74GB Raptor -vs- Caviar 640

[Rakewell]

Greetings all,

I currently have 2 X 74GB Raptors in Raid 0 running my rig's OSes (I am dual booting XP/Vista), and I am running out of room because of games, so I am going to buy a new 640 Caviar. My question is this:

Should I use the Raptors (They are 4 & 1/2 years old) to run XP/Vista and use the 640 for games, or should I use the new 640 for the OSes and the Raptors in Raid 0 for games?

Most importantly, which setup is faster: the 640 -or- the 2 aging raptors in Raid 0?

Look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

Thanks,

Rakewell

 

[Tweakin]

Without a doubt the raptors in raid will kick the snot out of the 640. I would probably drop the dual boot, continue to use the raptors in raid and use the 640 for storage/music/games etc.

It depends on the reason you are dual booting. Need more info...

 

[Rakewell]

I'm not a fan of dual booting, but I do it for better game framerates in xp.

Maybe it's time to stick with Vista (*gulp). What do you think?

 

[Rakewell]

 

[sutahz]

Do the 'hard' thing and run the tests yourself. Also, instead of just running RAID0 v 640GB, try 74GBrap/74GBrap/640GB, run all 3 seperatly (OS on one, games on another, page file on another). Get real world results and get back to us with your findings.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: sutahz
Do the 'hard' thing and run the tests yourself. Also, instead of just running RAID0 v 640GB, try 74GBrap/74GBrap/640GB, run all 3 seperatly (OS on one, games on another, page file on another). Get real world results and get back to us with your findings.

There was an article on Firing Squad that showed that the second configuration you mentioned was faster than a RAID 0 setup for playing games. I can't access FS at work, but maybe I will link it when I get home.

 

[Rakewell]

Thanks, guys, for all of your input. I think I will probably do some benchmarking.

In the meantime, Martimus, I went on over to FS but couldn't find the article you were talking about... if you get a chance, would you mind just forwarding that URL?

Thanks again; look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,

Rakewell

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: Rakewell
Thanks, guys, for all of your input. I think I will probably do some benchmarking.

In the meantime, Martimus, I went on over to FS but couldn't find the article you were talking about... if you get a chance, would you mind just forwarding that URL?

Thanks again; look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,

Rakewell

Rakewell,

Sorry, I forgot to get the link for you. It was an article done during their open competition for a new writer about 1 year ago. The guy ran two Raptor 150's in Raid 0 then one with the OS and the other with programs, and the second configuration was consistently faster by a sizable margin. I'll try to remember to find it again tonight. Sorry about that.

-Martimus

 

[Rakewell]

Martimus,

Thanks for the reply; no problem, if you get a chance. You're saving me a lot of time which I don't have!

Most likely my misunderstanding, but I thought the second configuration you were referring to a couple of days ago was this:

WD 6400AAKS: OS (XP & Vista partitions)
2X 74GB Raptors: Games

So according to his findings, as you said above, the best thing is to ditch the Raid 0 for this:

74gb Raptor: XP
74gb Raptor: Vista
WD 6400AAKS: Games

Which one was he referring to?

Sorry for my confusion-

Thanks again,

Rakewell

 

[Martimus]

I would say that
74gb Raptor: XP
74gb Raptor: Vista
WD 6400AAKS: Games
would be the better configuration, since I would want the fastest drives for the OS and Cache (page file). Although RAID-0 with partitions for XP and Vista on the Raptors would probably be slightly faster yet. His article showed what most of us already knew, that Raid-0 has very little real world performance gain over non-raid configurations; but what he showed was that taking that same raid configuration and making one drive dedicated to the OS and the other dedicated to all programs and data, you saw a considerable real world difference in performance (I don't remember exactly how much, but I think it was in the 10-15% range, compared to the 2-3% range of using a Raid-0 setup.) I am saying this off the top of my head, so the numbers may be different. I will look up the article when I get home if I remember and give you the real numbers.

-Martimus

 

[Rakewell]

Thanks, Martimus; very interesting; I hope to see that article.

As has been said many times (and argued over), Raid 0 doesn't show the benefit as once thought.

So then, I presume that the WD 6400AAKS should get all the apps, as well as games?

In the meantime, I will set this up and post benchmarks.

Cheers buddy,

Rakewell

 

[BoboKatt]

It was always my understanding, and from recent personal findings that you will always get better performance with doing what was suggested by Martimus. It's not that RAID0 is not fast, it's that you are generally reading and writing from the same source.

I have 4 drives now. One has my OS and that is it. Other has all my apps/games. Third has all my raw video and large .bin files etc, and last one is my target drive to where I place the finishes video edited files or where I uncompress/compress and place final files.

Essentially I am always trying to ensure I am not reading and writing to the same drive/partition/array.

I am not sure if this is what you are referring to: In theory if you had 2 RAID0 arrays? one where you have your OS, and the other where you install apps/games, you would see better performance all around. At least this way you are not reading and writing to the same array, and the HD arrays are not doing double duty, slowing them down to a crawl.

A good test is to? say you grab a very large RAR file? like a movie ISO or something. Or the reverse? grab 50 rar files that you want to unrar them to their original file. Now unrar from one directory to another on the same drive and time it. Now if you can do this test again, but with 2 drives, unrar the source file to a directory on the other drive. When I do these tests I see like 50% less time required to this.

 

[Rakewell]

Sounds like a plan.

Thanks BoboKatt, I'm gonna do that this week.

Wonder why it seem this isn't bantered about forum-style everywhere? Seems a no-brainer to me.

Cheers.

Rakewell

 

[sutahz]

As you want dual boot, you can do this as well.
Raptor 1
[1.5GB partition for 1GB Page file for XP][50+GB partition for Vista][leave this space empty or partition for storage]
Raptor 2
[1.5GB partition for 1GB page file for Vista][50+GB Partition for XP][leave this space empty or partition for storage]
6400AAKS
[50-100GB partiton for games][partiton for storage or special tasks like encoding][partition for storage]

When one OS is loaded, may as well use the other hdd's outer edge for best PF performance. Depending on if both OS's are going to be gaming and daily use you can make the OS partition much smaller. Min for Vista is like 25-30GB and XP can be as small as 7GB (but 10-15GB to be safe). Min OS part. size is based on having that OS only be there for gaming. No storeing pics and files and excessive programs that are not needed.

 

[Rakewell]

Very interesting, sutahz. I think I will put the pf on the opposite drive, as you suggested. I was planning on keeping the raptors raid0, but am I right by getting from you that the performance would be better with your pf change on a single drive, instead of Raid0?

A couple of other questions:
-Since the raptors will be used only for the OSes, is there any particular reason to keep the OSes in a 50+GB partition, instead of using the rest of the drive after the pf as one partition? (72.5 GB [or rather, 67.5 GB])
-OK to just have one partition the 6400AAKS?
-Since all apps are going in my 6400AAKS as well as games, OK to keep them both in the same partition?

Thanks for all your help; look forward to hearing back from you.

Cheers,

Rakewell

PS: One more question. I am going to install the 64 bit flavor of Vista tonight, and next week I am installing 2X2GB DDR 800 RAM.
Should this affect my page file size in either XP or Vista?

 

[Martimus]

Here is the promised article: It took me a while to find though.

 

[oscar6]

I was under the impression that the location of the page file matters little when approx 4GB of system ram or higher is employed.

 

[Rakewell]

Excellent read, thanks Martimus. Unless your system is rigged to transfer large files one at a time, Raid0 doesn't provide the benefit that has been touted in the industry.

Sigh. Still waiting for the SSDs to come down in price.

Cheers,

Rakewell

 

[sutahz]

Nope, no reason to just have the rest of the raptor be for the OS.
Sure the 6400AAKS can be one partition, just seperate partitions make for easier defrags. Why waste hrs defragging a hdd full of files, programs, games, junk when you could spend min's defragging just your games.
As far as PF's go. I prob wouldn't even have one but some games require one. Quake 4 and another game wouldnt load when I had no PF. 1GB PF never gave me any problems so thats why I suggest that.