IDE Raid - How good is it?

[maxxy]

Hey guys,

I am currently thinking of upgrading my system to an AthlonXP system and I want to know if IDE Raid is THAT much of a performance gain? Will games run faster? Will photoshop run THAT much faster? Is it worth the 100 uk pounds more that I will need to spend in order to get it?

Cheers,

Maxxy

 

[Haribo]

<< ...and I want to know if IDE Raid is THAT much of a performance gain? >>



no, only for HD intesive stuff... running a server is a good example.



<< Will games run faster? >>



no, might load a little bit faster though.



<< Will photoshop run THAT much faster? >>



no, can't see why... PS loves memory not HD speed.



<< Is it worth the 100 uk pounds more that I will need to spend in order to get it? >>



hmm 100£ isn't that much... but do you really need it?

 

[Tripleshot]

IDE raid is fine. I use it and I've noticed a big difference in speed, for apps as well as games. I have an Abit BX133 raid 0 using the on board Highpoint 370 controller running XP and using a PIII 850 CPU.

The only ones I ever see in here bashing IDE raid are those who have scci raid or they don't have a clue about IDE raid and spout what they read. SCCI raid 5 or 10 is used extensively in a corporate environment. SCCI means "Shell out the money!" Sure,If you have money to throw away, but scci. 1000's of corporate admins just couldn't all be wrong.

But if you are thinking of raid on your personal computer, I can tell you it IS worth the effort. Use high speed IDE drives, get a promise controller or use an on board raid controller from abit (highpoint) or Asus(promise) If you want to save your data, empliment a disater recovery program for yourself,or configure 0+1 raid.

BTW, Promise HAS Raid 5 for IDE. It is as fast as most any scci raid set up. Go to their website and check them out. I swear, they are the best for IDE. Smart and helpful tech support too.

 

[DSTA]

For a workstation I'd put RAID (SCSI or IDE) last on the list, ie if there is budget left over after buying a decent chunk of RAM, a good vid card and a fast CPU. If you want to have an advantage in working with big files you'll need 3 hdds at least: one for the OS & apps, two for the RAID0 which would hold data.

 

[Tripleshot]

I re read your post. Yes, photoshop will run faster.

 

[maxxy]

Thanks a bunch... After reading this I've decided to save my money and not go with IDE raid if the performance gain isn't going to be substantial.
512mb ram enough for today's programs?

 

[boyRacer]

I seriously can't tell isht between my bros WD 40gb by itself and my Raid array... maybe everything is a little more responsive... but i suppose that's just because my drives have a faster seek time.

 

[ucla88]

<< For a workstation I'd put RAID (SCSI or IDE) last on the list, ie if there is budget left over after buying a decent chunk of RAM, a good vid card and a fast CPU. If you want to have an advantage in working with big files you'll need 3 hdds at least: one for the OS & apps, two for the RAID0 which would hold data. >>



i'd second this.

raid is somewhat helpful is specific circumstances. i happen to have two seagate 10k's in a raid 0 configuration as well as a separate os scsi disk. i happen to do alot of pshop. yes, raid 0 will speed up photoshop in terms of reading and writing the large files. however, it's much more important to have memory (512 is minimum for pshop, 1gb isn't overkill) AND a separate disk for scratch. if you only have two disks and want to do alot of pshop, don't raid 0 them. the ide raid performance increase won't make up for the fact that you don't have a separate scratch disk.

actually, my order for a fast pshop machine (it's really the only intensive thing my computer does)

cpu, ram, good 2d video card, separate os/scratch disks, tablet pointing device, dual monitors, scsi upgrade, raid upgrade, smp