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RAID 0 HD choice..

B

Bugbear

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 13, 2003
Messages
220
Hi everybody. So I want to get rid of my current IDE setup and get 2 SATA drives and set them up with RAID:0. My motherboard is the Abit AN8 SLi. It supports the 3gbs. I'm not sure what the difference is between SATA 3.0Gb/s and Serial ATA150 . I'm looking for storage space of between 80 to 160 gigabytes for each drive. Can anyone make any suggestions for a HD? Thanks.
 
The difference between 1.5 and 3 gbps is minimal. I'd suggest that rather than getting two 160GB drives, you get one 320 - perhaps a WD3200KS - and use it. Raid 0 adds complexity, cost, and doesn't help speed much. Look at some real-world benchmarks and decide if it's worth it to spend the extra money for little or no benefit. The 320 is also a newer generation drive; the 160s are older drives, with lower STR, lower density, worse seek times, and a smaller buffer.

 
If you are dead set with having raid0 then I would recomend any of the newer drives from WD or the Maxtors with 16meg cache.. But I agree with the above poster.. If you don't need raid0, you should get a single large drive or one drive for backup/storage along with one for your os, apps, games, and etc..
 
I would recommend looking it up before you decide on Raid-0. I have been running on a Raid-0 array with 2 74gb Raptors and just decided to split them up after seeing a pretty good write up on real-world testing. Take a look and then decide and if you do, go with the second poster's recommendations.
 
Cool info guys. Thanks. I'll do some looking around for a single hdd setup.
 
For general use, you won't see much of a difference. Most of the performance you get from drive throughput is offset by your CPU being eaten up by the raid controller. You also greatly increase the chance of losing all data off of those drives as you have two drives now and losing one will lose all data. Also, the more common data threat is that the data on the drive becomes corrupt and you lose it all. As someone said, be sure you back things up if you do RAID-0. You are likely better off just getting a nice fast 10k RPM SATA drive instead.
 
Go with WD Raptors. I had a single WD Raptor 150 and it was a very fast dive. I just got a second one RAIDed them and the performance gain was (too me) amazing. Windows boots dramatically fast, file transfers are very quick and my game loads are faster. Overall the system just "feels" faster and more snappy. Also, my HD Tach and SiSoft scores pretty well doubled.

I am running on the nForce 4 RAID.

Yes, this does increase my risk of a failure (2 drives as a single logical drive but if 1 fails I lose it all) However, I have a great backup system for my data so I am not worried (network backup to my server, as well as an external USB hard drive).

Also the Raptors have a 5 year warranty - so that failure chance should be less then a standard drive.

The 150's are definitely expensive, but if performance is your main goal, they are worth it. If you don't mind the smaller size, go with the 74GB Raptors - definitely cheaper.

Good Luck!
 
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