What is the best HDD Setup for Gaming?

[cpush]

Hey guys I was wondering what is the best HDD solution for gaming, and in specific CS source. It is my only concern. THanks

 

[Crescent13]

As many of theese as your computer can support

EDIT: Raid 0 by the way

 

[svi]

Anything modern and fast will probably be fine. (Note: Not contradicting Crescent, since he's obviously just kidding around, but for whoever says it: you don't need RAID for CS: Source. You don't need anything fancy, really.)

I'd be a lot more worried about having a good video card and CPU and lots of memory (to avoid swapping).

 

[cpush]

alright thanks. im covered in all of those areas so I was going down the line and hdd was next so was just curious on what gives the best gaming performance

 

[Treyshadow]

Yes SVI is correct, skip raid for a CS Source gaming machine. I would go with a single raptor 74 Gig, a Maxtor 16MB Cache 300, or a SATA 2 WD 320 Gig drive. They are similarly fast for loading a game, and since CS is a quick load on a decent CPU, the speed burst of the raptor may win, but the sustained writing speed of the high density drives like the Maxtor and WD should be very comparable.

So I would say worry more about your memory, CPU, and video card and less about your hard drive

 

[Hacp]

Raid 0 offers very little performance boost over regular hds. Like none at all.

 

[entropy1982]

Originally posted by: Hacp
Raid 0 offers very little performance boost over regular hds. Like none at all.

I think these results contradict what you're saying Hacp

 

[HellRaven]

There is certainly a speed advantage to raid 0, but to me the benefits are outweighed by the complications and risk. If one of your drives decides it wants a little head on platter action your lose the data on the whole array. Since either drives failure will cause this, that means a 50% greater chance of losing your data. For those that backup frequently this is no big deal, but quite frankly - how many of us actually do? I myself don't backup as often as I should and don't have any important data, but the hassle of reinstalling everything is enough for me

So my opinion is that RAID isn't worth it unless your going to go all the way with RAID 5 and all SCSI drives (at which point your talking lots of $$$).

I think that an optimal setup for the hardcore gamer on a normal budget would be a high speed SATA drive (like a raptor) paired with a large capacity drive for storage. Honestly though, pretty much any old 7200 RPM hard drive with a large cache is probably going to be just fine.

 

[aatf510]

Any decently modern 7,200rpm HD.
The remaining cash go to Vid Card and low lat memory.

 

[entropy1982]

Originally posted by: HellRaven
There is certainly a speed advantage to raid 0, but to me the benefits are outweighed by the complications and risk. If one of your drives decides it wants a little head on platter action your lose the data on the whole array. Since either drives failure will cause this, that means a 50% greater chance of losing your data. For those that backup frequently this is no big deal, but quite frankly - how many of us actually do? I myself don't backup as often as I should and don't have any important data, but the hassle of reinstalling everything is enough for me

So my opinion is that RAID isn't worth it unless your going to go all the way with RAID 5 and all SCSI drives (at which point your talking lots of $$$).

I think that an optimal setup for the hardcore gamer on a normal budget would be a high speed SATA drive (like a raptor) paired with a large capacity drive for storage. Honestly though, pretty much any old 7200 RPM hard drive with a large cache is probably going to be just fine.

Hey, just wanted to help you out.... if you have a decently large drive (40gigs and up lets say) there are plenty of programs out there that just automatical sync certain folders (of your choosing) at scheduled times (to your choosing) so me personally i will be getting 2X250gb hitachi SATAII drives in RAID0 and my 120gb IDE drive will simply be used for certain folders to be backed up (everything other than games) I think i should be fine with this

 

[l Xes l]

Originally posted by: entropy1982

Originally posted by: Hacp
Raid 0 offers very little performance boost over regular hds. Like none at all.

I think these results contradict what you're saying Hacp

shouldnt go by those synthetic test when comparing the real life performance...
those number merely mean NOTHING in real life time and performance..
for example.. as u have seen in the anandtech review.. raid did pretty much nothing in loading time of the games and so on..

 

[HendrixFan]

Originally posted by: krnxpride83

Originally posted by: entropy1982

Originally posted by: Hacp
Raid 0 offers very little performance boost over regular hds. Like none at all.

I think these results contradict what you're saying Hacp

shouldnt go by those synthetic test when comparing the real life performance...
those number merely mean NOTHING in real life time and performance..
for example.. as u have seen in the anandtech review.. raid did pretty much nothing in loading time of the games and so on..

I invite you to read the tweakers.net article discussing the anand reveiw.

"Because of the striping setup's overhead, the single Raptor WD740GD is faster than the RAID-0 machine, with a queue length of one and a transfer size of up to 32K. When the transfer size increases to 64K however, the two striped Raptors take the lead from the single drive. Increasing the number of operations in the I/O-queue to eight means the striped setup leaves the single Raptor in a cloud of dust. At peak performance, the RAID-configuration manages 99.6MB/s in a completely sequential reading pattern, versus 70.1MB/s for the single setup, even though the PCI bus is significantly limiting the RAID-controller's performance."

"The Business Winstone 2004 programs Internet Explorer, Outlook, PowerPoint, Norton Anti-Virus and WinZip generated just a little I/O activity, with an average load of eight percent. A safe conclusion would be that a Business Winstone 2004-benchmark alone is not a good starting point when testing RAID 0 performance."

"Our gaming traces show that most games have very little impact on modern hard drives and generate a rather low load. Even the heavyweight champion Battlefield Vietnam was able to burden a Raptor WD360GD for only 17,1 percent average with a short peak of 70 percent. Other games had even lower averages and didn't rise above 80 percent peak usage. Therefore we conclude that loading game levels is mostly cpu intensive and does not rely on storage devices."

I cant easily copy over some of the benchmarks, but you can check them in the link yourself. They test instances where users will actually utilize a RAID setup, and you can see when it provides a benefit. RAID isnt for everyone, as not everyone will see benefits. Loading of games will not see a boost, but for many other things you can see a difference. Your blanket assertion that RAID has no "real life" impact is wildly inaccurate and completely false.

To answer the OP's question, any fast HD will do, RAID isnt necessary for games.

 

[ElFenix]

i'd like to see the new multitasking benchmark suite run on a 4800+ with raid0 and ncq enabled drives