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Raid 0 vs SRT vs Momentus XT

M

Mangonz

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So I am about to upgrade to a system with a z68 motherboard and just need a nudge in the right direction storage wise...

For the last year or so I have using 3 x 640G Caviar Black drives in RAID 0 and while they perform well I am prepared to spend extra to speed this up.
As far as I can tell the most popular option for new systems is to load the OS onto an SSD along with a few games and use a RAID for bulk data. The only problem with this is I tend to play a range of games so I would need a big SSD and would much prefer to maintain a single drive letter.

Ideally I would want a RAID of SSDs but I don't really want to spend that kind of money so my options as I see them would be:

- Keep my current RAID. Easy, fast sequential writes and reads. Free! Not very shiny though and no speed increase.
- Cache my current RAID with an SSD using SRT. Shiny factor still but I can't find much data on gaming performance compared to my current setup. Similar sequential read speeds and much slower write speeds. Cache will update about the same speed as I migrate across games so size not an issue.
- Get rid of my current drives and replace them with 3 or 4 Seagate Momentus XTs in RAID 0. Massive read speeds on cached data. Retain similar sequential read and write speeds as my current RAID. Apparently the spin down issue on these drives has been fixed by a firmware update. This will be costlier than the other options however.

I guess I am after an opinion on if the performance bonuses of SRT will out-weigh the negatives over my 3 drive RAID 0. If not the Seagates might be the best way unless anyone can see any giant flaws in going down that path.

I have no experience with SSD caching so thought I would ask before I buy :)
 
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Just get an SSD for OS/program storage and keep the raid array for storing everything else. The SSD by itself will kick the crap out of all 3 of your drives combined. Plus 3 drives in raid 0 is pretty brave. 1 drive failure and you lose everything.
 
Biznatch said:
Just get an SSD for OS/program storage and keep the raid array for storing everything else. The SSD by itself will kick the crap out of all 3 of your drives combined. Plus 3 drives in raid 0 is pretty brave. 1 drive failure and you lose everything.
Click to expand...

big brass balls...
 
Just get an SSD for OS/program storage and keep the raid array for storing everything else
Click to expand...
Yep.

Depending upon your storage needs, RAID doesn't need to be an option.

RAID wasn't/isn't really made for data storage.

It was made for servers that needed to run 24/7 without interruption but the actual data that's it's using is stored elseware for safekeeping.

Don't bother with these Momentus drives for storage.

Or are you not talking about storing anything but want to access it daily?

More detailed info would help to give an accurate suggestion. ;)
 
I know three people that personally use the SRT caching on the Z68, two of them it works perfect and the other has had problems. The two that it works flawlessly on are Asus motherboards, while the one that doesn't is an MSI board, (I might have them backwards).

At any rate, watching the guys who the SRT works fine, it seems their system is as fast as my current system with a dedicated SSD. Its pretty close. Not to mention loading a saved huge map in the 2000's in Civ5 takes like 5 seconds instead of 25 seconds.

I'm kind of torn though, because I like the crisp feel of my SSD, but I am currently caching 0 games because it only helps the load times, which aren't bad. I think I am going to get the z68 for both my wife and my son's computer and use the SRT since I won't have to micromanage their hard drive space. But if I were to build it again, I think I would keep the SSD and the spinning disks for the storage....
 
I think I am going to get the z68 for both my wife and my son's computer and use the SRT
Click to expand...
The family that computes together stays together? :)

Sounds good!
 
Momentus XT are not designed for RAID. I've read about some bad things with them in RAID, a la google.

If you want more speed than 3 640gb WD's eh?

Do you need the capacity as much as the speed? Maybe 128/256GB SSD? Or two velociraptors in R0?
 
Thanks for the info, I think I might pass on the expensive XTs in that case and just get a fast SSD to load what I am currently using on to it.

Any essential data on my PC I have backed-up to online storage so my current 3 drive RAID 0 is just for speed, if it fails I won't shed a tear. :)

I access the bulk data perhaps two or three times a week to watch movies and such. I was getting frustrated at the speed of steam backups installing or copying at LAN events so this is why I went initially for fast sequential speeds. It is amazing how setting up can soak up hours!

I might even experiment with SRT before moving data to it, the sata 6 OCZ Agility drives seems to be going at a good rate here.
 
Hmmm a thought - If I get a 128Gb SSD can I partition it in two and use half for caching and half for storing OS and a few goodies on?

That would give me booting speed and also a way of caching the games that won't fit. I could save big incoming files to the SSD and move them to the mechanical disks later to overcome the write speed issues :D
 
2 weeks using Intel RST, I now feel it really isn't all that cracked up to be.

I gave up my 5x1TB RAID0 for a 1x1TB + SSD RST and I now regret this configuration decision. I should have kept my RAID0 and use in addition to SSD RST. That is if your SSD cache is all full, you still have RAID0 to back you up. When the SSD cache is full, your HDD performance is back to normal speed exactly like a single 1TB without SSD caching. That means SLOW! I had to reset the acceleration mode everytime the HDD + SSD cache combination becomes slow.

I now plan to buy another 60GB SSD and in addition to the 60GB I already have, make them into 2x60GB SSD RAID0. Reserve 100GB of the SSD to OS and frequently used apps and allocate 20GB to SSD caching for the 5x1TB RAID0.

Keep in mind, Intel ICH only allows two RAID arrays and RST already occupies one. If you have more than 3TB and using it as Windows boot drive, you can only use up to 2GB. You can use all of 3TB if you only use it for storage. I didn't know this until I bought the SSD and hope to cache the whole 5x1TB RAID0 array.
 
STAY AWAY FROM SEAGATE MOMENTUS XT, THEY ARE GARBAGE, just read the seagate forums!! Mine is headed back for a swap!
 
I decided to bite the bullet and get 2 x 120G Adata S511 SSDs.

I will put them in a RAID 0 and use my other mechanical drive RAID on a seperate letter for storing what I can't fit on the SSD RAID. I might however try them with SRT just out of curiosity briefly before reinstalling. I only have 1.7TB so should be fine in terms of Intel ICH limits.

iTwins, my gear arrives Tuesday so if you don't have your second drive by then I will let you know what I find out SRT wise :)
 
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