Whats faster? 2 SATA drives in RAID 0 or a single SATA II drive?

[airfoil]

Originally posted by: Amaroque

Originally posted by: airfoil
Given that the rig will be used for video editing, you would notice a minor performance gain from the RAID0 stripe.

Based on tests conducted by several sites, including AT, there isnt much to be gained from a RAID0 setup and a single drive setup is the recommended solution for most desktops.

I know a lot of people (including myself) have a hard time accepting this, but the fact remains.

The AT article can be found here.

Actually for video editing, there will be a huge difference in performance comparing a single drive to two in RAID0. This is due to the nature of video editing. Large contiguous file transfers is where RAID shines very bright.

For standard windows usage, and games, there won't be any difference though.

Agreed, there is a 'theoritical' huge difference in data transfer rates. In the real world hwoever, while editing video, disk I/O is hardly going to be at its peak - this is a CPU limited activity, not storage limited. Any decent 7200 RPM drive should perform at or close to what a RAID0 setup will offer.

Unless of course, the video editing being done will involve sustained file transfers of 50+ MPBS.

 

[piasabird]

When you use RAID 0 some space is used to keep track of managing the two drives. It is not all automatic. This takes up some space.

 

[Wicked2010]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
You're a fool man... RAID0 isn't useful for desktop users but it's certainly not "CRAP!!!"

RAID0: 60GB+60GB=120GB... wasted space where???

The sustained data transfer rate can be very high with RAID0.

You're right about the wasted space, I was thinking of RAID 1 for some reason... sorry... thanks for calling me a fool by the way.

But it *IS* crap for desktop users as far as performance goes.

End of story.

 

[airfoil]

Originally posted by: Wicked2010

Originally posted by: ribbon13
You're a fool man... RAID0 isn't useful for desktop users but it's certainly not "CRAP!!!"

RAID0: 60GB+60GB=120GB... wasted space where???

The sustained data transfer rate can be very high with RAID0.

You're right about the wasted space, I was thinking of RAID 1 for some reason... sorry... thanks for calling me a fool by the way.

But it *IS* crap for desktop users as far as performance goes.

End of story.

Well Said.

And to quote Anand himself:

[/quote]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. [/quote]

 

[mrchan]

Thanks for the help all, 2 SATA in RAID 0 it is.

 

[Amaroque]

Just to clear up this confusion about RAID...

In a RAID0 setup, your seek times stay the same, but your STR doubles.

Windows is largely dependant on seek times and not STR, due to lots of small file loads. However, your seek times stay exactly the same with RAID0. This is why RAID0 does nothing for general windows usage.

With a video editing system, usually dual CPU (dual cored CPU's will really benefit here), or any similar types of access patterns, you are largely dependant on STR, and not seek times. With drive accesses like this, even a RAID0 5400RPM setup will outperform a single fast 7200RPM drive.

But again, for an "average" windows user, you will see no difference. You need to be doing the types of things that RAID benefits from to see the big jump in performance...

 

[mrchan]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
Show me where the hell the Hitachi's hit 300MB/s burst? The SATAII interface supports that, but the drive itself will NEVER see those kind of speeds. Notice my raptor analogue above... buffer to host speed means nothing. I could put a SATA(insert massive roman numeral here) interface on a drive that supports (insert massive figure here) speeds but it doesn't make the drive itself faster. That's like saying the speedometer on your car goes up to 200MPH so your car must be able to go that fast, right?

If he needs 500GB+ I would seriously consider a RAID5 with Seagate 7200.8.

http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/h...enuID=22f0deefa8f3967dafa0466460e4f0a0

whether or not it support is i don't know. it was just another possible option.

raid 5 isn't really an option because it is too expensive.

 

[mrchan]

Originally posted by: jbond04
Mrchan, two striped drives in RAID 0 will offer much better video editing performance than a single SATAII drive. While SATAII will have higher burst data rates than a single SATA drive, two SATA drives will be able to sustain a much higher data rate.

In video editing (especially HD video), most files are very large in size. Therefore, bursting rates will not affect performance as much as sustained data rates. For normal desktop use, where most files are small and will fit into the buffer of a hard drive, RAID 0 won't give much of a performance increase. This is why you will hear many users questioning the necessity of RAID 0 - because they don't see a benefit. Professionals, however, live and die by sustained transfer rates. I routinely work with uncompressed video and image files that are several hundred megabytes or even several gigavytes. For me, RAID 0 is the only way to go.

If the faculty member in your department is serious about video editing, then RAID 0 is perfect for them.

-Scott Fehringer
3D Animator

EDIT: Since when did a change in interface even affect hard drive performance that much? I don't remember any significant difference between ATA66->ATA100 or ATA100->ATA133. I highly doubt that SATAII would offer any tangible performance benefits to first generation adopters...

Thanks for the info. That's probably what I will go with then.

 

[ribbon13]

Originally posted by: mrchan
http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/h...enuID=22f0deefa8f3967dafa0466460e4f0a0

whether or not it support is i don't know. it was just another possible option.

raid 5 isn't really an option because it is too expensive.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/7k500/7k500.htm

Sustained data rate (MB/sec) 64.8 - 31 (zone 0 - 29)

 

[mrchan]

Hm, don't know how i missed that. Thanks.

 

[Markfw]

I agree with jbond04. The new maxtor 300 gig drive in a review linked above almost had the same performance as the WD raptor, buy 1/3rd the cost/gig. 2 300 gig drives in raid0 (and these drives DO have a 16 meg cache) would give you 600 gig, more than the 500 you stated you needed. Maxtor Diamondmax 10 series. as for the high failure rate, that is not fact, just an opinion, and one I don;t share. I have bought over 20 Maxtor drives in the last 3 years and have yet to have one die.

 

[Chris1122]

Umm... you clearly are not too quick. RAID 0 doesn't give you extra space dumb dumb. I'll get a link for you that shows you that RAID 0 is CRAP!!!

What I was talking about was you don't lose space by using two drives. If you have two 60 gig drives you will have one 120 gig drive when runing RAID 0, thus not wasting anything.

So you post back that I am a dumb dumb and a clown........ummmm OK So RAID 0 is crap.....

 

[gwag]

funny about 1/2 the posts here are from people that are wrong or don't know anything. if raid0 is crap why has it existed for 15 years and now a feature of most decent motherboards?

 

[Markfw]

Because sometimes it IS faster, but for desktop use (with exceptions like video edting) it is no different. Another use could be that mixing multiple disks into one logical disk may be convenient for some people.

 

[whattaguy]

Why not get 2 SATAII's in Raid 0? The price difference is pretty small...at least on 80gig drives.