RAID Question

[9Hooker]

Which is faster:

1 x Raptor 1 37GB
2 x Barracuda 7200.9 400GB in RAID 0

Both have 8MB cache, the raptor is sata 1.5. the cuda is 3.0.

There are no other choices, one or the other.

I've searched and there were raptor v raptor tests, but not this exactly...

Thanks.

 

[Denithor]

Raid0 generally shows virtually no improvements for typical desktop applications. Raptors show minor improvements in game loading times and general system performance.

Keep in mind that raid0 offers you double the potential for total failure. If either drive fails all the data is gone with no chance for recovery. Raid0 is also extremely difficult to migrate to another system if you decide to upgrade your motherboard or it fails.

 

[9Hooker]

Yes yes, all well and good. the potential for failure is irrelevant. everything I've read has posters saying how failure is a big deal. i have not once... that is NEVER had a drive fail on me. Not to say it won't, but in the 30+ HD's I've owned, none have gone TU. That includes multiple hard drives in a hostile environment (no really) for months running 24/7.

I'm asking as a speed ONLY issue.

Migration is also irrelevant. Everything I want to keep is stored elsewhere. A wipe and reinstall of Windows and associated programs is not an issue.

 

[Denithor]

What kind of applications are you running?

Raid0 will give you an advantage in I/O operations (server apps faster) and maybe raw throughput but the Raptor is going to rule for speed of reads/writes (especially randoms) and things like game loading times.


Link to review with these closing thoughts.

If you haven't gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place, and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. The real world performance increases are negligible at best and the reduction in reliability, thanks to a halving of the mean time between failure, makes RAID-0 far from worth it on the desktop.

There are some exceptions, especially if you are running a particular application that itself benefits considerably from a striped array, and obviously, our comments do not apply to server-class IO of any sort. But for the vast majority of desktop users and gamers alike, save your money and stay away from RAID-0.

Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth.

 

[9Hooker]

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2682

If you look at the tests, in all but one or two the raid 0 160GB drives did better than the 74GB Raptor. I have the 37 GB Gen 1 raptor.

The thing is I own all three drives currently. I'm going from a P180 case to the NSK2480 for space concerns. Instead of 3474209324 drive support, I've only got two. I would like to have all three in there but that obviously won't work because of physical size.

 

[Infernus]

I'm currently running 2x500gb Maxtor SATA II drives in RAID 0 and get between 150mb/sec and 216mb/sec in benchmarks. If you don't care about your data ie its just games and apps, I see a huge difference but then again I do a lot SQL server/C#/C++/3D Animation/DV Editing stuff all the time so I'm kind of a weird desktop user. My suggestion is possibly doing a RAID 0+1, that way you can get the reliability and the performance. I keep all of my archive data backed up onto another 500gb drive for reliability purposes.

 

[Concillian]

In my experience you will get a better *practical and noticeable* performance improvement by using a single fast drive as your main drive (like your Raptor) then a 2nd drive for virtual memory, backup and for storing large, files where throughput isn't as much of an issue (MP3s, videos, etc..)

Set windows virtual memory up to use the 2nd drive with a large swap file where min and max size is the same ( I use like 16GB, which is total overkill, but I have tons of space on that drive), then re-boot and then go back in and tell windows to have no virtual memory on your main drive.
Run all your apps off the Raptor.

By splitting the workload, I find this makes a more noticeable improvement in actual applications than a RAID setup. I had a raid setup for a while, but it just wasn't worth it.