Upgrading my storage

[DonDon]

Well, after a particularly bad holiday season, I have decided to embark on a little "Retail Therapy," and do some upgrades on my computer.

First thing I did was upgrade my ram from 2 gig to 8 gig, and purchase Ramdisk Pro 9 from superspeed. My pagefile now resides on a 4 gig ramdisk. Hard to benchmark performance increase there, but it certainly can't hurt.

Now, the reason I am posting here. I am looking to upgrade my storage from a single 500 gig 7200.11 running off of my Asus P5k mobo to something much faster.

I am looking at THIS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816131003), an Areca 1210 4 port Raid controller. My PCI EX slot is an 8 lane slot with 4 lanes wired up.

The reason I want an external controller, is that I am not ready to plunk down the cash on an I7 system yet, my current mobo does not support RAID, and I want to make sure the drives I am considering have plenty of bandwidth.

I am considering the following drives.

G.Skil 64 gig (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231220)

OCZ Solid 64 gig (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227373)

OCZ Solid 32 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227372)

RiData 32 gig (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820183202)

I am considering at least 2 drives if I go with the 64 gig SSD's, and at least 3 if I go with the 32s. I may go 3 or 4 depending on how I feel the day I place the order.

Let me know what you think.

While I do not have a set budget, I do not like to waste my money. I want a very fast system for a reasonable amount of money. I want it to be around for at least 3 years.

Thanks

Don

Hmm, after a little more research, I may pick up a Perc 5 off of ebay.

Don

[DonDon]

Ok, I bought a Perc 5i off of ebay today. Hmm, 3 64's or 4 32's.

Hmm, after reading the Battleship Mtron (http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/battleship/) article again, I think I will go with 4, 30 gig OCZ Solid Drives. 600 MB/sec will more than cap out the perc 5 controller. Writes should be at least 300 MB/sec. with a .2 ms access time, this should be fast enough for a while.

Just placed the order with Newegg. At least these are retail drives and they shouldn't be able to break them with their packaging.

Don

[DonDon]

Well, got my stuff in, and threw it in real quick. Updated the firmware on the Perc to LSI version. Figured out the Megaraid Config software, and this is what I got.

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/3416/4xssdreaddu0.jpg
By marzkedon (http://profile.imageshack.us/user/marzkedon) at 2009-01-31

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/4931/4xssdwriteco4.jpg
By marzkedon (http://profile.imageshack.us/user/marzkedon) at 2009-01-31

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9492/ssdx4filereadbb1.jpg
By marzkedon (http://profile.imageshack.us/user/marzkedon) at 2009-01-31

I made the file size twice the onboard cache size for the File Benchmark to try and get an actual representation of the drive speed.

I'm happy.

I will get 1 and 3 drive stats next. Prolly won't bother with 2 drives as I figure it should scale between 1 and 3.

Don

[DonDon]

I am going to start anew thread with a more descriptive title.

Don