View Full Version : Looking for two small, inexpensive, and fast HDDs for RAID 0
I'm going to be building a PC soon, and I'd like to give RAID 0 a try in my new PC to improve my loading times on my new system. I've found two 160 GB Western Digital drives that are relatively cheap and seem to be okay, but I'm not positive on how fast they are. I'd like something that's very fast, but also not incredibly expensive. Here's the WD drives I've found:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136075
Any thoughts on other HDDs to consider, or should these be good? I don't need much space at all, so the 320 GB I'd get with the two combined would be plenty for me. Thanks for the help!
ALL4AMD
06-22-2008, 10:56 PM
for the performance of the wd 640gb drive @ $99 id say get that
nitrobass24
06-22-2008, 11:35 PM
+1 for WD6400AAKS
Joe Average
06-22-2008, 11:43 PM
In this day and age, some single hard drives can approach near-RAID 0 levels of performance - and that's a single drive - in terms of read speed/loading times. I'm not going to outright say "Don't do RAID 0" because that just makes someone do it anyway, so I'll suggest you read this article by a guy that knows what he's talking about. His entire business is built on building high performance machines so... read what he's got to say and do some research and go from there. If you choose RAID 0, I hope you never have the array go bad on ya...
"Why RAID is (usually) a Terrible Idea" (http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles?&id=29)
nitrobass24
06-23-2008, 04:14 PM
In this day and age, some single hard drives can approach near-RAID 0 levels of performance - and that's a single drive - in terms of read speed/loading times. I'm not going to outright say "Don't do RAID 0" because that just makes someone do it anyway, so I'll suggest you read this article by a guy that knows what he's talking about. His entire business is built on building high performance machines so... read what he's got to say and do some research and go from there. If you choose RAID 0, I hope you never have the array go bad on ya...
"Why RAID is (usually) a Terrible Idea" (http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles?&id=29)
If want to do raid, then do raid. I had so many people ^ tell me I didnt NEED raid and their right i dont NEED raid. But i love it cause its makes me cooler than my roomates who dont, and I enjoy the performance boost. Lets be honest with each other here, If you on this forum and even talking about raid you kinda nerdy and you like to try new things out.
Although i cannot say i haven't had problems with it before because i have. But thankfully i do nightly backups, so in about 2 hours time i was back up and running at full speed with minimal loss if any.
Bottom line if you wanna do raid do it.
Also yea if your raid0 fails you lose everything, but if you lose your single drive you also lose everything so either way you need to have backups if your worried about data loss.
Chilly
06-23-2008, 04:58 PM
Before I say this, I wanna say that I don't *personally* use Raid at all.
When going 1 Drive vs 2 or more drives drives raided in Raid 0, the END RESULT of a failure is the SAME.
You lose everything, but what many people seem to fail to grasp is that its no diffrent than what an avrage joe loses data because they only have 1 drive and it failed on them.
nitrobass24
06-23-2008, 05:27 PM
Before I say this, I wanna say that I don't *personally* use Raid at all.
When going 1 Drive vs 2 or more drives drives raided in Raid 0, the END RESULT of a failure is the SAME.
You lose everything, but what many people seem to fail to grasp is that its no diffrent than what an avrage joe loses data because they only have 1 drive and it failed on them.
Finally somebody that understands and agrees!!!
Whoa, thanks for the responses. You guys are way more helpful than the RAID forum on Tom's Hardware.
Anyway though, I'm very good about backing up my data, so data loss wouldn't really be an issue for me. That WD 640 GB drive looks very nice, but do they make a drive that uses similar technology in a smaller capacity? If I were to get two smaller versions of that drive, and put them in RAID 0, that would give me an additional performance benefit on top of an already quick and quiet hard drive. Is there a smaller version with the same technology?
ALL4AMD
06-23-2008, 10:07 PM
Whoa, thanks for the responses. You guys are way more helpful than the RAID forum on Tom's Hardware.
Anyway though, I'm very good about backing up my data, so data loss wouldn't really be an issue for me. That WD 640 GB drive looks very nice, but do they make a drive that uses similar technology in a smaller capacity? If I were to get two smaller versions of that drive, and put them in RAID 0, that would give me an additional performance benefit on top of an already quick and quiet hard drive. Is there a smaller version with the same technology?
well WD has the 320 but they slowed it down a little bit so they could sell it cheaper
nitrobass24
06-24-2008, 09:50 AM
well WD has the 320 but they slowed it down a little bit so they could sell it cheaper
Yes the WD3200AAKS is slower, you cant really beat the price/performance of the WD6400AAKS
I see. Okay, then it looks like I'll probably be best with a single 640 GB WD drive. It's too bad they don't sell ones with this speed in 320 GB or 160 GB variants. I'd buy those suckers up! There's no way I'm ever going to fill 640 GB of space.
Actually though: I wonder if two WD 160 GB drives or two WD 320 GB drives in RAID 0 would beat a single WD 640 GB drive. I don't need space. I'm looking for pure speed, really. Hmm.
nitrobass24
06-24-2008, 03:39 PM
RAID0 wont really increase your access times, it will only increase throughput. If you want lower access times you need to get a 10k or 15k drive, or an SSD. But with those prices go up.
Ive got two 74gb raptors that im selling on the bay right now if you interested(got me a pair of 15k SAS drives now).
There's no way I'm ever going to fill 640 GB of space.
That's what you think! When I bought the mybook essentials 500GB extern HD, I thought I would never use all of it. Until I found a hobby by backing up some DVD's. I actually ran out of space. I also scanned some old pictures from the family photo albums at very high quality settings 20MB file pictures!
Actually though: I wonder if two WD 160 GB drives or two WD 320 GB drives in RAID 0 would beat a single WD 640 GB drive. I don't need space. I'm looking for pure speed, really. Hmm.
meh...I am not sure about that. You say inexpensive. What is your budget here? Any values? Raid seems cool. and like the other guy said, it has some good bragging rights. Raid with 2 or more 150GB Raptor X, is not as pleasing when u hear those critters rattling away. Even one fore that matter. I am getting rid of my raptors to get this less quiet and way more spacious hard drive (2 of them or more if the cashback goes up more :-))
IdiotCow
06-24-2008, 04:11 PM
from my understanding the speed on the 640 comes from the dual 320 platters... so a 320 IS the same speed as the 640, but you get to access data from two points on the HD at nearly the same time... that coupled with the physical platter density and you get one heckuva drive
ALL4AMD
06-24-2008, 05:03 PM
That's what you think! When I bought the mybook essentials 500GB extern HD, I thought I would never use all of it. Until I found a hobby by backing up some DVD's. I actually ran out of space. I also scanned some old pictures from the family photo albums at very high quality settings 20MB file pictures!
meh...I am not sure about that. You say inexpensive. What is your budget here? Any values? Raid seems cool. and like the other guy said, it has some good bragging rights. Raid with 2 or more 150GB Raptor X, is not as pleasing when u hear those critters rattling away. Even one fore that matter. I am getting rid of my raptors to get this less quiet and way more spacious hard drive (2 of them or more if the cashback goes up more :-))
i don't think my raptorx 150s r that loud. now my 36gb raptors are loud but i enjoy hearing my hard drives churn away. :D
nitrobass24
06-24-2008, 05:06 PM
i don't think my raptorx 150s r that loud. now my 36gb raptors are loud but i enjoy hearing my hard drives churn away. :D
Ive got 8x18gb 15k U320 SCSI drives in a old ibm server, now that is loud.
Lazn_Work
06-24-2008, 06:12 PM
I am curious if newer games benefit more from RAID 0 that older games did, because I know it used to be that there was very little benefit from going to RAID 0:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=734&pageID=1211
and even the site that went out of it's way to "prove" that RAID 0 was good:
http://tweakers.net/reviews/515/1/raid-0-hype-or-blessing-pagina-1.html
in the end said: Striping does not always increase performance (in certain situations it will actually be slower than a non-RAID setup), but in most situations it will yield a significant improvement in performance.
Kaldskryke
06-24-2008, 06:18 PM
from my understanding the speed on the 640 comes from the dual 320 platters... so a 320 IS the same speed as the 640, but you get to access data from two points on the HD at nearly the same time... that coupled with the physical platter density and you get one heckuva drive
Well, kinda. The problem is that not all 320GB drives use a single 320GB platter - not many at all. Most 320GB drives use 2 160GB platters, IIRC. Since read speeds are proportional to density, this would mean a slower drive. A 160GB drive would certainly be slower. Chances are two 320GB drives in RAID0 would be slower overall than a single 640GB drive - not to mention more expensive and physically larger.
The current fastest 7200rpm desktop drives are the WD640GB (320GB platters) and the Samsung F1 1TB (333GB platters), as far as I know. Both are fantastic. If you want anything faster than these, might as well get a VelociRaptor or a SSD. I wouldn't bother with RAID0.
Joe Average
06-24-2008, 06:56 PM
If you want anything faster than these, might as well get a VelociRaptor or a SSD.
SSD = Faster random access time than any physical hard disk, but slower on sustained reads, so... real physical hard drives still have the edge there when comparing a single physical hard drive versus a single SSD. Even MTron SSD hardware - widely regarded as the best performing - can't keep up with something like the Velociraptor when it comes to sustained reads and sure as hell not on writes where Flash-RAM is notoriously slow.
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