Need hard drive advice

S

shady86

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 17, 2003
Messages
148
Hi,

Im planning to get either of these setups currently

1) 2xSeagate 7200.12 1TB for Matrix RAID(0,1)
2) 3xSeagate 7200.12 500GB for Matrix RAID(0,1)
3) 2xSeagate 7200.12 500GB for RAID5

All three setups cost about the same. If I choose 1, I will get most $/GB value. Im not sure 3 7200.12 will be much faster than 2 pcs in RAID0 for daily applications, OS and games loading. If I choose 3, Im not sure RAID5 is fast enough or at least match 2pcs of hard disk in RAID0. Storage size is not a matter for me because I have another 1TB Samsung F2 for storage.

Im also considering to get SSDs in RAID but with my tight budget, Im aiming for cheap ones like Patriot Warp v2 64GB and plan to get a pair for RAID0. A single SSD will cost a much of the setups above though. Warp 32GB is out of stock and 64GB is cheaper per GB. Would a single high end SSD like Intel X25-M beat out two Patriot Warp v2 64BG in RAID0? X25-M rev 2 is currently out of stock though. Or should I wait for SSDs to mature and get cheaper and just go for mechanical drives? Thank you in advance.
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A single SSD with a decent controller is going to deliver better desktop random access performance than any reasonable number of mechanical drives in RAID-0.

What would I do? Forget RAID, grab the best SSD that fits your budget, and pickup a mechanical drive that's at least 500GB to hold your music/movies/etc.
 
Unless you have a real RAID controller, which is often $300 or more, forget RAID 5 completely. I'm a fan of a RAID 0 solution personally. I don't want to have to think about where I'm installing or storing a file every time I do it. Several drives in RAID 0 will surpass an SSD in terms of throughput but not operations per second or access time.

With spinning storage, the price per gigabyte is amazing, as low as 6 cents per GB. When you RAID drives, it's amazing to see how the performance increases, even in response time.

I would not recommend the current Seagate SATA drives to anyone attempting RAID however. They've had far too many issues as of late. Western Digitals have the TLEC issue that you can change using the WD utility.
 
No raid preferably. RAID 0 if you have sufficient external backup to cover the space of your internal x500GB config.RAID is not backup :(
 
Tell us, how much actual money are you willing to spend, and how much space do you really need? Please be honest, because you don't want to spend lots of money in space you are not going to use, when you can easily trade that for speed.

You can really benefit from SSD if you don't need TONS of space, like a HD video editor would. If this is for a new computer, which you plan to use for for Browsing, Gaming, and PhotoShop once in a while, then take a look at this:

2x OCZ Vertex 30GB MLC SSD ($139.00 - $20 MIR + Free Shipping)
1x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB HDD ($59.99 + Shipping)
--------------------------------------
TOTAL: $337.99 - $40 MIR + Free Shipping ($297.99 after MIR)

The OCZ have more cache memory than the Patriot, and uses a better controller. I think the Patriot uses the old "JMicron" which stutters once in a while, while OCZ uses a better "Indilinx" controller. Get those 2 in RAID0, and you should have better speeds than a single X-25-M loading medium or large files. You know, like game map loads, or high resolution images. In actual OS usage, the difference should be around the same, possibly favoring the X-25-M, since those drives kick the crap of anything out in raw I/O operations per second.

The Seagate 500GB is so you can store your stuff like music, and videos, which don't benefit at all from speed. You can even put older games here, which you know already load fast, so you can save the space for the heavier and regular used games for the RAID0.
But don't get me wrong, this drive is extremely fast, is one of the fastest in raw reading speed. Of course, it doesn't have the quicknessa and responsiveness of a WD Velociraptor, but that won't make a difference since you will be storing and reading single files here.

Windows XP is around 6.5GB after you install SP3 with all updates. Windows 7 is around 12GB, so Vista should be somewhere in the middle. So really, that gives you more than enough space in your RAID0 setup (60GB total) to put a few applications, and a couple of games too. Heck, If you don't have much pictures and documents, you can put them here too.

I've been doing some research myself because I want to upgrade my HDDs, and those look like the best. I might go for those very same SSDs I recommend you for my own setup, but I still don't know, I have to see how much money I'll have left after I move to a new house. If the X-25-M G2 don't come down in price by then, I'll get the OCZ Vertex in a heartbeat.

Ok man, good luck.
 
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Actually, I want to get the best value. Im just not sure that SSDs are worth the money paid for. X25-M G2 is around $250 at my place now. 7200.12 is $50 and $80 for 500GB and 1TB respectively.

7200.12 is attractive because of 500GB platter and low noise. For $50 I can get 640GB Spinpoint F1. Which will be faster, 3 Spinpoint 640GB or 3 Barracuda 500GB in RAID0 configuration? I would consider storage important too because I do some HD encoding and do a lot of heavy file copying.
 
shady86 said:
Actually, I want to get the best value.
Click to expand...
Oh ok, now we're talking. If pure value is what you seek, then how about the regular Spinpoint F1 like you said, but the 1TB (non-green) model. This one. Those are great $/GB drives, at only $0.084/GB. I use one of them for backup, and it's actually very fast. I have it connected to an external enclosure, which connects to my PC using an eSata slot bracket, and I'm still getting Reads of 93.2MB/s and Access Times of 13.4ms.

Two of those should do wonders in Raid0, and you get the value you want. As far as understand, you start to loose the benefit of RAID0 once you get more than 2 drives. HDD don't scale as well as SSD does, that's why RAID0 setups skyrocked once SSD came out, they scale almost linear.

shady86 said:
Im just not sure that SSDs are worth the money paid for.
Click to expand...
I understand, money is not easy to come by now days. I feel like quitting my job every day, but i don't because I know I won't find another one. However, before you say it's not worth it, just take a quick look at this videos below. They're running the exact same setup I posted above, with the exact same drives.

Opening 29 applications simultaneously OR Opening 26 applications simultaneously.
The first video is specially impressive, when you consider he's recording his desktop in HD on the same drives while doing the test.

I mean, if that doesn't bring a smile to your face, I don't know what will.

shady86 said:
X25-M G2 is around $250 at my place now.
Click to expand...
Where do you live anyways?
Newegg has it for $225 and ZipZoomFly for $229. Both of them with free shipping. They are out of stuck at the moment, but I'm sure they'll have more in the upcoming days/weeks.
 
I'm from Japan. X-25M is out of stock everywhere and after consideration, I might just want to go with normal mechanical drives. I just could make up my mind on which to go for.

Seagate 7200.10
Samsung F1
WD Black
Hitachi 7K1000.B

WD Black seems to be the fastest of all there but its expensive per GB. Samsung have fast read/write speed but average application performance. Seagate seems to perform well in most area but slow latency. I cant find any reviews on Hitachi though. Should I go for two 1TB drives or three 500GB drives for RAID0?
 
shady86 said:
I'm from Japan. X-25M is out of stock everywhere and after consideration, I might just want to go with normal mechanical drives. I just could make up my mind on which to go for.

Seagate 7200.10
Samsung F1
WD Black
Hitachi 7K1000.B

WD Black seems to be the fastest of all there but its expensive per GB. Samsung have fast read/write speed but average application performance. Seagate seems to perform well in most area but slow latency. I cant find any reviews on Hitachi though. Should I go for two 1TB drives or three 500GB drives for RAID0?
Click to expand...

Not sure if I understand this..... you are looking at SSD, but the X-25M is out of stock. But price per GB for mechanical drive is keeping you away from the WD Black. [H]?????[/H]
 
Sorry if you misunderstood but what I mean is the Black worth the extra money for little performance advantage compared to other drivers? Or Black is much faster which I dont see in reviews out there. For you reference here are the estimated price for the drives in Japan.
7200.12 1TB $77
Black 1TB $97
Samsung 1TB $69
Hitachi 7K1000.B $69
 
I found out Velociraptor WD1500BLFS(150GB, no ICEPACK) for about $100. Do you all think its a good deal?
 
BTW, if you look at Seagate, look for the "7200.12" drives, those are the fast ones. I have a 7200.10 as well as a 7200.11, and the difference in speed is HUGE. 64MB/s VS 90MB/s. The 7200.12 models should be around ~100MB/s, but I don't have one myself to test the speed using the same PC, but that's what some benchmarks show.

I have no idea about the other brands, except the Samsung F1(non-green) 1TB. It's just a hair faster than the 7200.11 Seagate of the same size. Meaning, between Samsung and Seagate 7200.12 at 1TB, get the ones that's cheaper.

BTW, I recommend 2x1TB over 3x500GB. You get more value of your money, more space, and should get nice speeds. Remember HDDs don't scale as good as SSD, so anything higher than 2 drives and you start to lose value.
 
Thanks for the comments Odin75. After some hunting, here are the price for the drives in my mind.

WD Velociraptor 150GB WD1500BLFS - $100
Seagate 7200.12 1TB - $78
Samsung F1 1TB - $70
WD Black 640GB - $65
WD Black 1TB - $98
Hitachi 7K1000.B 1 TB - $70

Currently Im thinking of getting one or two Velocaptor 150GB for OS/system drive. Does Raptor scale well in RAID0 or single drive is enough? Im planning to get two 1TB Samsung/Hitachi/Seagate for storage too. Samsung and Hitachi is cheaper but Seagate only have two platters. Which should I go for?
 
See, this is when I don't know what to say, because you contradict yourself somewhat. I'm trying to recommend you something according to what you request, but you are jumping from SSD, to HDD, to HDD Velociraptors. $100 for 150GB Velociraptors is an extremely good price, since they normally go for $180. To me, they're still too expensive. Access Time is about the only advantage it has, which is about half from any other HDD, but the actual speed is similar to other good drives. However, is it worth it? Are you willing to make the sacrifice? I can't answer that for you.

To be honest, since the X-25M G2 came out, it destroyed the possibility of Velociraptors, even in RAID0. I mean, I'd trade 300GB of goodness for 80GB of ultimate heaven, any day of the week. I know they'are Sold Out now, but that's not going to be forever, they're making more. But hey, I can't force ideas into your head, you have different needs and priorities than me.

Anyways, yeah, the Velociraptors should scale better than slower drives. Better access time seems to translate into better scaling. Of course, not near perfect scaling like SSD, but considerably better. Also the RAID Controller in your motherboard will add a bit into that difference. People have good results with stock ICH10R, so if you have that you should be fine.

About the platters, the less the better, and faster. Do you know Einstein's Law of Relativity? Well, HDDs remind me of it. They are faster in the outside, because they travel a longer distance at faster speeds, relative to the inner part. So the less platters, the more of your data is going to be in the outside, as long as you defragment it and organize it that way.
Seagate is currently using 500GB by platter in their 7200.12 models. I've heard Velociraptor gets their good speed by actually limiting drives to the outside of the disk, which perfectly explains why their GB size, price, and speed.
 
Odin75 said:
About the platters, the less the better, and faster. Do you know Einstein's Law of Relativity? Well, HDDs remind me of it. They are faster in the outside, because they travel a longer distance at faster speeds, relative to the inner part. So the less platters, the more of your data is going to be in the outside, as long as you defragment it and organize it that way.
Seagate is currently using 500GB by platter in their 7200.12 models. I've heard Velociraptor gets their good speed by actually limiting drives to the outside of the disk, which perfectly explains why their GB size, price, and speed.
Click to expand...

Actually, more platters = better, as more of the data fits in the fastest outside tracks.

As for the Velociraptor's construction, don't forget that they are 2.5" drives in a 3.5" market. WD bets in their Raptor designs that they can offset the reduced number of tracks (lower density / capacity) with a more powerful actuator and read/write heads, allowing them to dramatically increase seek performance. The increased spindle speed is a largely independent adjustment from this phenomenon, although it does increase seek performance as well by reducing rotational latency.
 
DougLite said:
Actually, more platters = better, as more of the data fits in the fastest outside tracks.

As for the Velociraptor's construction, don't forget that they are 2.5" drives in a 3.5" market. WD bets in their Raptor designs that they can offset the reduced number of tracks (lower density / capacity) with a more powerful actuator and read/write heads, allowing them to dramatically increase seek performance. The increased spindle speed is a largely independent adjustment from this phenomenon, although it does increase seek performance as well by reducing rotational latency.
Click to expand...

Can you explain why higher platter density drives can get higher read write/write throughput? Ive made my purchased for Velociraptor 150GB. Now searching for two drives for storage. I will be doing some HD encoding and storing lots of HD contents. Any recommendations? I have Seagate 7200.12 1TB and Hitachi E7K1000.B in mind now because they are cheap.
 
Higher density drives give faster transfer rates because:

Assume that the spindle speed is the same for the given drives (7200RPM)
If you increase density, more data passes under the read/write heads during any given period of time.
This is borne out in this Tech Report article
The Barracuda 7200.12 has two 500GB platters to reach 1TB, while the other 7200RPM 1TB drives use three 334GB platters to reach 1TB.

In straight linear transfers, the Barracuda 7200.12 is about 8MB/sec faster than the Hitachi 7K1000B on average. Running RAID-0 does boost linear throughput for loading video files into RAM for editing quite a bit, you may consider it. Regardless of the setup you choose, have a backup system in place.
 
shady86 said:
Can you explain why higher platter density drives can get higher read write/write throughput? Ive made my purchased for Velociraptor 150GB. Now searching for two drives for storage. I will be doing some HD encoding and storing lots of HD contents. Any recommendations? I have Seagate 7200.12 1TB and Hitachi E7K1000.B in mind now because they are cheap.
Click to expand...

i would get a WD black 1tb, they are the best mechanical drive on the market right now. why buy cheap and have problems? you get what you paid for i was always taught
 
hclarkjr said:
i would get a WD black 1tb, they are the best mechanical drive on the market right now. why buy cheap and have problems? you get what you paid for i was always taught
Click to expand...
I disagree, based on the OP's purpose for the drives. He just needs them for media storage. Indeed, the Caviar Black is actually a slower drive for the OP's application than the Barracuda 7200.12, as the OP will be relying principally on raw sustained read/write throughput rather than seek performance or caching strategy.
 
yes, but seagate is having all kinds of trouble as of late with their firmware. IMHO WD is better than seagate
 
hclarkjr said:
yes, but seagate is having all kinds of trouble as of late with their firmware. IMHO WD is better than seagate
Click to expand...

I think the 7200.12 series is not affected but from reviews I have read, their access time is slower than other 7200rpm drives. I havent actually made up my mind for storage drive but Im leaning towards Seagate at the moment. They are fairly quiet and should be fast enough for storage. I have tried almost 10 HDDs from Hitachi, Seagate, WD and Samsung and the only drive that has failed me is 7200.10 last time but the replacement drive has been working fine since. I notice you have a Velociraptor 150GB which I have made the purchase a while ago and a WD Black. Is the raptor much faster than the black?
 
not by much. about the only thing it beats the black at is access time, 13ms for black and 7.1ms for the raptor on my system.
 
western digital WD1500HLFS 150GB 74.7 mb/sec 119.5/sec 102/sec 7.2ms 169.3 mb/sec
.western digital WD7501AALS 750GB 63 MB/SEC 114.7 MB/SEC 90.4 MB/SEC 13ms 133.1 mb/sec there are the benchmarks using HDD tune 2.55
 
Thanks for the benchmarks. How about daily usage, like windows booting, applications booting and system responsiveness?

Im planning to to use raptor only for OS and games and the storage drives for HD video and file editing purpose. Maybe I will get SSDs in future when price comes down.
 
as far as windows booting, i would say they are about even there. system response goes to the vraptor because of the faster access times but not by much. if you want to be picky and want the fastest go with vraptor as it is faster but not by much. if you want space and speed get the black
 
DougLite said:
Actually, more platters = better, as more of the data fits in the fastest outside tracks.
Click to expand...
DougLite said:
Higher density drives give faster transfer rates...
Click to expand...
Either we have misunderstandings, or you are contradicting yourself.
What I said was that less (more dense) platters was the better solution.

DougLite said:
I disagree, based on the OP's purpose for the drives. He just needs them for media storage. Indeed, the Caviar Black is actually a slower drive for the OP's application than the Barracuda 7200.12, as the OP will be relying principally on raw sustained read/write throughput rather than seek performance or caching strategy.
Click to expand...
If he wants to do video editing, he needs to get the drive with the fastest WRITING speed, NOT reading speed. I can play HD videos (1080p 5.1 AAC) from my old USB drive just fine, they play instantly with no lagg, and the max reading speed on it is 30MB/s. Loading videos doesn't require that much speed at all.

Getting a drive with good WRITING speed will make sure you don't bottleneck, in case your computer can encode faster than the drive can save it. Applying effects and saving projects should be faster, since that's all writing. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying get a drive with horrible reading speeds, I'm just saying that writing speed is more important for video editing, since reading speeds are more than enough. You will be playing a video or two at a time anyways, so it won't make a difference. Writing Speed is the real challenge, when you have to write huge chunks of data.

But yeah, you will be fine with your Velociraptor in your OS. Access time really makes a difference, as well as good reading speed.
 
Odin75 said:
Either we have misunderstandings, or you are contradicting yourself.
What I said was that less (more dense) platters was the better solution.


If he wants to do video editing, he needs to get the drive with the fastest WRITING speed, NOT reading speed. I can play HD videos (1080p 5.1 AAC) from my old USB drive just fine, they play instantly with no lagg, and the max reading speed on it is 30MB/s. Loading videos doesn't require that much speed at all.
Click to expand...
If you have two drives of the same "generation" of density, such as a 500GB Caviar Black and a 1TB Caviar Black, the 1TB drive will deliver better random access performance than the 500GB drive, as the larger drive intensifies locality and makes the fastest outer zones bigger.

On 7200RPM drives, performance factors, largest impact to smallest:

Buffer size/strategy
Sectors per track
Seek performance
Overall drive capacity

If you postulate that drives within a given family will have the same seek performance, the biggest drive will be the fastest. Simply doubling the size of a drive while changing none of the above metrics increases desktop level performance about 7%.

I was not saying that a 4x250GB platter 1TB drive would be faster than a 3x334GB drive, I was saying that a 3x334GB drive is faster than a 1.5x334GB drive.

Also, if you look at the article I linked earlier, you'll see that write speeds on current mechanical drives are within 5% of read speeds. In most cases, the variance is within 3% and hence within testing margin of error. Also, if the OP intends to do HD encoding or editing, he'll be able to use the extra throughput.
 
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