Hey guys! So I've finally replaced my ten year-old system with some money I'd been saving up for a while. I found an awesome deal on WD Caviar Black 1 TB HDD (32 MB cache I think) at a local electronics outlet. $65 a pop. I had some money left over and got 3. Anyways, I'm having a headache deciding what RAID to go with. I go to university (CS major) and work co-op (CS) the rest of the 4 months. I've had HDDs crap out on me in the past to disastrous consequenses. So redundancy is a must. I like gaming, fiction writing, and movie-editing as well. Here's my dilemma:
- I need redudancy.
- I'd like speed.
Am I right that these are my options?
1. RAID 5. Redundancy. Faster read times, slower write times. Chews up the CPU when writing for parity. Some people hate it with a passion, like these guys: http://www.baarf.com/ (though I don't understand why).
2. RAID 1 the first 2 drives and keep the third for less vital files.
3. RAID 0 the first 2 drives and manually transfer vital files to the third drive. Con is that I'll probably forget to do this occasionally, and may lose older files I didn't deem important but now sorely miss (Oh, how I lament you my lost custom Warcraft III maps I designed in elementary school) for nostaligic or other reasons.
4. RAID 0 all of them and transfer files to my external HDD. Big files will likely put me off from transferring. Same cons as 3.
Most of my questions are about RAID 5 and 0.
1. Are the performance gains from RAID 5 and 0 noticeable? Do they affect things like frame rates and pop-in, or just loading-times (which aren't a big bother to me) and boot times?
2. Does RAID 5 chew up noticeable CPU speed (I have an i7 920)? Will that affect games? Do most games do a lot of writing to the HDD (I'd assume not)?
3. Are RAID 5 write times sluggishly slow (say half as fast), or only like usually 10% slower?
Thanks. At this time I can't afford another HDD. I'm saving up for and waiting for SDDs to get cheaper so I can load my OS onto one. Oh, and the controller I'd be using is the one built into the p6t deluxe mobo.
On an unrelated note, if anyone wants to field or knows, is the built-in sound in the p6t pretty good? Good directionality? Can't seem to find anyone to answer that one.
- I need redudancy.
- I'd like speed.
Am I right that these are my options?
1. RAID 5. Redundancy. Faster read times, slower write times. Chews up the CPU when writing for parity. Some people hate it with a passion, like these guys: http://www.baarf.com/ (though I don't understand why).
2. RAID 1 the first 2 drives and keep the third for less vital files.
3. RAID 0 the first 2 drives and manually transfer vital files to the third drive. Con is that I'll probably forget to do this occasionally, and may lose older files I didn't deem important but now sorely miss (Oh, how I lament you my lost custom Warcraft III maps I designed in elementary school) for nostaligic or other reasons.
4. RAID 0 all of them and transfer files to my external HDD. Big files will likely put me off from transferring. Same cons as 3.
Most of my questions are about RAID 5 and 0.
1. Are the performance gains from RAID 5 and 0 noticeable? Do they affect things like frame rates and pop-in, or just loading-times (which aren't a big bother to me) and boot times?
2. Does RAID 5 chew up noticeable CPU speed (I have an i7 920)? Will that affect games? Do most games do a lot of writing to the HDD (I'd assume not)?
3. Are RAID 5 write times sluggishly slow (say half as fast), or only like usually 10% slower?
Thanks. At this time I can't afford another HDD. I'm saving up for and waiting for SDDs to get cheaper so I can load my OS onto one. Oh, and the controller I'd be using is the one built into the p6t deluxe mobo.
On an unrelated note, if anyone wants to field or knows, is the built-in sound in the p6t pretty good? Good directionality? Can't seem to find anyone to answer that one.