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Raid0 vs Raptor?

S

slaya

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 10, 2002
Messages
1,132
Hey, im considering purchasing 2x Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM IDE 8MB Retail ($40 a peice) and run them in Raid0, OR get 1x Western Digital 36.6GB 10K RPM SATA Retail ($99) and use my 200 GB Seagate as storage. I want mucho speed from my hard drive, but i'm not sure which route to go. With Raid0, I get an OVERALL increase in speed as well as a nice amount of storage. With the Raptor I get an extremely fast boot drive, with little space, but I will have my slow (compared to the others) storage drive. What would you do, and why?

Also, how would the speed from the Raid0 drives compare to the Raptor?
 
This has actaully (beleive it or not) been gone over like a million times.........

But One more time...

RAID does give a usefull speed increase as long as your dealing with large files. When I upgraded to RAID I did notice a a increase in speed (Timed) in my boot times. However when your dealing with raid in a everyday situation then you need the fastest seektimes going.

It's also great for braggin rights !!!!

AS for everyday use for most people RAID-0 Is too unrelaiable. So if you want storage don't go near Raid. The only thing i put on my raid is replacable stuff. Everything else goes on Single drives...

While im on the subject.... Why would anyone use Raid or even a fast drive for storage. the adverage PATA-UDMA drive is pleanty fast enough to play even the largest of DIVX/XVID files.

So if your wanting fast booting go for the Raptor. The Seek times on the 120's would be too slow for a array. Especially in a boot drive and with that amount of space your just asking for some major fragmentation, and in a Raid array fragmentation is your worst enemy. but if you want storage then go for the 120's and keep them as single drives.
 
Oh, sorry, I didn't think this was a *popular* question, or else I would have searched. Thanks for the information, I guess i'll probably get the Raptor, and use it with me 200 GB Seagate.
 
If your primarily doing video editing, go for RAID0. But, you'd better have another drive to store your files on.

If your not doing video editing, or nothing professional level, get the Raptor and the storage drive.
 
i actually had the same debate with my self, and i am actually still in the middle of the two. I am not using it for professional use just for gaming and every day use. though right now i am leaning towards the raptor and then after a while i am gonna by another and put those in to raid0....hahaha, prob not but its my wish.

games i will play
CS 1.6 and S
HL2
WoW
Battlefield 1942 & desert combat
Battlefield 2******(cant wait)
and many more to come out
 
jnex26 said:
It's also great for braggin rights !!!!
Click to expand...
OS -> 3 18GB 15K Cheetah SCSI drives in a RAID 0 Array
Data -> 12 36GB 15K Cheetah SCSI drives in 2 RAID 5 Arrays
;)


jnex26 said:
So if you want storage don't go near Raid. The only thing i put on my raid is replacable stuff. Everything else goes on Single drives...

While im on the subject.... Why would anyone use Raid or even a fast drive for storage.
Click to expand...
Placing your data on 2 drives in a RAID 1 Array ( or 3+ drives in a RAID 5 Array) makes perfect sense to me ... but, I guess it comes down to what your data is worth to you. Given the backup habits of most folks, I often recommend a single OS drive and multiple drives in a RAID Array for data storage.

Anyone "toyed" with Intel's "Matrix Raid" yet?
 
Dually: is that the system you're running right now? Thats pretty similar to the configuration I'm going to use on my dual-Opteron system except I'm going to use (4)18gb SCSIs w/ RAID 0 for the OS and (8)80gb SATA w/ RAID 50 for the programs.
 
Order said:
What is your time from a cold start to desktop?, if you don't mind me asking...
Click to expand...
I've never really timed it ... it certainly is longer than a boxen with a single IDE/SATA drive since the SCSI Drives/Arrays have to be initialized ... once the the arrays are initalized ... it loads and runs ... well ... like a Cheetah! ;) I will try to time it later this eve.

Order said:
BTW: I don't know if you've looked at the Fujitsu MAU series...their scores absolutely kill other drives in all single user tests and most other tests as well.
Click to expand...
Yes ... unforunately, I can't afford to purchase the latest generation SCSI Drives. All my SCSI drives are either used or preferably unused spares, so I'm typically a generation or two behind. The MAUs are certianly on my watch list!
 
jnex26 said:
When I upgraded to RAID I did notice a a increase in speed (Timed) in my boot times.
Click to expand...

Maybe that's because booting the system is CPU-bound, not disk I/O-bound.

jnex26 said:
the adverage PATA-UDMA drive is pleanty fast enough to play even the largest of DIVX/XVID files.
Click to expand...

How is the size of the file relevant? I thought the file was streamed in, and as long as it could be read as fast as it was being played, then everything was just fine.

.B ekiM
 
Its been great! The 15K drives where all unused spares ... I've had to replace one, but that was due to a motor start error during intial installation/testing ... so, I don't really factor that into the equation. I purchased 30 used IBM 10K U160 9GB drives for use my 5 2u servers (each server has 4 drives in a RAID 5 Array for the OS) ... so far 20 drives in service and 10 spares have setting on the self.

Alot has to do with the history of the drives ... the 9GBs came from upgraded corporate drive arrays, so they lived in a well ventilated enclosure with conditioned power ... in that environment ts pretty tough to kill an enterprise class scsi drive ... hence the typical 5 year warranty for a drive that they know will be hammered 24/7.

I look at it this way ... these are all in use in my home lab, and not a business ... all the drives are in RAID 5 Arrays (with the exception of the RAID 0 Array in my workstation) ... the 9GB drives cost me about .50 per gig, so when I finally do loose one it won't be that big of deal ... pop one of the spares in, and rock on. The 15Ks and the larger capacity 10ks did cost a bit more per gig, but nothing even approaching the cost of a new SCSI drive.
 
It seems like you have a pretty sweet source for used hardware...
Any chance you want to share? :)
 
mikeblas said:
Maybe that's because booting the system is CPU-bound, not disk I/O-bound.



How is the size of the file relevant? I thought the file was streamed in, and as long as it could be read as fast as it was being played, then everything was just fine.

.B ekiM
Click to expand...

A.) That would mean that RAID would Slow down the system, RAID Sped up my booting times.

B.) File size Is VERY relvant when reading media files. As long as the disk can keep up with the information requested then you will be able to play a media file fine.
 
As long as you size the stripes properly you should see a speed increase in most environments.

Dually: touche. :)
 
jnex26 said:
B.) File size Is VERY relvant when reading media files. As long as the disk can keep up with the information requested then you will be able to play a media file fine.
Click to expand...

If you're consuming data at a certain rate (in order to play it without dropping out) and you're reading data at a certain rate, then the actual size of the data stream isn't involved in the equation. You just need to keep the rates up.

The rates don't change based on the size of the file... though they can change based on caching or location on the disk.

Why would a slightly slower drive not be adequate to play larger media files, but correctly play smaller media files?

.B ekiM
 
mikeblas said:
If you're consuming data at a certain rate (in order to play it without dropping out) and you're reading data at a certain rate, then the actual size of the data stream isn't involved in the equation. You just need to keep the rates up.

The rates don't change based on the size of the file... though they can change based on caching or location on the disk.
Click to expand...
As an example of this, get the halo 2 trailer in HD wmv (10 mbit/s) and put it on an old cdrom drive. Then try to play it. Yecch.

However, even a really old hard drive will maintain 10 mbit sustained transfer rate, so there's something else going on if you can't play the media files. Your media player may be getting unaccelerated video, caching badly, or something else simple and dumb. MPlayer Classic works for me, even on 4+gb avis, so if WMP isn't doing it for you, might be something to look into.
 
RAID 0 can Increase your access times by a pretty significant amount. If you do alot of small file reads, like booting versions of windows (stick with me here) that don't optimize for initial file access, which XP does, it can slow down your boot time if the files are more randomly assorted. XP does a nice optimization at boot time to speed up the process, it does create a nice sequential set of files for the system to read. In most instances though, including loading game levels(which have been bencmarked to be cpu bound), raid 0 is pretty much useless for the home user. It's geared towards single, large file access at high speed, it's better designed for working with large video and audio files.
 
I strongly argue that RAID 0 is only "useless" if you are striping across only two or three drives while using a cheap or built-in controller. A properly configured array of 4+ disks on a good controller will fly in practically all circumstances.
 
Note, I did not say that raid 0 was useless in all applications I said it was pretty much useless for the home user. The only advantage raid0 has ever had over a single drive is massive raw transfer rates possibilities.
 
Sorry, I should have phrased that more accurately. I didn't mean that you were insinuating uselessness.
Back on topic, though, I strongly believe (and wish I had evidence to verify) that ANY application is greatly enhanced by my aforementioned configuration of 4 disks + the controller.
 
Order said:
Back on topic, though, I strongly believe (and wish I had evidence to verify) that ANY application is greatly enhanced by my aforementioned configuration of 4 disks + the controller.
Click to expand...

How would a better disk system help applications that aren't I/O-bound?

.B ekiM
 
Seek time and sustained transfer rate.
(this is speculation, as i haven't tried doing this on a system that seemingly wouldn't need such an implementation)
 
Order said:
Seek time and sustained transfer rate.
(this is speculation, as i haven't tried doing this on a system that seemingly wouldn't need such an implementation)
Click to expand...

Seek time and transfer rate are irrelevant because you're not I/O-bound, so you weren't waiting for them. Making them faster won't make applications that aren't using them faster, since the application's aren't gated by that aspect of performance.

I think you'll have a hard time showing that "ANY application is greatly enhanced by" a good disk subsystem. Showing that any I/O-bound application is enhanced by faster disk should be pretty easy.

.B ekiM
 
Well.
You just made me your bitch, lol.
;)
I always overlook stuff like that. Sorry for hijacking the thread with my incorrect assumptions.
 
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