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Raptor Hds?

P

phaelinx

Gawd
Joined
Mar 12, 2003
Messages
535
Ok I have a ata133 250gig maxtor hd, and 2 western digital 120gig ata100 hds. Currently I use the 250gigger for windows and the 2 120's in a raid0 setup for storage. If I add one of those 36gig Raptor 10k rpm hds, and put windows on that how much of a performance increase in load times for windows/games would I see? And how much of a performance increase would I see if I bought 2 of them and put them in a raid0 setup?
 
thats basically the same system setup that I have. I just got my raptor in 2 days ago. I notice bootup so much faster and windows apps are very much faster. Everything feels a lot better. You shouldnt' regret.
 
Whatever you do, get your data off that RAID 0 setup, and onto a single drive or RAID 1 if possible, RAID 0 is just asking for data loss.
 
so what do you recommend i have the 2 hds at? raid1? and raid0 causes alot of data loss??
 
correct me if im wrong.

raid 0 if one drive crashes then u lose both. i read it somewhere in this forum " would you turn in a paper that has every other word " (something like that)

raid 1 i think one drive is still good?
 
well my motherboard comes with a raid managing program that allows me to unlink the 2 drives even if 1 fails. im not worried about it failing, im worried about the data..but thats another story, im just interrested in a performance increase on my system..
 
RAID 0 is where two drives act as one. One chunk of a file is written to one drive, the next chunk goes on the other drive and back and forth. When one drive fails you loose the data on both, and since the chances of a drive failure is higher with using more drives, its asking for trouble.

RAID 1 is when both drives have the exact same data copied onto them. If one drive dies the other drive still has all data intact. The downside to RAID 1 is that its inefficient for storage, since if you had 2x 200 GB drives, you only have 200 GB usable since both drives have the same data.
 
so what do you recommend i do with my 2 120 giggers..? I want to raid them to gain performance but not at the cost of failure..i do however want the space of both hds..if i abolutely have to i'll raid1 them..but that would suck to just pretty much lose 120gigs of space....
 
First off, what kind of things are you doing with this 240gb raid array right now? Do those activies even take advantage of the array's abilities? If not, then you can take them out of an array and just use them seperately. That would still leave you with half your data if a drive fails and you would not lose any space. What kind of backups do you run on this array if any at all? If you run frequent backups then you can really do whatever you want with them because you won't lose much data. If backups are less frequent then Raid-1 might be the answer depending on the importance of the data.
 
RAID0 should not be considered a storage option, under any circumstances. RAID1 possibly but you lose half available disk space, since half the array is pure back up, identical copy of the other half. RAID5 or 50 is how corporations do it, but they also use large number of drives. I can do it with 4 drives on one card, and 5 drives on the other. Performance using even small raptors exceeds, any ATA solution or even a single large raptor. If pretty good performance without excessive cost is the goal here, a single 74GB raptor for OS and games is probably the cheapest solution. If you do huge sequential reads, writes (video editing), RAID5 should be you're first choice, purely for the sake of safety. One drive will do nothing but run parity data to ensure the rest don't become corrupted beyond use, and if a drive fails, will rebuild all data onto remaining drives.
 
phaelinx said:
well my motherboard comes with a raid managing program that allows me to unlink the 2 drives even if 1 fails. im not worried about it failing, im worried about the data..but thats another story, im just interrested in a performance increase on my system..
Click to expand...


If it's raid 0, even if you can "unlink" the drives you still lose EVERYTHING on the array.
 
I already moved all the data to my 250 gig hd, and unlinked the 2 120s and now have them as separate drives..They are storage so i didnt want corruption..so you need 4 drives for a raid5?
 
phaelinx said:
well my motherboard comes with a raid managing program that allows me to unlink the 2 drives even if 1 fails. im not worried about it failing, im worried about the data..but thats another story, im just interrested in a performance increase on my system..
Click to expand...

you need to re-read the definition of Raid 0 to understand why that wouldnt work.
 
phaelinx said:
I already moved all the data to my 250 gig hd, and unlinked the 2 120s and now have them as separate drives..They are storage so i didnt want corruption..so you need 4 drives for a raid5?
Click to expand...

You would also need some sort of Raid card that supports Raid-5 unless you want to use Windows build in software support. I believe you need a server package for that feature though. Raid-5 is one of the best ways to go but it's just not feasable for a lot of normal users that can't afford expensive hardware Raid-5 cards. Keep them seperate and just make good backups of the data. If you need to buy a DVD burner to do that then go get one.
 
TheGameguru said:
you need to re-read the definition of Raid 0 to understand why that wouldnt work.
Click to expand...

what do you mean wouldnt work? I just wanted the benefits of Raid..I am not very familiar with it. So I did setup a raid0 for awhile, but I moved all the data off the raid drives, deleted the array setup, and reformatted both hds in windows disk management. Now both drives are separated and I just moved my data back onto the drives..I'm just tired of the windows swap file being a bottleneck on my system because my drives are so slow..I mean its not that slow, but exiting games, my hds spins for about 5 seconds causing windows to load the desktop slowly
 
Raid 0 with two drives is perfectly fine for applications and temp data. It is perfectly fine for all your data, if you maintain reliable backups. This is talking about home use, where downtime due to hardware failure is acceptable. Work ends up being mirrored stripes, or RAID 5.

I backup a 2x74 raptor raid 0 to a cheap 180 gig drive every couple days, and have no fear of losing one of the raptors.

Anything that qualifies as actual data I've created ends up on removable at some point as well.
 
He means it wouldn't work AFTER a drive failure, as you'd have just lost half your data.

What you probably mean is that your software will deconstruct a striped pair for you. It of course would have to be a functional stripe, though, not one where a drive had failed.


phaelinx said:
what do you mean wouldnt work? I just wanted the benefits of Raid..I am not very familiar with it. So I did setup a raid0 for awhile, but I moved all the data off the raid drives, deleted the array setup, and reformatted both hds in windows disk management. Now both drives are separated and I just moved my data back onto the drives..I'm just tired of the windows swap file being a bottleneck on my system because my drives are so slow..I mean its not that slow, but exiting games, my hds spins for about 5 seconds causing windows to load the desktop slowly
Click to expand...
 
eastvillager said:
He means it wouldn't work AFTER a drive failure, as you'd have just lost half your data.

What you probably mean is that your software will deconstruct a striped pair for you. It of course would have to be a functional stripe, though, not one where a drive had failed.
Click to expand...

well I load the Raidmanaging software up and it shows both hds linked into 1 drive, then the options below it say "Create Array, Delete Array, and Rebuild Array" I assumed that since its showing both drives and the array that even after a drive failure i would still be able to delete the array..correct me if im wrong, but thats what it looks like..
 
If you think the page file is the bottleneck of your system...why use one?
 
djnes said:
If you think the page file is the bottleneck of your system...why use one?
Click to expand...

well with all the previous versions of windows, isnt it "recommended" to have one even if you have more than enough ram? I guess I could disable it but would it cause random windows errors?
 
phaelinx said:
well with all the previous versions of windows, isnt it "recommended" to have one even if you have more than enough ram? I guess I could disable it but would it cause random windows errors?
Click to expand...

Your never going to find a definitive yes or no. However, many many people do not have a page file, and have no problems. I think it's one tweak where you can feel the difference. Every PC I ever build feels snappier without one...assuming it has enough memory. Three of my systems have 1 GB of memory, and none of them have a page file.
 
djnes said:
Your never going to find a definitive yes or no. However, many many people do not have a page file, and have no problems. I think it's one tweak where you can feel the difference. Every PC I ever build feels snappier without one...assuming it has enough memory. Three of my systems have 1 GB of memory, and none of them have a page file.
Click to expand...


Ok, i have a 256 meg ram drive setup, would be good to setup a 200 meg pagefile on that drive or just remove it all together?
 
phaelinx said:
Ok, i have a 256 meg ram drive setup, would be good to setup a 200 meg pagefile on that drive or just remove it all together?
Click to expand...

200 MB doesn't seem worth the trouble at all anyway. I don't really know your uses of the computer, and what software you run...but it can't hurt to try it without a page file. If you start getting out of memory errors, or apps complain about no virtual memory, then you'll have to re-add it. If I ever have a page file, I set it as a static size of 400 MB and I just leave it on the C: drive.
 
liquidtrance123 said:
:confused: wtf are you talking about?
Click to expand...


WTF am I talking about? The fact that it has been proven and beaten to death that RAID0 does absolutely nothing for you in a desktop setting, besides cutting your MTBF in half. I'd suggest some heavy reading at Anandtech and StorageReview before you go around touting RAID0.
 
I use my pc for web browsing, chatting, and gaming, and posting on [h] baybee!...anyways..um...im just tired of exiting a game ive been playing for a couple hours to have windows/my hd lag as it attempts to reload the desktop icons and background/screen resolution, etc..shits annoying..i mean with my current setup, gig of ram, 3200+ you'd think it wouldnt do that but it does...i think its either 1. my hds or 2. a lousy vm/swap file thats slowing it down
 
djnes, don't take a steaming dump on this thread.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, you're bashing something you don't or can't have to feel better about your single disk's performance. Unless you have something useful to add, please don't 'contribute'.

--

I'm going to ignore the anandtech topic even though I've got plenty to say about it.

Personally, I have two 36.7g raptors in RAID-0, and I backup the array to a single 80GB removable PATA drive once a week. No worries here.

The speed increase in absolutely noticeable. I went from a PCI SATA Raid card to my current motherboard with onchip RAID (bypasses the PCI bus), the the speed increase was stunning. The raptors were being bottlenecked by the PCI bus before.

phaelinx, a question. Do you have onboard SATA RAID that bypasses the PCI bus? Like some (all?) of the nForce3 chipsets and kinda recent P4 chipsets. If you have an older motherboard, the raptors wouldn't be used to their full potential.
If you do have a suitable motherboard, I'd get two raptors, load windows and all your games and any other high i/o apps (photoshop scratch), and then REGULARLY backup the raptor array to your 250gb drive with norton ghost (creates an EXACT replica. very very easy system restores).

EDIT: Didn't see your sig while I was in the message editor. I JUST upgraded from the mobo you have right now. I'm sorry to say, but the onboard SATA controller IS THE DEVIL. The drivers for it just suck. BUT, see if they've been updated, they could have fixed them. They would bluescreen windows (both 2000 and XP) relentlessly. It was a known problem back then.

I THINK, the Silicon Image 3112a SATA controller runs across the PCI bus, someone correct if I'm wrong here. Therefore, I'd recommend a single raptor drive for now. Get another one later on once you upgrade your motherboard.
 
Never put a pagefile on a RAM drive. Instead, don't use a RAM drive. If you did put a page file on a RAM drive, it's going through the paging subsystem then through the RAM drive subsystem to accomplish what it could otherwise do going straight to RAM... Bad stuff.
 
vert1go, I have 2 onboard raid controllers, one is for my ide3 and ide4 ports..its ran by an ITE gigabyte driver and the other is a SataRAID controller with sata1 and sata2 ports..both controllers bypass the pci bus..and ive taken your guys' advice and didnt put the swap file on the ram drive..instead i disabled it..and am now just putting my temp folders/temp internet files on the ram drive so taht when i reboot...it auto deletes it..which is nice...just with doing those 2 things i noticed a huge increase in load times and less hd spins..is that because the page file isnt being resized dynamically while playing games/loading stuff ?? or is it more because i moved a bunch of small temp files off the drive and into the ram drive??
 
phaelinx said:
vert1go, I have 2 onboard raid controllers, one is for my ide3 and ide4 ports..its ran by an ITE gigabyte driver and the other is a SataRAID controller with sata1 and sata2 ports..both controllers bypass the pci bus..
Click to expand...

You positive about that? Let me do some looking..

I'm aware of the PATA ITE controller. Does the ITE chip still perform really badly in RAID 0? Last I saw, single drives were outperforming RAID 0 arrays using the ITE controller. Bad implementation on Gigabyte's part I'm told.
 
Found it.

http://www.siliconimage.com/products/sii3112.asp

"Featuring a 32-bit 33/66 MHz PCI interface, the SiI 3112 supports two independent Serial ATA devices and can be incorporated in a motherboard design or a PCI add-in card"

Meaning, even though it's not a PCI *card*, it still runs it's data through the PCI bus.
 
phaelinx said:
... is that because the page file isnt being resized dynamically while playing games/loading stuff ??
Click to expand...

That'd be my conclusion. Glad to hear your system is running faster :)
 
Yeah the performance is still slow...I had 2 ata100 7200 hds raid0 and were performing slower than the raid0 ata100 5400 hds on the same benchmarks..im wondering if thats just a driver issue or if its an actual hardware issue? either way once generation 2 pcix boards along with gen 2 amd64 bit boards (plus 64bit winxp) is out then i'll be upgrading..as it is..i got a 3200+ at 2.2ghz but my mb says it supports up to 3.2ghz...so i might screw around with overclocking it..cause someone mentioned 3200+ is probably the last line of xp processors...which blows...why put support for a 3.2ghz processor on a mb if you cant even hit that mark..anyways...i'll have to try and oc it some..
 
djnes said:
WTF am I talking about? The fact that it has been proven and beaten to death that RAID0 does absolutely nothing for you in a desktop setting, besides cutting your MTBF in half. I'd suggest some heavy reading at Anandtech and StorageReview before you go around touting RAID0.
Click to expand...
i noticed quite a large difference between 1 raptor and 2 in raid0
besides i work with quite large files all the time between my main PC and my Raid5 array on my webserver. files are at least 100mb and up to 700mb per file. So i believe i am getting much better performance from my array than with only 1 drive.

edit: and being as both my drives come with 5 year warranties i'm far from worried about my drives failing.
 
liquidtrance123 said:
edit: and being as both my drives come with 5 year warranties i'm far from worried about my drives failing.
Click to expand...

The warranties don't cover lost data....and the minimal difference in performance is not worth the risk of data security. I work with large files in the form of video, and no real world benchmark tests showed any difference in performance worth considering. As I mentioned before...read Anand's article.
 
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