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

[mrchan]

Which is faster? 2 SATA drives striped or 1 SATA II drive? This is for video editing and processing. Thanks.

 

[mrchan]

Any links to comparison benchmarks would be nice too, I searched and couldn't find a good comparison.

 

[ribbon13]

SATA/SATAII is just the interface. Most drives couldn't even saturate a ATA100 link. NCQ isn't going to be helpful for you, so SATAII has nothing special to offer.

Finesse Versus Force : DiamondMax 10 Takes On The Raptor

 

[Wicked2010]

That's not true.

1) 2 SATA drives in RAID 0 will perform nearly the same as just 1 SATA drive. There is virtually no performance gain. In the real world, you might see a 1 or 2% gain... but nothing that you will notice. And not to mention you'll be paying for another hard drive to do it.

2) 1 SATA II drive has a higher bandwidth than just regular SATA. You are definitely further ahead to invest in one SATA II drive than to even consider using RAID 0.

Besides, RAID 0 isn't really ever going to make sense on a desktop computer. It's worthless. RAID 1 on the other hand, is a nice way to have a backup at all times.

 

[Mykl]

Get something with a 16mb buffer.

That'll make more of a difference than the interface will.

 

[ribbon13]

Originally posted by: Wicked2010
That's not true.

1) 2 SATA drives in RAID 0 will perform nearly the same as just 1 SATA drive. There is virtually no performance gain. In the real world, you might see a 1 or 2% gain... but nothing that you will notice. And not to mention you'll be paying for another hard drive to do it.

2) 1 SATA II drive has a higher bandwidth than just regular SATA. You are definitely further ahead to invest in one SATA II drive than to even consider using RAID 0.

Besides, RAID 0 isn't really ever going to make sense on a desktop computer. It's worthless. RAID 1 on the other hand, is a nice way to have a backup at all times.

Obviously you missed the 'video editing' part. That isn't an everday desktop application. RAID0 offers higher SDR which would be helpful for his needs.

A SATAII drive has twice the "buffer to host" bandwidth of SATA, which in the end doesn't mean shite, because the fastest non-SSD ATA drive is undeniably the Raptor, and its sustained transfer rate isn't even HALF of SATA's potential 1500Mb/s, 150MB/s after overhead, at 72MB/s

Also note the only 16MB ATA drives out are made by Maxtor, who has a long history of failing more than any other brand.

 

[mrchan]

This isn't for me personally, it's for a faculty member in my department that does a lot of HDTV editing.

I realize that NCQ won't help much, but the Hitachi SATA II drives have a 300 mb/s burst data rate. In the real world, is that faster than 2 SATA 150 mb/s drives striped?

 

[mrchan]

He's also looking for about 500GB.

 

[DEredita]

As far as I know, the SATAII drives are NOT out in stores yet.

- Mike

 

[mrchan]

Originally posted by: DEredita


As far as I know, the SATAII drives are NOT out in stores yet.

- Mike

I don't think they are either. But if they would be faster then he could wait.

 

[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.

 

[DEredita]

I have a 74GB raptor drive as my only drive now. I prefer to have a second drive for mass storage, but I could hold out to the summer on what I have until the SATAII drives come out with the 16mb cache. SATAII (300mb/sec) - 16mb cache - I could wait till summer.

- Mike

 

[fell8]

The slowest link in the chain is disk read/write. Unless SATAII has some amazing breakthrough that can double the speed of a modern high-end HD (roughly 60 MB/s), the the advantage goes to RAID.

 

[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 gigabytes. 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...

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: Mykl
Get something with a 16mb buffer.

That'll make more of a difference than the interface will.

 

[Chris1122]

) 2 SATA drives in RAID 0 will perform nearly the same as just 1 SATA drive. There is virtually no performance gain. In the real world, you might see a 1 or 2% gain... but nothing that you will notice. And not to mention you'll be paying for another hard drive to do it.

You sir no crap about running 2 hard drives in RAID 0.

For one you don't think loading a large program is real world.

Plus.....yes you will pay for a second hard drive but you will also get the extra space. So how is that a waste?

I have been running RAID 0 for years and you will see a big difference during extensive hard drive use.

 

[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.

 

[Oyeve]

If you really want to notice any difference in raid or not to raid you really have to go SCSI.

 

[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.

 

[Wicked2010]

Originally posted by: Chris1122
You sir no crap about running 2 hard drives in RAID 0.

For one you don't think loading a large program is real world.

Plus.....yes you will pay for a second hard drive but you will also get the extra space. So how is that a waste?

I have been running RAID 0 for years and you will see a big difference during extensive hard drive use.

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!!!

 

[Wicked2010]

Hey Chris1122,

Here ya go you clown

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101

 

[MrControversial]

Is every drive with NCQ, SATAII?

 

[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.

 

[FishTankX]

To answer the original question in a plain, simple manner.. a RAID 0 array comprised of SATA-I drives will perform admirably under HDTV editing conditions. SATA-II will make little or no difference.

It would be advisable if you're not using RAID 1, and this array is used as primary data storage, to backup the array every day. A data failure would be catastrophic.

That being said, it'd be pretty cheap to throw in two 250GB Hitachi drives and call it a day. And that's what I reccomend.

 

[ribbon13]

Originally posted by: MrControversial
Is every drive with NCQ, SATAII?

No NCQ was part of the original SATA, but was optional. It is required with SATAII