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PLEASE HELP - RAID, Raptors, and sharp teethed fish!

B

BlackHawk22

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 18, 2006
Messages
503
So I am getting a little confused by the mixed signals on a fast HDD set-up from the internet by now. I know a bit about computer hardware and sadly have devoted nearly 2 hours to researching computer technology every night for the past 3 months. Apparently, not enough.

Here's the ultimate question:

Which is faster, 4 crappy SATA drives in RAID, one 150GB Raptor (16MB buffer), Dual 36GB raptors (8MB buffer) in RAID, one 7200.10 Barracuda, or two 7200.7 Barracudas in raid?

And also on a sidenote, there are mixed responses as to which is faster - an old model 36GB raptor or a new model one with 16MB buffer, or a new Raptor 150 with a 16MB buffer - is there even a difference between all raptors?!?! :mad:


I appreciate any one who posts anything in this thread... Seriously.
 
BlackHawk22 said:
mate question:

Which is faster, 4 crappy SATA drives in RAID, one 150GB Raptor (16MB buffer), Dual 36GB raptors (8MB buffer) in RAID, one 7200.10 Barracuda, or two 7200.7 Barracudas in raid?
Click to expand...
The 150GB Raptor will be the fastest.
I'd rank them as follows:
150GB Raptor > 7200.10 > 36GB Raptors RAID0 > 7200.7 RAID0 > 4 crappy drives RAID0

Of course "fastest" depends on what you're using the drive for, but for general desktop usage, the WD1500ADFD will be the fastest, no doubt.

BlackHawk22 said:
And also on a sidenote, there are mixed responses as to which is faster - an old model 36GB raptor or a new model one with 16MB buffer, or a new Raptor 150 with a 16MB buffer - is there even a difference between all raptors?!?! :mad:
Click to expand...
There are basically 3 different kinds of Raptors out there:

1) The new ones with 16MB of cache - WD360ADFD, WD740ADFD, WD1500ADFD.
These are the fastest by a wide margin, so get one of them. They are all about the same speed wise, so just pick based on how much storage room you need.
I'd go for a WD740ADFD and if you need more room, pick up a cheap Seagate 320GB 7200.10 for storage.

2) The WD740GD. This the 74MB Raptor with 8MB of cache. It's a decent drive, but kinda slow by today's standards. I've heard reports that current WD740GD drives are based on the new design of the ADFD series, but still have 8MB of cache. I don't know if this is true, but either way I'd still go for one of the new ones.

3) The original WD360GD. Stay away from this one. It's relatively slow, overpriced and loud.


Hope that helps.
www.storagereview.com is the best place for hard drive reviews and info so check it out if you want to learn more
 
the 36GB, 8MB raptors are NOT worth the money they cost. If you look at any SR benchmarks, you will see that any newer 7200rpm drive will beat them in almost any benchmark. For this reason, I urge you not to buy them.

In terms of 'complexity of recovering, should something go wrong':

any RAID setup >> single drive.
 
Wow - more replies here than on my WTB threads! Thanks alot for the input. I am looking to use them for Loading OS speed and cutting down BF2 loading screen time. From what my research tells me, a 7200.10 Barracuda is pretty fast, but raptors are better for random access since they have higher spindle speeds and are therefore "faster on the draw". The price of the 150 raptor is pretty ridiculous, would two 7200.10's in RAID0 be better than one of those raptors? Could you give me a scenario of where a barracuda would be faster than a raptor, or where a raptor would be faster than a barracuda?

While I am on my onslaught of questions to find the Holy Grail of bottleneck elimination, is there a difference between the 7200.10 Barracuda 320GB and the 250GB? Common sense says no - but reviews on the interweb say only good things about the 320GB version.

Really appreciate the help here. Thanks!
 
BlackHawk22 said:
The price of the 150 raptor is pretty ridiculous, would two 7200.10's in RAID0 be better than one of those raptors? Could you give me a scenario of where a barracuda would be faster than a raptor, or where a raptor would be faster than a barracuda?
Click to expand...

A 750GB Barracuda is faster on linear transfers than the 150GB raptor. The problem is that if the 'cuda needs to seek a lot, the raptor beats it thanks to the lower seek time.

BlackHawk22 said:
While I am on my onslaught of questions to find the Holy Grail of bottleneck elimination,
Click to expand...
Gigabyte iRAM
BlackHawk22 said:
is there a difference between the 7200.10 Barracuda 320GB and the 250GB? Common sense says no - but reviews on the interweb say only good things about the 320GB version.
Click to expand...

I the 250GB version uses less dense platters, it'd be worse than the 320GB version. Average seek distances, could be lower on the 320GB drive.
 
Noticeably different between the 250GB and the 320GB and the 750GB? What needs random access, BF2 loading just needs to random access once and then it loads the rest without having to seek again, correct?

Pretty much, what would be the best Price/performance out there? Right now Newegg.com is offering 7200.10 250GB Sata-II 16MB buffer Barracudas for $90.00 and free shipping. Or just a little more to a 320GB version. Is that going to make loading times much faster than a normal SATA drive?

BTW - I know about the iRam - holy crap is all I can say. :eek: Thinking about saving for that.
 
Here are some actual load time numbers for BF2 : http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2760&p=10

"RAID 0 finally shows up to the party and offers a 7% improvement in the Battlefield 2 scores but otherwise does not offer any tangible benefits, and it even posts slower load times in the Oblivion and Half Life 2 benchmarks."

You decide if the 4-10 seconds added to the 1 min load time is worth the cost and risk of RAID.

==>Lazn
 
BlackHawk22 said:
BF2 loading just needs to random access once and then it loads the rest without having to seek again, correct?
Click to expand...
Wouldn't it be great to know that?
 
Lazn_Work said:
Here are some actual load time numbers for BF2 : http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2760&p=10

"RAID 0 finally shows up to the party and offers a 7% improvement in the Battlefield 2 scores but otherwise does not offer any tangible benefits, and it even posts slower load times in the Oblivion and Half Life 2 benchmarks."

You decide if the 4-10 seconds added to the 1 min load time is worth the cost and risk of RAID.

==>Lazn
Click to expand...
I'd also point out that it's two of the 750GB 7200.10 drives, which should be a bit faster than the 320GB varients.
Also, a single WD1500ADFD comes within 2 seconds of a 1.5TB RAID0 array.
 
Is the difference noticeable between a 750GB barracuda and a 250GB barracuda? And is a 250GB barracuda close to the performance of a 36GB Raptor (ADFD, 16MB version.)?

Again - thanks for the input.
 
BlackHawk22 said:
Is the difference noticeable between a 750GB barracuda and a 250GB barracuda? And is a 250GB barracuda close to the performance of a 36GB Raptor (ADFD, 16MB version.)?

Again - thanks for the input.
Click to expand...
And what type of applications are you talking about?
Game loading? Probably not.

I haven't seen benchmarks on the WD360ADFD, but assuming it performs close to its bigger brothers, it will win the benchmarks for sure, but as far as you noticing the difference, it just depends on what you're doing and if you'll notice a few seconds here and there.
The average user would not notice a big difference.
 
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