Anyone Tried 4 Raptors?

[ohnnyj]

Hello all:

I am seriously thinking about picking up 2 more raptors to make 4 total as I have heard that such a setup shows a huge performance increase. Anyone tried it?

Thanks.

 

[Bugalaman]

you mean put 'em in raid 0+1? I wouldn't think there would be much difference over raid 0, just more reliable

 

[ohnnyj]

Or even a straight Raid0.

 

[Chris_Morley]

Yeah, I've done 10. With a decent controller in RAID 0 you'll definitely see a difference in bandwidth intensive situations, what are you looking to use it for?

 

[ohnnyj]

I am mainly playing games and editing photos via Photoshop as well as web design work with Dreamweaver and Flash.

 

[k1pp3r]

sisters boyfriend had 4 in raid 0 at one time, wasn't worth the cost to performance is you asked me, i would want a later gain

 

[Chris_Morley]

I am mainly playing games and editing photos via Photoshop as well as web design work with Dreamweaver and Flash.

You wouldn't see an iota of difference...

 

[ohnnyj]

What kinds of applications would show a difference?

 

[FunkStar]

google for a review, cause someones put benchies of up to 4 raptors. The gains went like 35% for 2 drives, 42% for 3 and 47% for 4 and it peaks at like 50%(done on simple controller). I'd imagine putting 4 raptors on a 3ware PCI-X controller that has its own CPU would warrant alot higher gains, but its not worth IMO. For what you said you do just buy higher capacity drives, not 4 lower ones.

Then again you could get 6 drives and an expensive controller and get some Raid 5-0 happening.

 

[BillR]

Unless you’re doing real time HI Def video storage there would probably be little advantage.

Follow this thread all the way through, some interesting info and near the end some pictures to make you drool.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=742083

 

[Chris_Morley]

Unless you’re doing real time HI Def video storage there would probably be little advantage.

Follow this thread all the way through, some interesting info and near the end some pictures to make you drool.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=742083

Even then you'd need dual processors, a 64-bit RAID controller, an HD capture card with HD-SDI input, and be able to sustain 152MB/s writes for 1080i 29.97 4:2:2.

 

[Ice Czar]

more than halfway there
yet so far to go

the other primary use would be heavy multiuser access in a NAS or SAN for various databases or media storage

some bus numbers
32bit 33MHz PCI Bus 133MB/s, SATA port not attached to the normal 133MB/s southbridge 150MB/s
32bit 66MHz & 64bit 33MHz PCI Bus 264MB/s, 64bit 66MHz PCI Bus 508MB/s,
64bit 100MHz PCI-X Bus 800MB/s, 64bit 133MHz PCI-X Bus 1066MB/s
and past that the various PCI-Express lanes at 250 MB/s per x2, x4, x8, x12, x16 and x32 (3GIO 3rd generation I\O)
(of course traffic on the bus from other sources factors in, CPU(s) overhead, or lack there of on the controller(s) ect, would impact the throughput as would the boards chipset achitecture)

of course all additionally constrained by the controller(s) in question and the internal limitations of the drives themselves
As the Disk Spins
and the stripe width of the array (number of drives), with additional considerations of stripe size to typical access\file

some benchmarks
http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/400
(thats Dutch, in case you need more than just the Charts which are self explanatory)

 

[BillR]

Definitely the kind of horsepower we all need to balance the old checkbook and play the occasional game. I’ll take two…or was that 4…..8?

 

[Sandman]

Why not buy the raptors and make another RAID 0 array? Two independant arrays (one with Windows and other programs, the other with games) would probably be faster than one giant array.

 

[poopy]

get a couple maxtor atlas 15k II u320 scsi drives instead

 

[ohnnyj]

Why not buy the raptors and make another RAID 0 array? Two independant arrays (one with Windows and other programs, the other with games) would probably be faster than one giant array.

Is that possible?

 

[FragMagnet]

Is that possible?

Possible = yes, faster, I wouldn't think so. You didn't mention a mobo/chipset, but with an Abit IC7 they use 2 Sata through the controller on the northbridge, and the other 2 through an additional SI controller on the mobo. Dual raid 0 is possible without a raid card. I'm sure other mobos are capable.

 

[ohnnyj]

Its an nForce 4 ASUS A8N-SLI.

 

[FragMagnet]

The ASUS site claims you can, without the PCI-Card

SATA 3Gb/s
A8N-SLI supports next-generation SATA hard drives based on the new SATA 3Gb/s storage specification. Furthermore, the chipset has two dedicated SATA controllers delivering more scalable performance and doubles the bus bandwidth for fast hard drive data retrieval and saves.