what is the fastest/best: 2 Raid 0 5400 or 1 7200?

[Pieter]

Hi,

For my new laptop I want to use the advantage of Raid 0, in case it is
really an advantage
These are my possibilities:
1) 1 Harddisk, 60 GB, 7200 rpm
2) 2 HD, each of them 40 GB, 5400 rpm: in Raid 0
3) same situation as 2), but not in Raid 1, and one harddisk for
applications, the other for Data

Which one will be the fastest? Situation 1 of situation 2?
And what will be the difference in eprformance between situation 2 and 3? 3
is in my opinion a lot safer (I can easily re-install the application-HD
without losing my data on my data-HD)...

Is there a 4th possibility that combines somehow situation 2 and 3: having
the speed of the Raid 0, but the safety and easy possibility to format the
C: and reinstall the software without loosing the data?

Any help, hints, links would be really appreciated!

thanks a lot in advance,

Pieter

 

[John]

Hi,

For my new laptop I want to use the advantage of Raid 0, in case it is
really an advantage
These are my possibilities:
1) 1 Harddisk, 60 GB, 7200 rpm
2) 2 HD, each of them 40 GB, 5400 rpm: in Raid 0
3) same situation as 2), but not in Raid 1, and one harddisk for
applications, the other for Data

Which one will be the fastest? Situation 1 of situation 2?
And what will be the difference in eprformance between situation 2 and 3? 3
is in my opinion a lot safer (I can easily re-install the application-HD
without losing my data on my data-HD)...

Just get a 7200. Ive posted a zillion times already Anandtech claimed
in a test that RAID 0 had very little performance benefits if any for
the vast majority of desktop users. Only in special cases did you get
any benefit and he said it increased the risk of losing data so he
strongly recommended NOT using it. In your case its even a stronger
case not to use it. For one thing in a laptop carrying it around there
probably a higher chance of HD failure with the heat (I assuming this
but have not proof) and shocks and probably no or little benefit.

I tried it again recently due to certain things bogging down my system
in recent months like agent the newsreader with a zillion headers. Id
used it before and like some said I didnt really notice a huge
improvement. Anandtech said youll see huge imrprovements in artificial
benchmarks like HD TACH etc but virtually nothing in everyday use.
The I knew I wouldnt get huge performance increases but I thought it
might alleviate some bottlenecks that bogged my system down. It seemed
to help a little there but I was plagued by data corruption and other
problems and realized RAID presents a lot of problems. Like when I
tried to upgrade the bios on my MB to possibly fix the data corruption
my MB went dead. But I couldnt carry my RAID set to my other system.
Just lots of problems.

Anyway I tried a newer SATA HITACHI 16o gig as my main system HD and
its helped subjectively just as much and Im pretty satisfied with the
improvement and no RAID problems.

I wouldnt mind getting several more of the newer sata drives with 16
meg cache that are reviewed well or even a RAPTOR.

Arent those 7200s going to generate tons of heat in your laptop? My
disks ever since Ive been getting the 7200s really seem to get hot. So
I really pay attention to the cooling for HDs now vs the old 5400s
which didnt get that hot at all.

 

[Pieter]

Hm ok thanks for the input.
Yes indeed: that's something I'm kind of 'affraid' of: that the 7200 rpm
will produce too much heat (and noise).
So would it be better than to use 2 HD's of 5400 rpm, and put the data on 1
disk (without using RAID 0)?

The most important thing to me is speed/performance. I will use the laptop
for develomment, and I do guess that I loose speed because of my (currently)
5400 rpm HD... It just takes a lot of time to open big projects...

So which of the 4 possiblity should I chose?

 

[John]

Hm ok thanks for the input.
Yes indeed: that's something I'm kind of 'affraid' of: that the 7200 rpm
will produce too much heat (and noise).
So would it be better than to use 2 HD's of 5400 rpm, and put the data on 1
disk (without using RAID 0)?

The most important thing to me is speed/performance. I will use the laptop
for develomment, and I do guess that I loose speed because of my (currently)
5400 rpm HD... It just takes a lot of time to open big projects...

So which of the 4 possiblity should I chose?

Id try out a 7200. Heres a blurb from a site :

Hitachi’s 7200 rpm notebook hard disk series is now in its second
generation and is very fast compared to all other notebook hard disks.
It produces no more heat and consumes no more power than
run-of-the-mill notebook hard disks. My Toshiba A10's overall
performance was so improved that I purchasing a new, faster notebook
computer made no sense at all. Installing a new Hitachi 7200 rpm hard
disk in my existing Toshiba A10 notebook computer was a highly
worthwhile upgrade that brought my existing notebook computer up to
near state of the art performance. A upgrading to a demonstrably
faster hard disk is still among the best ways of improving overall
computer performance.





Another notebooks site likes the Hitachis and Seagates. They say the
samething about Hitachis saying they are fast but he claims they run a
bit hotter than the other drives so who knows but apparently a lot of
people are using them so they must be OK heatwise too unless your
laptop is worse than others in that regards.

 

[Paul]

Hm ok thanks for the input.
Yes indeed: that's something I'm kind of 'affraid' of: that the 7200 rpm
will produce too much heat (and noise).
So would it be better than to use 2 HD's of 5400 rpm, and put the data on 1
disk (without using RAID 0)?

The most important thing to me is speed/performance. I will use the laptop
for develomment, and I do guess that I loose speed because of my (currently)
5400 rpm HD... It just takes a lot of time to open big projects...

So which of the 4 possiblity should I chose?

I would choose one 7200RPM hard drive to hold OS, applications,
and data, and no other drives. Then, you have the heat of a single
disk drive. You have the seek performance of a 7200RPM drive, so
every time you use the "Find" command, it would go faster than
if you are using a 5400RPM drive. And opening a big project,
where many tiny files are randomly accessed, will make the 7200
RPM drive the winner.

Using RAID0 for the two 5400RPM drives, will give enhanced STR,
but both drives still have poorer seek performance, so random
access on the 5400 RPM drives in RAID 0, will still suck.

If I was doing Photoshop, I might be tempted to use RAID 0
and the 5400RPM drives. For virtually any other usage, the
7200 RPM drive by itself, would be my choice.

Paul