To RAID or not to RAID??

[Lil_Biatch_UK]

Hello all,

I'm looking to build a new system, as my current one is getting creaky

my question is, as i use my system for gaming first then downloading large files/media encoding second, do i use a raid 0 array as my boot disk or a single hard drive for maximum performance???

the drive(s) would be 74GB western digital 10,000 SATA raptors on a msi k8t neo mobo, 3200 athlon 64, 1gb corsair 3200 pro, 9800xt, creative audigy 2, pci adsl modem, seagate 200 GB on ide channel (as storage disk), dvd rom and dvd rewriter, the operating system would be xp pro sp1 with norton internet security as the only program that would be running at all times

i am really looking for blistering gaming performance, the media encoding would take second place if there was a choice to make.

also would i use the onboard controller for the raid array or a separate pci controller for maximum performance???

i have no experience of raid in any capacity and would appreciate any advice you can give.

Biatch

 

[marneus]

What would be more important?? Striping the 2HDDs into one faster virtual drive or mirroring your 1st HDD to your 2nd so that in case of disaster, U will have a backup...

Trust me I know what I'm doing... ooops, grab the cat...

 

[Lil_Biatch_UK]

definitely the striping for one virtual drive, this would only contain the boot disk and programs, all my data is always kept on a separate disk and backed up

See you at the end of my scope

 

[grafixmonkey]

Use a single disk to boot off of, and a striped array for stuff you want to be fast.

Reason 1: The array will require drivers, and you don't want a driver or bios problem to prevent you from booting, because if you can't boot you can't fix your drivers.

Reason 2: If you ever get a new board or a controller card and want to move your array data to a new PC, you'll find that you can't just move the hard drives. A raid controller can only recognize arrays created on it or a controller with the same chip (or sometimes brand name of chip.) So if/when you do move your array, you'll be able to copy all files to your single drive, unplug the striped drives, plug them into new system, recreate / reformat array, and zip your files across the network or just plug in your single drive to copy files back. If you booted to the array, you wouldn't be able to move the array without reinstalling your OS on the old machine.

 

[Lil_Biatch_UK]

thanks for posting grafix, but i'm a little confused, its the os and any games i run that i want to be really fast, i accept the risk of having to reinstall from scratch if anything goes wrong. i have a spare laptop for essentials so i wouldn't mind the reinstall. a fresh install of windows is always a nice site to behold anyway . does what you say still stand with this in mind?

Biatch

See you at the end of my scope

 

[lunitic]

A RAID0 array outperforms a single drive.

However, in many cases you don't benefit from faster drives, for example if you're downloading (large) files from the internet, editing documents in Word or Photoshopping images.

So you'll have to identify the processes which are slow and check whether this is a disk problem; if the disk is very busy at that point you may have found one.

Now about your usage:
- I'm not a gamer but I'm told that games are usually not disk intensive. Only when changing scenes you might win some performance.
- Media encoding is very disk intensive, but also very CPU intensive. If you're encoding videos with relatively high compression (DIVX) with complex filters then the disk performance is a small factor compared to the processor. Also media files are quite big and you'd probably want to save them on a large (and slower) drive.
- Windows is usually quite disk-extensive, except when you're booting or when you're launching an application. However, if your goal is to boot faster then you'd better forget RAID: all controllers that I know of add considerably to the bootup-time.

What I'd do in your case is probably something like:
- Install Windows and applications/games on the fastest drive (read RAID 0 array)
- Use the 200GB as an archive drive
- use a separate partition on the fastest drive as a working space, especially for your media encoding

You don't need a PCI SATA RAID controller if your mobo has one. Afaik there is hardly any performance difference between PCI and on-board controllers.

NB Norton Internet security takes a lot of resources, even on your system. You may want to try switching it off when you really need performance.

NB2. You have to consider the fac that RAID 0 is very vulerable. As grafixmonkey pointed out RAID 0 drives are not very compatible to other systems. Also if any drive of a RAID 0 array fails the whole array fails, recovery of files on a bad array is almost impossible. And the chances of drive failure on a 2 or 3 or 4 drive array doubles / triples / quadruples.

 

[HammerBot]

A RAID0 array outperforms a single drive.

That certainly depends on the access pattern. For small files and random access, it tops at the same speed. Sometimes it may even be slower.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[arkus]

I reckon 2 74gb Raptors in RAID 0 will probably be imperceptibly faster than 1 on it's own, especially for the kind of usage that you're talking about (and I'm a gamer who's used RAID 0 here). Either mirror the drives (RAID 1) or spend the cash on another component that will improve your enjoyment of gaming (a better monitor for example).

And, IIRC a few people have already posted here about Raptors maxxing out the PCI bus in RAID 0 (or something like that, but don't quote me on it!!!)

Of course, if you're interested in learning more about 'puters then go for RAID - if you're lucky it will cause you a few headaches and you'll have to find ways to adapt ;o)

Lots more on RAID and Raptors just about everywhere on the net, try searching the forums here or at <A HREF="http://www.storagereview.com" target="_new">http://www.storagereview.com</A>

PIV2.6|IS7-G|1GbDDR266|R9700Pro|SonicFury5.1|4*36GbRaptor[1/0]
2*120GbCaviar|Highpoint1640|CRW-F1|GC7000|460w EG465AX-VE(G)
ATC210cAX-1|1451Visionmaster|AltecLansing5100|WinXPSP1|DX9.0b

 

[DOOM]

That certainly depends on the access pattern. For small files and random access, it tops at the same speed. Sometimes it may even be slower.

Don't most games load large files in sequential access? In that case, RAID-0 would dominate over non-RAID, but only in level load times and cinematic sequences, I'd wager.

____
P4C800-E Dlx, P4 3.0 @ 3.5MHz, 1024 Corsair @ 5550MB/s, 72GB WD 10,000rpm SATA as RAID-0 @ 92MB/s, Antec TruePower 480W, Zalman 7000 AlCu HSF, Arctic Silver III, FSB 233, CPUv 1.6, 3-4-3-7 PAT

 

[jim552]

I always lean towards the safer approach.

While RAID 0 may give you a small speed boost, I would just use the Raptors each alone on separate channels, or mirrored.

I have several Raptor 74gb drives, in systems that were upgraded from Raptor 36tg drives, and they are VERY fast.

One real easy thing you can do on your own.

Load up your Western Digital 200gb IDE drive, (didn't I read that on your post?) with your OS. (Make sure to include all drivers for the SATA stuff.)

Run a few tests there.

Then use Ghost, or something like that, and put that image on a Raptor drive hooked up by itself.

Next Ghost is over to a Raptor Raid 0 configuration.

See for yourself what the difference is.

I think that you will find that the actual difference is VERY negligible, and likely not worth the risk or hassle.

Besides, if you configure the Western Digital drive as a boot drive, then you can just go in the BIOS and change the boot order, if you need to bootup from a different drive. (I am pretty sure on your motherboard, the SATA drives would boot as SCSI.)

 

[HammerBot]

Don't most games load large files in sequential access? In that case, RAID-0 would dominate over non-RAID, but only in level load times and cinematic sequences, I'd wager.

Some games do, but only during 'scene' or 'level' change. So a very brief moment of your total playing time might be speeded up by 50-75%. I really don't think you'll notice any significant overall performance increase while gaming.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[sjonnie]

Not in my experience (but then I don't play a hell of a lot of games) Run Perfmon and set it to monitor disk reads, processor usage and perhaps paging. Play your favourite game for 10mins then go back and look at the disk access, you'll find that disk access is hardly ever maxed out.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/myanandtech.html?member=114979" target="_new">My PCs</A>

 

[Makaveli]

You don't need a PCI SATA RAID controller if your mobo has one. Afaik there is hardly any performance difference between PCI and on-board controllers.

Incorrect, Any Serial ata controller running thru the PCI bus will be limited by its bandwidth.
2 74GB raptors will easily saturate the PCI bus!
The only motherboards I know of with dedicated bandwidth for serial ata are the intel boards with the ICH5 I believe its called.

I did notice he is using an athlon 64board but you will want to check into if the onboard serial ata controller runs thru the pci bus, or you will never get all of the speed the drives can produce.

 

[Lil_Biatch_UK]

thankyou all for your very helpful advice guys

looks like i'm going for one raptor as the boot drive, as the general consensus seems to be that the difference in speed will be so negligible i wouldn't notice it in games or in encoding

i still want to muck about with raid though so i'm going to try a raid 1 array for extra security of my data

oh and maybe i'll give watercooling a go with the £150 i'll save, been itching to try that for ages

thanks once again, i'm sure i''l be back for more advice when i blow something up with the watercooling

Biatch

See you at the end of my scope

 

[arkus]

Incorrect, Any Serial ata controller running thru the PCI bus will be limited by its bandwidth.
2 74GB raptors will easily saturate the PCI bus!
The only motherboards I know of with dedicated bandwidth for serial ata are the intel boards with the ICH5 I believe its called.

Thanks for the correction.

I guess for all those who aren't using ICH5 there would be no difference. If both on-board and PCI card go through the PCI bus, then Raptors in RAID 0 will max it out either way.

PIV2.6|IS7-G|1GbDDR266|R9700Pro|SonicFury5.1|4*36GbRaptor
2*120GbCaviar|Highpoint1640|CRW-F1|GC7000|460w EG465AX-VE(G)
ATC210cAX-1|1451Visionmaster|AltecLansing5100|WinXPSP1|DX9.0b

 

[Johanthegnarler]

You wouldn't have to worry about that if you would have bought 1gb of good fast RAM.
The cache is usually used for video games on harddrives if you don't have enough RAM.
512mb of ram with xp isn't enough to run a game like SWG right.


<A HREF="http://arc.aquamark3.com/arc/arc_view.php?run=610166081" target="_new">http://arc.aquamark3.com/arc/arc_view.php?run=610166081</A>
Figured i'd do it too..reality my ass.

 

[bsavoie]

In front of me, I have four new UATA 100 Seagate 120GB Barracuda's with 8MB cache. I'm trying to decide on the best way to deploy them "0", or "0+1". I'm leaning toward not using raid at all. Just one for OS / programs, another for data, and another for backup. I'm a programmer just looking for some additional storage space, hopefully a performance boost, and a solid backup plan. Sounds like you guys are of the opinion that a non-raid solution is usually the best solution in a situation similar to mine. I did buy the Promise FastTrak100 two channel raid controller, perhaps that was a waste of money? (Only $25 not too bad).

Dell Dimension 8200 2.0 ghz 768MB ram

BSavoie