Building new PC, need hard drive advice

[djeyewater]

I'm having problems with my current PC taking ages to open and save large image files (approx 1GB) and so need a new one.

Current specs are:
Athlon 2000+ XP
MSI KT4v Mobo
1GB RAM, PC2700, CAS 2.5
7200rpm HDs (not SATA)

For my new PC I'm looking at getting:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Asus P5B Deluxe Mobo
2 x 2GB RAM, PC2-5300, CAS 5 (so I can purchase another 2 x 2GB to bring the total up to 8GB if needs be)

What storage would you advise getting?
I'm thinking either:
2 x 150GB Raptors in RAID 0
1 x 15,000rpm U320 + PCI SCSI card
1 x 150GB Raptor + 4GB I-RAM (to set as scratch disk)

Or will a normal SATA drive with the above specs give me much improved performance anyway? I don't want to pay a lot more than I have to if the performance increase is only neglible.

 

[mechBgon]

Welcome to the Forums Tangential but important: if you want to use all 4GB of RAM, you need a 64-bit OS, so if you didn't have that on the radar already, there ya go.

1GB images... wow. :shocked:

 

[djeyewater]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Welcome to the Forums Tangential but important: if you want to use all 4GB of RAM, you need a 64-bit OS, so if you didn't have that on the radar already, there ya go.

1GB images... wow. :shocked:

Thanks for your reply, yep I knew that. I'm planning on running Win XP, Vista, Linux (probably Kubuntu) and OSX. The images are large layered PSD files if you're wondering how they get that big. I do have one that's about 4GB but it takes a day to open it.

 

[Jiggz]

Since you're only concerned with speed, I wish you can wait a little more and get a SSD. Even a 64GB SSD will do you justice for your OS and Program hdd. And then get two 500GB SATA II hdd for storage. But if you cannot wait, then I will recommend getting two 150GB Raptors in RAID 0. Of course, a question about back ups will come up. This can be discussed on a different topic.

 

[bX510]

Make sure you back up the raid 0, you don't want to lose 1 drive and lose everything else.

 

[ribbon13]

You need RAW STR here, neh? SSD ideas will not help general loading speeds since their true speed lies in access time (High I/O) and not raw read speed over a large dataset, ie the major portion of work data still will come off slower HDDs. Sure 4GB of fast access will help with recently loaded material, but not over multiple 1GB images.

I'd suggest a RAID5 or RAID6 consisting of WD4000YR or WD5000YS drives on an Areca ARC-1231ML or ARC-1261ML card. You can also upgrade that RAID card with a standard ECC DDR2 DIMM for cache, and the ARC-6120 BBM (Battery backup). Topmicrousa.com for the Areca stuff and zipzoomfly.com for the hard drives.

 

[djeyewater]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
You need RAW STR here, neh? SSD ideas will not help general loading speeds since their true speed lies in access time (High I/O) and not raw read speed over a large dataset, ie the major portion of work data still will come off slower HDDs. Sure 4GB of fast access will help with recently loaded material, but not over multiple 1GB images.

I'd suggest a RAID5 or RAID6 consisting of WD4000YR or WD5000YS drives on an Areca ARC-1231ML or ARC-1261ML card. You can also upgrade that RAID card with a standard ECC DDR2 DIMM for cache, and the ARC-6120 BBM (Battery backup). Topmicrousa.com for the Areca stuff and zipzoomfly.com for the hard drives.

Thanks for your advice, but those cards cost a lot more than I was looking to spend. I think I might go with Raptors or SATA II disks in RAID 0.

I also have 3 HDs in my current PC, would it best to get a card so I can plug them all into my new PC, or should I leave them in my current PC, network the PCs together and have them both switched on at the same time (effectively making my old PC a NAS device)?

 

[Boyo]

I would go ahead and get the two Raptors. That for now will be your best bet money wise.

 

[chusteczka]

The strength of a Raptor is its small access time, similar to the coming SSD. A Raptor's overall throughput is not significantly greater than that of a standard SATA drive with a 16MB cache. Many small files will benefit from smaller access time but fewer large files will benefit from overall throughput. IMO, a Raptor is not worth its extra cost.

My recommendation is similar to Jiggz's. Use two SATA drives with 16MB cache in a RAID 0 mirror for the operating system(s) and swap space. If you want to get fancy with a little extra kick, get a Seagate with "Perpendicular recording technology for maximum drive capacity and reliability Ultra-fast performance ...". My preference is the Seagate Barracuda with 320GB.

For data storage, either a:

• single 500GB internal drive backed up on a single 500GB external drive or
• two 500GB internal drives in a RAID 1 mirror backed up on a single 500GB external drive.

Your previous data can possibly be consolidated on a single 500GB or 750GB external drive if you wish.

 

[bob4432]

2x of basically any new hdd will beat a 15k scsi in str, even the fasted 15k.5, plus they are hell of expensive since you need a log of space. plus you will be limited to ~125MB/s max w/ 32bit pci slot

i would do 2x 7.2k hdds in a raid0 array and back it up at least 1x day, 2x day.

the areca stuff is good but expensive, but ribbon know his stuff and the drive recommendation is good. you may want to look at drive benchmarks and just worry about str.

 

[Sqube]

Why not just grab one of those new 750s from Seagate?

Barring that, you could RAID 0 a couple 500 gig drives; the Raptors won't give you as much of a boost since you're opening such large files, and I'm sure the extra storage will be nice considering the size of the files you're working with.

Just a thought.