(SFF) Raptor w/o Raid worth it? Other Suggestions?

[mason_msw]

Considering buying a Raptor and I have a few questions that I need to answer before I decide. Is it worth it? I will only be able to run a single SATA drive, it will be the 74 Gb plenty for running my Windows and programs games etc (I currently have an 80). Will I notice much benefit using it without Raid 0. How much performance am I getting? How hot will it run? The reason I can only run a single SATA HDD is because I am using a Mega 865 mini pc. Will it run cool enough to be okay in a SFF? I also have the option of running another HDD to store music & etc. on but it has to be IDE. Should I buy a Raptor? Other options: Using a 7200 Rpm HDD with double the storage for half the price on the single SATA. Running two on IDE. Whats your opinion and can someone inform me a little or point me somewhere that can explain RAID a little better to me (curious about RAIDING two 8 mb buffer IDE HDD's instead). Thanks for any help ahead of time!

[jnex26]

It's generally a bad idea to Raid two drives that arn't identicle. So If you can Raid two Raptors otehrwise don't bother.

As for improvements in speed there is a improvement using RAID 0 (especially in write speed for larger files) but unless your a HD Speed freak then Don't bother. Raptors are llightning fast as it is.

AS for Heat Unless you've got good cooling don't get raptors they are hot drives. I can't Read teh Smart on mine butt they get pretty hot in my Raid 0 Array and mine are sitting infront of two fans directly blowing on them.

[Ice Czar]

well a Raptor brings to the table the 2 most important advantages a HDD has for performance
increased rotational speed and higher areal density (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=699246) (more bits per square inch)
as to whether its worth the investment, that greatly depends on how you employ it and if there might not be another bottleneck (filesystem\partitioning optimaization\fragmentation\ect)
its possible youd get far more bang for your buck with more RAM or simply more drives
(a seperate HDD on a different channel from the primary HDD for the pagefile or data access (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=741512))

Ive heard of members falling all over themselves about how great it is
and then Ive heard other bemoaning the marginal performance increase for the money spent

so its both subjective, and further, unique as to the access pattern
it will load games and levels fatser, and a RAID 0 of 2 of em even faster
but as to is it worth it, well I cant really say

[MrSmegzabush]

i was just going to post about my raptors in raid 0. Had it running for 3 days now and im just not seeing dramatic improvement over a single raptor (74gig ones btw). Im a gamer and I do some Video encoding, and I have not seen anything worth my 150 extra bucks yet... :(

[mason_msw]

Yeah I hear both ways some say its so much better some say no difference I've decided that since my computer won't post I'm going to worry about that for now but thanks for all the help guys!

[djnes]

If your not doing any hardcore video encoding, RAID0 has been tested, proven, and repeated hundreds of times to show it adds no benefit at all. If you have a single Raptor, your fine the way it is. I had 2 in RAID0, and decided to split them up over 2 PCs.....and I'm getting far more benefit out of them this way, than in RAID0.

[MindBuster]

Yes, as the other said, RAID0 is for video editing, and for that it's very good, not in everyday perfomance.

I have 2*74GB raptors as single drives, as i do alot of filecopying from one drive to another, and the speeds are fast compared to my old 120GB seagates i had in before the raptors, copying from one single raptor to another is so much faster than my old seagates.

Copying a 50meg file from one drive to another doesnt even bring up the file transfer dialog, a 100meg file or more is "needed" to bring up the filetransfer dialog :cool:

When i first got them i was like..."Hey, why didnt it copy my file :mad: ", but it did, it was just so fast the dialog didnt show up :D

[operaman]

RAID in general is overrated for performance. The raptor by itself is plenty fast. Only Cheetahs and other 15000rpm SCSI hard drives are faster...

[bripab007]

I don't think any of you have answered his question yet, as his original post was whether it'd be worth running a Raptor, without any form of RAID, over, I assume, a more plebian 7200rpm drive. He already stated he only has room for one drive.

So, the question stands: Is the performance increase of a lone Raptor over a 7200rpm 80GB drive worth it in his SFF case?

[Crosshairs]

I don't think any of you have answered his question yet, as his original post was whether it'd be worth running a Raptor, without any form of RAID, over, I assume, a more plebian 7200rpm drive. He already stated he only has room for one drive.

So, the question stands: Is the performance increase of a lone Raptor over a 7200rpm 80GB drive worth it in his SFF case?
See post #3 ... Its all there if you read it....

[zandor]

Raptors are nice. :)
Not as nice as my 15k SCSIs, but still quite nice. :p
Of course, being a guy that'll pay $250 for a 36GB drive and buy a SCSI controller, of course I think a Raptor is worth it.
You'll see just as much benefit from it w/o raid 0 as you would with raid 0. The performance profile will just be a bit different. Raid 0 improves transfer rate while degrading access time and reliability (one drive fails & you lose everything, with 2 drives your chances of bad luck are roughly doubled). So a single Raptor will be a little faster with small files and a little slower with big files vs. a pair in Raid 0.

Basically I think only 3 kinds of raid are worthwhile for me (gaming, programming, general "office/internet" type use). (well... maybe 4. I could see using Raid-6 in a business application)
Raid 1 - Need a reliable volume
Raid 5 - Need a big reliable volume
Raid 0+1/1+0/10 - Need a big reliable volume that isn't dog-ass-slow on writes.

Raid-0 is for video editing and similar applications and that's pretty much it unless you want to make a big volume using software raid in Windows XP. (fuckers don't support raid 1, 0+1, 1+0, 10, or 5... grrr) I had a 4 drive raid-0 going for a while. It worked ok, but I just used it for recording TV (from TV tuner/capture card) and to install a few shooters. I figured I could always use cheat codes to start from about where I left off if a single player mode FPS was good enough to finish but not good enough to start over if a drive died.

[Ice Czar]

See post #3 ... Its all there if you read it....

LOL
it all right, Im used to people ignoring my links :p

a few more that can be ignored
http://faq.storagereview.com/SingleDriveVsRaid0
http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/515
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=822454