• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Help me pick a Raid 0 config...

M

mrderp

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 1, 2004
Messages
89
All,

Before people shoot me out of the water, I have been to StorageReview.com and I have read the Hard Drive buying guide listed in this forum. I'm just looking for peoples honest input. I just found out I'm getting a fat tax refund so I'm looking to build myself a completely new PC. My current system is 4 years old and I'm looking to build something that'll last me another 4 years with minimal upgrading. I have built systems before but it's been a while. I basically know what I want except when it comes to the storage department. I want to build a SATA Raid 0 disk array of some sort. I want to get up around 1TB of storage but don't want to spend more than $400 on hard drives (if it's a little under 1TB, it won't be the end of the world... though it would be nice to have 1TB bragging rights). I basically want all of your input as to which hard drive I should go with. I want something that'll be smoking fast but drives that'll be reliable (3 year warantee on the things at least). Please help!

Also... will I see much of a performance improvement with a 16mb buffer over an 8mb buffer?

Thx in advance.
 
your best bet would be to go with 2- raptors 175gig in raid o , and when use a couple big drives for storage. i use the raptors for games and programs, and to the other drives for xp and mp3's ect....
 
I'm looking for a balance between speed and storage. Raptors = fast but not enough storage. Remember, I'm looking for close to 1TB, relatively fast, all for under $400.
 
here's an idea:

Get a [used?] 74G raptor as boot (will likely outperform most RAID-0 setups) and then buy a bunch of drives for a nice storage array.

Also, 1GB of HDD space for $400 is going to be hard, considering that most drives sell for just about 40 cents/Gig, but these are not the biggests drives, so you'd need a few of them.
 
If you want it to last 4 years, you do not want raid 0. Look up MTBF, and tell me why. Either spend the money for a raid 5 array or spend 4 years regretting it.

 
Where are you going to back up this 1 Tb raid0 array, because I know you don't plan on filling it with disposable info.

You could get close to a tb with 250gb drives.

Answer me this. Why do you think you need raid0?
 
I'm looking for something that'll be faster than your regular, out of the box, hard drive. If I had the money, I'd buy as many Raptors as I could afford and cram them into my system. Unfortunately, this is not possible. Instead, I'm looking at two, or three, or four drives working together to give me something faster than what I would get out of a single drive. I know a couple 7200rpm SATA drives raided together come close to one Raptor but for my bottom dollar, too much money for not enough space.

I was also thinking about buying one of those 500 giggers but for the money, it's not worth it. $350+ for 500gb or $380-$400 for 900gb-1tb spanned over 3 or 4 drives raided together.

As far as the RAID goes, I'm not all about RAID 1 because I feel like I'm wasting half my system for backup purposes. All the important stuff I need, I back up myself. I don't need the hard drive to do it. That's why I have a DVD burner.

I guess what it comes down to is that I want RAID 0 for the above average speed and storage instead of blowing all my money on either speed or storage.

*note* and worse case scenario, if I get burned with a RAID 0 array and lose everything, I can always wipe the drives out and start over with a RAID 1 array.
 
A raid 5 will be the best balance between lost capacity and performance (good read speed). You will be able to run 4 drives and only "lose" the capacity of one. Though a decent controller is a bit more expensive.

edit: if you are set on a 1tb level 0 array for ~$400, it really comes down to picking your favorite 250GB <$100 pony and keeping your fingers crossed that one of four does not bite the dust or experience a controller hiccup. I'd go seagate but thats just my preference.
 
dirtydr, the raid 5 thing doesn't sound too bad. i agree with you and i'm uneasy about 4 drives... too much room for failure. so what do you suggest... 3 300gb drives? as i said, the terabyte thing was a goal but it doesn't look like it's gonna happen with my budget. i'm guessing i could do a 74gb raptor for windows/games, and get 2 300 or 320gb hard drives and use them as a dump space. what do you guys think about that setup? the benchmarks say the raptor is a pretty fast little drive yet i hear a lot of people talking about how the raptors are over-rated. what to do what to do?

i guess i should have said this earlier... i'm looking at an a8n32 sli mobo. how's the controller on that board?
 
250gb drives seem to be the in the $/GB sweetspot right now. I would highly suggest reading the [H] raid faq in my sig (actually in the answers sticky) before making a final decision. A raid 5 array will offer you redundancy and faster reads with the least lost space but the tradeoff is write speed. A good controller with its own dedicated xor processor and memory will help to minimize that but there is still a write speed penalty. I believe a decent, hardware raid 5 controller is going to start >$150. That may or may not kill the deal for you.

jbod might be worth looking into also. Just as risky from a point of failure standpoint as a level 0, but you 'only' lose the data on the drive that fails. I believe the controller on your board supports jbod (?).
 
Ok... looks like I'm definitely striking the whole terabyte thing.

So everyone, which would be faster... 2 250gb in RAID 0 or 1 400gb hard drive?
 
mrderp said:
Ok... looks like I'm definitely striking the whole terabyte thing.

So everyone, which would be faster... 2 250gb in RAID 0 or 1 400gb hard drive?
Click to expand...
depends
 
What you're doing with it. Would you be playing games off it, or just media storage? And if it's media storage, why do you care how fast it is?

In any case, I'd be inclined to go with a single 400.

 
I guess the 74gb raptor will hold enough. I'm gonna use the raptor for my OS, games, and DVD ripping/burning. I'm gonna use the other drive(s) basically as a storage dump and for general backup purposes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top