Fast HD Question

[asdf]

Want to upgrade my computer to a faster HD's. What does everyone think of
the Raptor that i've chosen below. I want to put two of those in a RAID 0
for my system partition. And since i have only 2 SATA connectors on my mobo
I also want to get a SATA card and put my two other slower harddrives on it.

The question i have is that there is also a 150Gb version of the drive. As
far as i
understand the difference is only in the capacity of the drive. Both drives
are SATA I.
Should i wait for SATA II drives to come out? Are there other SATA/IDE
drives
which will give me better performance? Is the SATA card I chose a good one?

The products are below. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions.

SIIG SC-SA3012-S1 PCI SATA Controller Card RAID 0/1 - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16816150010

Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10,000 RPM
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822136033

 

[johns]

SATA 2 is already out .. same as SATA 300. My opinion
is you are much better off with a max of 2 hard drives.
I've never exceeded the need for 160 gig per drive, but
I'm using my 2nd drive strictly for capturing video. Also,
I think RAID is very old hat. For security backups, I
use disk imaging, and an external USB drive .. again
160 gig seems plenty.

johns

 

[asdf]

so would i be better off getting two
7200RPM/SATA II hard drives
or two
10000RPM/SATA I hard drives
and putting them into RAID 0

The only reason that i want two hard drives
in such a configuration is because i think that
this is a bottleneck in my computer.

Thank you very much for responding

 

[kony]

Keep in mind that everyone's needs are different, as are the
uses for the data/apps/whatever being stored.

so would i be better off getting two
7200RPM/SATA II hard drives
or two
10000RPM/SATA I hard drives
and putting them into RAID 0

Do you mean RAID0 in either config?

For your operating system partition, the 10K RRM drive is
the fastest choice, one of them alone should be better than
an RAID0 of two 7K2 RPM drives. As for whether to RAID0 two
of the 10K RPM drives, I doubt you will get much further
benefit, if you have that much drive access from your OS or
apps, more likely you need more memory to serve as a
filecache.

In some uses it would be faster to delegate separate reads
and writes or applications to a separate drive volume, not
all going to same raid0 array. This is for high bitrate
tasks such as video editing, DVD burning, or if you are
heavily multitasking.

The only reason that i want two hard drives
in such a configuration is because i think that
this is a bottleneck in my computer.

You forgot to mention how you use the system, uniquely, and
of course when you feel it's a bottleneck.

 

[John Weiss]

Want to upgrade my computer to a faster HD's. What does everyone think of
the Raptor that i've chosen below. I want to put two of those in a RAID 0
for my system partition. And since i have only 2 SATA connectors on my
mobo
I also want to get a SATA card and put my two other slower harddrives on
it.

The Raptor 74s are great drives. I have not heard anything adverse about
the 150s either.

I started with RAID 0 on my pair of Raptors. After a Windows Update "broke"
the RAID array and forced me to reload from scratch, I switched to RAID 1.
You will have to decide whether the risks of RAID 0 are worth the
performance gains (which, in my experience, were very discernable).

One issue with SATA on a PCI card is that the 32-bit PCI bus is still
limited to 133 MBps total bus bandwidth, AND other PCI devices will be
battling for their share of bandwidth and CPU load. You cannot approach the
theoretical 150 MBps per drive theoretical SATA bandwidth. The reality of
even RAID 0 on the MoBo controller is closer to 80 MBps for a pair of HDs,
so that alone is not a real problem, but don't expect a lot of performance
from an add-in SATA PCI card.

 

[DaveW]

In any RAID array you need to use EXACT MATCHING harddrives for best
results. They need to write , read, and transfer at the same speed.

 

[asdf]

The Raptor 74s are great drives. I have not heard anything adverse about
the 150s either.

I started with RAID 0 on my pair of Raptors. After a Windows Update
"broke" the RAID array and forced me to reload from scratch, I switched to
RAID 1. You will have to decide whether the risks of RAID 0 are worth the
performance gains (which, in my experience, were very discernable).

One issue with SATA on a PCI card is that the 32-bit PCI bus is still
limited to 133 MBps total bus bandwidth, AND other PCI devices will be
battling for their share of bandwidth and CPU load. You cannot approach
the theoretical 150 MBps per drive theoretical SATA bandwidth. The
reality of even RAID 0 on the MoBo controller is closer to 80 MBps for a
pair of HDs, so that alone is not a real problem, but don't expect a lot
of performance from an add-in SATA PCI card.

Thank you so much for replying.
How loud are the Raptors. If they are what kind of noise dampening equipment
would i buy for them?
I will not be connecting them to the RAID card. My motherboard already comes
with 2 SATA connectors.
The RAID card is for my two other SATA drives which i will be using to hold
my data.
Would you say it's worth getting two of these drives or is putting two of
these in RAID 0 will only achieve
a marginal improvement over just using a single Raptor.

 

[kony]

In any RAID array you need to use EXACT MATCHING harddrives for best
results. They need to write , read, and transfer at the same speed.

WRONG.

Take an array of two 80GB, 5K4 RPM drives for example,
identical drives of any brand. One of them fails, and is
replaced by a newer drive, it could be 80GB, or 120GB with
only 80GB used- it does not matter, and with 7K2 RPM.

The result is that the newer replacement drive makes the
array at least as fast, marginally to quite a bit faster
(depending on array type and use).

The idea about identical drives for performance was always
nonsense.

 

[John Weiss]

How loud are the Raptors. If they are what kind of noise dampening
equipment would i buy for them?

Quiet (the original 36s were appaerntly LOUD; fixed in the 74s).

None.

Would you say it's worth getting two of these drives or is putting two of
these in RAID 0 will only achieve
a marginal improvement over just using a single Raptor.

The performance increase in a RAID 0 array is something you can actually see
and feel with these drives. The biggest question is whether you want the
additional risk of failure/corruption.

Ideally you'd buy 4 of them and put them in RAID 10 (1+0). If you're not
Donald Trump, though, you have to decide what's more important to you -- the
added performance or the added risk. If you use Ghost or TrueImage to
backup the RAID 0 drives regualrly, maybe you can absorb the risk...

 

[asdf]

OK. So should i go then with 150Gb model or with 74GB one.
My understanding is that the larger capacity drives give better
performance simply because of their geometry?

stirage review states that a single 150Gb performs equally to
4x 74Gb ones in RAID0

 

[kony]

OK. So should i go then with 150Gb model or with 74GB one.
My understanding is that the larger capacity drives give better
performance simply because of their geometry?

stirage review states that a single 150Gb performs equally to
4x 74Gb ones in RAID0

A synthetic benchmark is only as applicable as the I/O of
the benchmark matches what you'll be doing with the drive in
actual use. So you may not see such a significant
difference and it will also depend on the RAID controller.

Yes a 150GB drive will be faster than same 74GB drive, ever
moreso the more data you have on the drive, if your primary
use were only 5GB or so for WinXP OS access then it would
make less difference whether 150GB or 74GB, because the
primary advantage of the Raptors is the higher rotational
speed as related to lower seek times. If it were only a
matter of sustained throughput, you'd be as well off to get
a larger, 400GB or more (non-Raptor).

 

[John Weiss]

OK. So should i go then with 150Gb model or with 74GB one.
My understanding is that the larger capacity drives give better
performance simply because of their geometry?

stirage review states that a single 150Gb performs equally to
4x 74Gb ones in RAID0

I would doubt that benchmark in real-world performance, but overall a larger
capacity HD will outperform a smaller capacity HD:

If the storage density of the platter is higher, it will be inherently
faster.

The closer your data is to the "beginning" (outer rim) of the HD, it
will be faster because of faster average linear speed of the head across the
platter.

If it is a dual-platter HD, the read/write capacity of the 4 separate
heads may be greater than a single-platter, 2-head design.

Besides, if you're unhappy with a single 150, you can still buy another
later... ;-)