148 10k or 2 X 250 ?

B

Brucee

Gawd
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Oct 31, 2004
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am a gamer . I look for preformace and good amount of space. What would be the better deal?

2x 74 10,000 RPM Drives in raid 0 = 148 total

Or

2x 250 7200 RPM Drvies in raid 0 = 500 total



What do you think might be better to do if you had to pick from those 2?
 
If you game and nothing else, 148 GB should suffice for a great deal of games. However, as a realist, I would go with the second option, as it would perform nearly as well but offer much more space.

That said, RAID 0 is a dangerous proposition because you risk losing ALL of your data if even ONE drive fails in the array.

Even better, buy one 10k RPM drive and one 7200 RPM drive for the best of both worlds, and none of the disadvantages.
 
Well I game and this is a configiration for a dell system im buying. I do download a lot but is 148 gb really not much?
 
will the 74 1000k raptors really makes games go that much faster and better performace then the 2x 250? or is it very little change?
 
Barring SCSI, only Raptor will get you from boot to XP CD to logged in and at desktop in less than 10 minutes. Raptor remains the fastest thing going on SATA right now.

I'm not suprised that Dell is pushing RAID-0 with "increased performance" - they sell twice as many drives that way. Really, the most effective combination of speed, space, and spending is one of each.
 
The Raptors don't affect frame rate whatsoever. They can, however, reduce loading times.

AnandTech seems to be down at the moment, but if you go back no more than a couple of months, there is a review that compares and contrasts RAID 0 with other configurations. Included in the review are game loading times with and without RAID 0, and the Raptor is featured in this review. Check out the review for an idea of the kind of performance difference you can expect.
 
Hmm OK i was just thinking I do this:

148 raptors raid 0

and 160 for storage
 
1 Raptor
1 7200 RPM big drive

If you can swing it, this is your best option.
 
xonik nailed it... for Me I 've gota raptor system drive, A samsung 160 sata, and
a giant (at the time) 300 gigabyte external for backup
 
hmm I just wondering are the raptors much louder? never had one so i don't know.
 
Here's a great description of the Raptor's noise performance,
Raptor

The dual platter Raptor impressed us with its idle noise. There is no motor noise to speak of; the only noise is the whoosh of airflow across the spinning platters. The overall volume is slightly louder than our favorite reference drive — the Barracuda IV — gauged by listening and by SPL measurements. It actually matches our reference quiet Samsung (Nidec motor) drives for idle SPL.

We can vouch for the Raptor's reknown speediness, even though we did not run benchmarks; it is perceivable in everyday general Windows use and in applications. Storage Review describes the Raptor as "the fastest single-user desktop HDD" money can buy. To achieve its exceptionally fast seek performance, the Raptor has to move the read/write heads across the surface of the disc with exceptional speed. A side effect is that the seeks are sudden and sharp, not a good combination for acoustic quality. The seeks are 4-5 dBA/1m higher than the idle noise, enough to be plainly audible. The seek vibration is equally sharp; when placed on our vibration box, the seeking drive produced a loud rumble that added significantly to the overall noise level. Enabling AAM has little effect on seek noise (or power dissipation). Careful listening revealed that the sharp clicks occurred slightly less frequently with AAM, but neither noise character nor volume changed significantly.

The vibration level at idle is quite good, on par with the Barracuda IV. In a real system, the Raptor's vibration noise might be slightly more intrusive than the Barracuda because of the higher pitch fundamental of the 10,000 RPM drive (167 Hz instead of 120 Hz for a 7200 RPM drive), but the total amount of vibration is roughly the same.
Click to expand...
Source: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article246-page3.html
 
does anyone also know which drives dell puts the operation system on If I choose this set up :

148 raptors raid 0

and 160 for storage

it should be on the raptor correct or not?
 
Its doubtfull the controller that dell would be using with the Raptor would support the (Semi) NCQ that the raptor offers.

That said
A set of 4 200gb SATA's Supporting True NCQ with a good controller (Raid5 prefered) is going to give you everything you could ever want or need HD wise. If you have the cash to burn
 
go one raptor...i've raided them and no significant difference with two...just more dangerous.

going back to one.
 
tiebird321 said:
Its doubtfull the controller that dell would be using with the Raptor would support the (Semi) NCQ that the raptor offers.

That said
A set of 4 200gb SATA's Supporting True NCQ with a good controller (Raid5 prefered) is going to give you everything you could ever want or need HD wise. If you have the cash to burn
Click to expand...
Naw, the access times of the Raptor can never be matched by any number of 7200 RPM drives, and this kind of performance is useful for frequent and random accesses. A 10k RPM drive plus additional 7200 RPM storage would outdo most 7200 RPM drive setups with an acceptable cash outlay.

The Raptor and NCQ are unrelated. There is no semi NCQ support or whatever. The Raptor supports TCQ, which is different from and incompatible with NCQ.
 
xonik said:
The Raptor and NCQ are unrelated. There is no semi NCQ support or whatever. The Raptor supports TCQ, which is different from and incompatible with NCQ.
Click to expand...

TCQ == Lesser form of NCQ
Hence my term "Semi-NCQ" as it preforms a very similer function but with less possible (and possibly a few different) operations.

A raid array of 7200 drives can easily outperform a single drive in access times for multiple random access. if the controller is sent requests for 20 random bits of data it can be assumed that they are likly to be spread amoungst the drives. with that for every single request the raptor is returning, the drive array is returning a number of the bits = to the number of drives.
 
Yes, but in typical desktop use, those requested bits are almost always 'localized.' This concept is the secret behind 7200 drives outperforming (older) 10K and 15K SCSI drives on the desktop, despite slower seek times and higher rotational latency. Presuming contiguous files that are regularly defragmented, most of the files associated with a given task are going to be very close to each other. Even a massive 5.5GB UT2004 install takes up less than 10% of the space on a Raptor, and an even smaller percentage of a 160 or 250GB ATA drive. The drive designers know this - they have the drive read ahead into the buffer when it notices lots of request for data in a particular area.

This means that short stroke seeks and read ahead strategies are the most important factors in hard drive performance on the desktop, both areas where a RAID-0 array falters. Using multiple spindles increases the chance for rotational latency to impact performance, and the added arbitration between multiple drives weakens the ability of a buffer to mask slow seek times on ATA drives. Of course, if you're doing extremely linear straight file transfers or extremely random server level I/O, the more spindles the better. However, the desktop is an entirely different proposition, and designing performance for it is more of an art than a science.
 
RAID 0 raptors imaged (eg using ghost/livestate server) to a larger capactity drive, that way your raptors are backed up and you get the advantages of RAID. 148GB isnt alot when you have 400GB+ drives and when used together with ghost to compress the data.
 
DougLite said:
This means that short stroke seeks and read ahead strategies are the most important factors in hard drive performance on the desktop, both areas where a RAID-0 array falters. Using multiple spindles increases the chance for rotational latency to impact performance, and the added arbitration between multiple drives weakens the ability of a buffer to mask slow seek times on ATA drives. Of course, if you're doing extremely linear straight file transfers or extremely random server level I/O, the more spindles the better. However, the desktop is an entirely different proposition, and designing performance for it is more of an art than a science.
Click to expand...
I was thinking Raid5
where the data (for something like UT4) should be evenly spread amoung the drives if the controller is doing its thing right
I dont trust moving media enough to ever run raid 0 :)

Considering the alternatives though, the raptor & a large 7.2k is probobly the best way to go
The raptor, in my opinion, still has too much hype atached to it so I like to play devils add whenever it comes up. ;)
 
Well, with RAID-5, weaknesses are even more acute as a desktop platform. I sure hope you're not recommending using a RAID-5 volume for an OS drive. The frequent writes will be killer on a RAID-5. For data storage, it's great though.

Is the Raptor over-hyped? Yes, a least a little. However, it is the fastest ATA drive available, and it beats 7200 drives in most usage models by astonishing margins. Well designed 7200 drives can come close in certain scenarios, but in terms of all-around performance, it's king of the hill (not the whole mountain where SCSI rules, just the desktop 'foothill' ;)) However, if cost, capacity, or ease of integration are concerns, the Raptor loses it's luster pretty quickly. I don't tell everybody to get a Raptor, only users who put performance first and really don't care about the other factors.
 
No point in using RAID 5 for the OS, in any case the OS and DATA should be on different physical disks. For a gamer RAID 0 raptors with a large RAID 1 7200rpm drive array, its also a good idea to have some kind of NAS box placed somewhere safe.
 
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