Two 150GB raptors in RAID0 vs one Velociraptor?

[robocam]

Has anyone gone from two 150GB raptors in RAID 0 to a single 300GB velociraptor? I'm curious to know if applications would load any faster and if my computer would boot-up any faster with the velociraptor.

 

[cjl]

I doubt there'd be a huge difference. The Raptors might have a slight advantage, but on the whole, it wouldn't be much of a difference.

 

[505090]

raptors are outperformed by current caviar blacks

 

[cjl]

In sequentials, yes. In randoms, not a chance. The RAID 0 raptors should make up for the difference in sequentials, and maintain the lead in randoms due to the ~8.5ms access time. In other words, a current caviar black won't stand a chance against a pair of 150GB Raptors.

 

[505090]

yes a pair of raptors will beat a single black

but a pair of blacks would beat a pair of raptors and offer a lot more storage

 

[daship]

+1 for Balcks in raid 0 for performance and storage.

If performance is real important, you need to look into SSD from Intel or OCZ summit.

The only way to dramatically improve load times and boot time is to move to SSd or 2x SSD raid 0.

 

[rubix_1011]

RAID 0 over the single raptor, whether it be 150s or caviars. If you are really needing that much speed and space, yes. If you absolutely need that speed, SSDs.

 

[cjl]

yes a pair of raptors will beat a single black

but a pair of blacks would beat a pair of raptors and offer a lot more storage

Not in most tasks, no. The Blacks would win for sheer transfer rate, but the Raptors would probably still pull ahead for application loading and boot. The blacks could never hope to match the raptors' 8ms access time. It's the same reason why an SSD feels faster (only to a lesser degree).

 

[505090]

a caviar black beat the raptor in all PCMark Vantage categories including app loading and boot.

I have both drives and have found no advantage of the raptor over the black other than the black didn't exist when I bought the raptor some 5 years ago.

 

[robocam]

Thanks for all your replies. I want fast application load time and quicker overall feel. Sequential transfer rate is not my top priority. I did some research on SSD's and discovered that they're finally usable as a main drive. I decided to get a 36GB Intel X25-E.

 

[cjl]

Why waste the money on an X25-E when an X25-M is basically the same performance (for desktop use) at a fraction of the cost per gb?

 

[geofelt]

Thanks for all your replies. I want fast application load time and quicker overall feel. Sequential transfer rate is not my top priority. I did some research on SSD's and discovered that they're finally usable as a main drive. I decided to get a 36GB Intel X25-E.

If the price is not a big concern, the Intel SSD is the best option. But, you may not have sufficient space with 32gb for the OS and many applications. Consider one of the new gen2 X25-M drives. They were temporarily withdrawn, pending firmware updates. It seems that if you specified password protection on the drives, it could corrupt data. Not a big issue to me.

To answer the initial post, the velociraptor would be the best conventional drive. It would be faster in both random and sequentil performance than raptors in raid-0.

 

[cjl]

In randoms, yes the velociraptor would beat the RAID-0 raptors. The Raptors would beat the velociraptor in sequential though - a pair of Raptors should hit ~150MB/s average compared to the Velociraptor's ~100MB/s. Also, the best conventional drive would be this one:

http://www.costcentral.com/proddetail/Seagate_Cheetah_15K7/ST3600057SS/10898252/froogle/

It just happens to use an inconvenient interface (SAS) for home users, and costs way too much (I can dream though ).

 

[daship]

Sorry but 32G is to small you will barely fit Vista, let alone and Apps.

 

[robocam]

I was concerned about the minimum write speed based on these results.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-performance-power,2279-5.html

The X25-E seemed to have far superior results.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-performance-power,2279-6.html

I was editing a file in CS2 last night and the scratch file grew to over 15GB. Do you think the X25-M would still be ok for my use? I wonder if it wrote the scratch file mainly sequentially. I used to have four 74GB Raptors in RAID 0 as my scratch disk. I wonder how that would compare to a single SSD.

When something better is available, I usually just get the better performing item if the price is similar. The price difference was only $34 (64GB M vs 32GB E).

I think I can live with the 32GB capacity. I actually installed Vista on a 30GB partition on my laptop. I'm out of space there, but now that I know what it's like, I can reduce the clutter.

Someday I could add another SSD and set it up as a RAID 0 array. Then capacity should be less of a concern.

I'm always trying to reduce the effect of the storage bottleneck. I almost tried to use two of those Gigabyte iRAMs. That would've been an 8GB capacity drive. I wonder how the X25-E compares to the iRAMs.

Why waste the money on an X25-E when an X25-M is basically the same performance (for desktop use) at a fraction of the cost per gb?

 

[cjl]

I would think an X25-M would be more than adequate for your use, yes, and 80GB is far better than 32GB if you're installing Vista. The E is a lot more expensive too - on Newegg, the 80GB M is $220 or so, while the 32GB E is $330.

 

[robocam]

I actually bought an open box E from newegg and it was $264. The M is $230 (and out of stock - the one that supports TRIM). I'm using XP Pro on this machine. I could install less frequently used applications on my data drive if space becomes an issue. But it shouldn't. I basically have CS2, Office, and that's pretty much it for the big stuff.

I would think an X25-M would be more than adequate for your use, yes, and 80GB is far better than 32GB if you're installing Vista. The E is a lot more expensive too - on Newegg, the 80GB M is $220 or so, while the 32GB E is $330.