Raid Zero (best drives)

[ldreher]

I have a MSI motherboard with built in Promise lite RAID.

What two 80 - 120 GB drives would be recommended. I'm currently running two seagate barracuda IV drives and the disk performance sucks. Seagate has confirmed that these drives are basically incompatible with IDE raid arrays. (They call it a feature)

Any suggestions?

 

[Apex]

These are currrently the highest performing IDE drives currently available:

WD Caviar Special Edition, 8mb buffer

 

[Strych9]

<< I'm currently running two seagate barracuda IV drives and the disk performance sucks. Seagate has confirmed that these drives are basically incompatible with IDE raid arrays. (They call it a feature) >>


Yeah, the Seagate apparently is so fast that the RAID controller can't buffer the data quickly enough and so the disk has to read everything twice and hence runs much slower.

I'd look into Maxtor.

 

[Pariah]

The WD SE drives are the fastest around, but from my experiences, WD drives don't perform well in RAID 0 either. IBM drives are probably the best IDE RAID performers.

"Yeah, the Seagate apparently is so fast that the RAID controller can't buffer the data quickly enough and so the disk has to read everything twice and hence runs much slower."

Uhh..no.

 

[Informant X]

/me agree's with Pariah

 

[Strych9]

<< Uhh..no >>

I didn't pull that outta my ass....it was quoted from a review...I'll see if I can find it.

 

[John]

IBM 60GXP's

 

[RazeOrc]

I have 2 WD800BB drives (80GB) which when setup in (1) partitioned RAID array I mark around 38000 in Sandra, not awsome but not bad. What is intersting is that when I partition it into (3) 50-60GB chunks I get about 44000, which is blazing fast, there's really no comparison for non RAID 0 users...

 

[Pariah]

"I didn't pull that outta my ass....it was quoted from a review...I'll see if I can find it."

I didn't say you did, but for a number of reason, that statement is not true. There is a lot of bogus information out there on the web, with an excessive amount of it pertaining to storage. Which is only going to be exasperated by the loss of storagereview.com the only really reliable review site on the net.

"I get about 44000, which is blazing fast, there's really no comparison for non RAID 0 users..."

The WD1200BB and JB both exceed 49MB/s. There are a few other IDE drives in the 45MB/s range as well. SCSI drives are up to 60MB/s.

 

[Strych9]

<< I didn't say you did, but for a number of reason, that statement is not true >>

Please explain the true reason. I'm curious.

 

[BigEdMustaffa]

definitely IBM 60GXPs.

 

[marat]

<< These are currrently the highest performing IDE drives currently available:

WD Caviar Special Edition, 8mb buffer >>



Me have 2 of those delivered today for our file server

 

[ldreher]

>> seagate drives too fast for RAID<<

That's the official line from Seagate. I could copy you the note they sent me when I complained. I persionally think it's BS though.

Their web site toutes the ability of the drives to work in RAID configurations, yet in reality they perform like crap. I threated to sue them for false advertising but I haven't heard back from them.

It sounds like there are a number of votes for the IBM's. I was going to get those before the Seagates but I heard they had problems with reliability. Any comments on that?