hold up time was only 48 hours or so i remember

Instead, they should make a PCIe RAM drive, with 8x DDR2 that would be both cheap and extremely fast. Just not so much space, but hey with 16GB it would be really cool.

 

[SSD Kevin]

I have been testing with some of the SSD's on the market and I think the OCZ Z-Drive in a RAID 1 configuration is your best bet for performance and redundancy. You will get 400Mb of read performance, be bootable, 32 or 64 bit and can install easily.

I also heard Western Dig is getting their foot in the market with SSD's. It will only get better.

I gotta tell you I have tried a few of the ioDrives and Fusion does not have their act together. In fact, I got screwed by them because they said I could return the card within 30 days and they would not let me. I had problems with the card corrupting data and they had me try different drivers. Look at how many flippin' drivers they have come out with in the last year. So I forked out $3k and got the short end of the stick. They claim Enterprise, but I would not put these in my work environment because I would be fired.

 

[XepherZenith]

If no price limits = unlimited funds.
Theoretically speaking, with UNLIMITED funds , you could build a storage device out of CPU's cache. That way whatever data you put in there will have closest path to the CPU core. I imagine you would also need specialized motherboard to use that kind of storage device but with UNLIMITED funds that shouldn't be a problem.

For more realistic setup, you could:
1. Get 4 X25-E and do RAID5 setup.

2. Install lots of ram and use SuperSpeed to make a Ramdrive out of it. I bench-marked my ramdisk and the speed is 8GB/s read and 5GB/s write. It's not bootable and you will have to wait long time on shutdown/restart but all your apps/games on that ramdrive will have lightning fast read/write.

 

[BigGuyWhoKills]

If you REALLY do not have a price limit, then you would probably want a fibre channel connection to a LUN hosted on a NetApp GX cluster running their new 24 drive SAS shelves. Several PB of overall storage and an honest 4Gbps throughput (before FC overhead).