10,000 rpm HD's worth it?

[sh1ft3d]

I'm sure this has been tossed around a lot in this forum so I do apologize in advance. I'm looking to build a PC in the near future and am debating on hard disk storage. I already bought a 120GB 7,200 IDE WD hard drive, and considering buying a 36.7 GB hard drive for OS (using 120GB hard drive as backup) that runs at 10,000 rpm. Is this worth it or should I just stick with the single 120GB hard drive running at 7200 rpm? I will be using the system primarily for gaming, but also for media burning, possibly graphic design (photoshop), etc - basically what your average power user would use a computer for.... bottom line question:

1) 2 hard drives: 36.7GB 10,000rpm for OS and 120GB 7,200rpm for backup

or

2) 1 hard drive: 120GB 7,200 for OS and file storage????

 

[RichPLS]

Personally, I have a Raptor 73 gig boot drive and a Maxtor 250gb data drive with swap file.
I think that the benifits of not increasing proc overhead yet splitting data drive access is the best choice.
I do plan on RAID array the 250gig drive later using Netcell SyncRAID controller and getting 2 addl 250gig drives.
In the mean time, I like this setup.

_____________________________________________
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[Mr5oh]

Personally I was debating on a 10k RPM drive for quite a while. Finally I came across some extra money, and went ahead and bought the 36 gig version at a local shop. I knew there was a difference, but I expected it to be minimal. I was suprised, it made a big difference. I noticed a difference when booting up, and installing stuff. I was pleasantly surpised, and won't be using a 7200 RPM as a boot drive again. (Still use a 7200 80 gig for backup space)

My Desktop: <A HREF="http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html" target="_new">http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html</A>

 

[sh1ft3d]

Thanks for the feedback...

Out of curiousity, do you run into an issue with it overheating? Did or do you suggest buying a hard drive fan if you get a 10,000rpm due to extra heat running at faster speed? Are they more prone to failure since they run rotationally faster than 7,200's? (sorry for the 20 questions

 

[sjonnie]

Don't get the 36.7GB, the 74GB drive is much better and not that much more expensive. No one should ever ever have a single drive, how the hell do you backup your data? On CDs? Even with DVDs backing up 50GB of data is no mean feat. Don't worry about heat, the WD740GD is a cool cucumber, probably cooler than your 120GB drive believe it or not and the warranty will also be longer, 5 years!

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

 

[fota]

I've reviewed the replies to the original post and they bring to mind a question. . . If one were considering the switch from EIDE RAID to SATA RAID but did not wish to swap motherboards (i.e., wanted to install a PCI SATA Controller Card), would the PCI Bus become a bottleneck in the system (saturated/overwhelmed)? I'm considering a RAID 0 Array of 2 74 GB Western Digital Raptors (WD740). My motherboard chipset and RDRAM solution perform better than most DDR & DDR2 solutions currently available (ASUS P4T533 w/Intel 850 Northwood chipset, 1024 dual-channel 32-bit RDRAM).

Any idea of the performance increase in this scenario over EIDE RAID solutions? I currently get 55 MB/s using a pair of WD1200JB Western Digital drives (SiSoft Sandra Benchmark).

Thanks for your expertize.

Frank Fota

 

[Xeon]

80m/sb-125mb/s peaks and falls, sustained at least on my 36's about 80mb/s-90mb/s; small little files will kill the RAID though, taking it down to 30mb/s-45mb/s.

It should be noted this has been seen on 36gig Raptors, 74's which are apparently much faster will notably score higher.

Xeon

<font color=red>Post created with being a dickhead in mind.</font color=red>
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[addiarmadar]

Personally I never saw the boost difference when going to the 10k rpm drives and they are a bit noisy. If you are going into SCSI drives then thats different.

<i><font color=red>Only an overclocker can make a computer into a convectional oven.</i></font color=red>

 

[davemar14]

Got 2x74 GB Raptors in RAID 0. Get 85 MB sustained write, and 112 MB sustained read.

 

[dwpix]

If you were a Photoshop poweruser you would want to dedicate your fastest HD for the scratch disk, having partitioned it and using one of the partitions EXCLUSIVELY for the designated Photoshop scratch. With this set up you get partition/s for storage of files AND a fast Photoshop scratch disk.
use the slower beast for OS, ect.

 

[sh1ft3d]

Wow time flies, I originally posted that question almost 4 months ago...

What I ended up doing is just using the existing 120GB hard drive as boot disk and partitioned into two separate logical drives. I have a Western Digital 80GB Sata on the way for backups. I originally purchased a Hitachi 80GB Sata that ended up dying on me shortly after putting the computer together. Assuming that they honor my RMA and I get a fresh Hitachi 80GB Sata, there wouldn't be any issues with running an 80GB WD and 80GB Hitachi, both sata in Raid 0 config? It's not the same idea of dual channel where the two sticks have to be nearly identical is it?

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In just two days, tomorrow will be yesterday.

 

[RichPLS]

No, drives do not have to be same size or brand, just the the smallest and slowest will govern overall speed and space.
So in effect you would get double the space of the smallest drive, and speed equivlant of a pair of the slowest drive as in a RAID 0..

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[prolfe]

I agree! My roomate just got a 10K raptor, and it scratches noticeably.

 

[mattburklund]

I read a review on anandtech comparing the raptor 74 to the new maxtor 250/300g with the 16mb cache. Basically they were both great. I didnt see anything that would make me want to take the raptor over the maxtor.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2094