I currently have a Maxtor 120 gig SATA drive for system and games, and a Maxtor 120 gig PATA drive for storage. I'm thinking of getting another 120 SATA and running raid 0 using the onboard controller on my NF7-S rev 2. My question is how much preformance increase should i expect? i really dont need the extra storage at this point, i just want faster drive access for loading games. is the gain worth the extra $100 for the drive?
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Raid 0 Question
- Thread starter distr0
- Start date
You might see a 25% increase on large file transfers. But for game loads this is in the small file classification so you would most likely not see any improvement.
You will see a loss in access times. Raid 0 increases access times around 15% to 25%. This will make the system feel sluggesh.
So my answer to your question is use the money for other items. Raid 0 isn't worth it.
If you do decide to use it. Backup any data you do not want to loose every day. Raid 0 is the best way to loose data that I know of.
BillR
Born Again Cynic
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2002
- Messages
- 18,535
Id tell you to get the RAM first, then if you need more speed get yourself a Raptor 74 gig SATA drive.
More ram will help the system. But for faster loading and lower access its time for faster HDD system. Stepping up to a 10k Raptor will help load times. If that isn't fast enough then 15K SCSI is next.
The HDD is the slowest thing in a computer today. To make the system feel and work faster you need high end HDD system.
The HDD is the slowest thing in a computer today. To make the system feel and work faster you need high end HDD system.
mulpsmebeauty
Gawd
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2004
- Messages
- 882
As above - RAM first, drive after. 512Mb will get you by, but 1Gb gives you so much extra headroom.
As for the drives: until they failed, I had 2x160Gb SATA drives in RAID 0 and I was disappointed. Doing things like expanding the 'program files' menu in NT Explorer would have a notice delay and games didn't load up much quicker than my old single 60Gb IDE disk. This was on a fresh build as well. I have now gone onto a 74Gb Raptor and subjectively it seems much better. Even things that aren't cached in memory pop up straight away in XP. I just cleared my internet cache after a day's surfing and it took just one second, which I was quite impressed with. Doom 3 still takes a while to load up (it's not done in 5 seconds or anything), but it appears to be quicker. XP loads up noticeably faster. All in all, a better solution for speed, though obviously I've lost out on c.250Gb of capacity. I'll be getting in a big SATA drive for storage soon.
As for the drives: until they failed, I had 2x160Gb SATA drives in RAID 0 and I was disappointed. Doing things like expanding the 'program files' menu in NT Explorer would have a notice delay and games didn't load up much quicker than my old single 60Gb IDE disk. This was on a fresh build as well. I have now gone onto a 74Gb Raptor and subjectively it seems much better. Even things that aren't cached in memory pop up straight away in XP. I just cleared my internet cache after a day's surfing and it took just one second, which I was quite impressed with. Doom 3 still takes a while to load up (it's not done in 5 seconds or anything), but it appears to be quicker. XP loads up noticeably faster. All in all, a better solution for speed, though obviously I've lost out on c.250Gb of capacity. I'll be getting in a big SATA drive for storage soon.
wow, thanks for the info everyone.
i really thought raid0 would speed up everything, so im glad i asked. the maxtor i have is 7200 rpm 8 meg cache so it's by no means a slow drive but the way raid0 is presented it seems like you 'should' be able to double your bandwidth. meh, ill get the ram and see what happens
i really thought raid0 would speed up everything, so im glad i asked. the maxtor i have is 7200 rpm 8 meg cache so it's by no means a slow drive but the way raid0 is presented it seems like you 'should' be able to double your bandwidth. meh, ill get the ram and see what happens
Raid 0 will not double your transfer speeds. When I used it for about a year. I was using a pair of 40 gig WD's. These were the newest and fastest out at the time. One drive was good for 25 MB/s. With two in Raid 0 it was good for 38 MB/S. Access times for one drive was 10 MLS with Raid 0 it was 16 MLS. Going from a single drive first I could see the lag waiting on the drives to sync in. Doing large file transfers was good. But I hated the lag after using single drive config.
After the 4th reload of the OS in a year (1 failed drive, 3 broken strips from power outages). It was time to move on to something better. I stepped up to a 10K SCSI drive. It had a faster transfer speed of 50 MB/s and a 8.5 MLS access time. Then later on I stepped up to a 15K drive.
Raid might be fun to play with if money isn't a problem or you have the hardware laying around. But Raid 0 doesn't offer a person much when working with small files.
Go for the Raptor.
After the 4th reload of the OS in a year (1 failed drive, 3 broken strips from power outages). It was time to move on to something better. I stepped up to a 10K SCSI drive. It had a faster transfer speed of 50 MB/s and a 8.5 MLS access time. Then later on I stepped up to a 15K drive.
Raid might be fun to play with if money isn't a problem or you have the hardware laying around. But Raid 0 doesn't offer a person much when working with small files.
Go for the Raptor.