SSD Vs WDC Black Raid 0

[V99]

I'm going to upgrade my rig to a probably a Core i7 930 very soon.

With this fancy new PC the only thing that will be holding me back is a crusty old WDC Blue 640gb.

So I'm weighting up my options.

SSD's are still to expensive for me (Im in New Zealand where a 64Gb SSD is $250+)
I can pick up two Western Digital Caviar Black GP 500GB 32mb Cache for under $200 NZ.

So if I put these two HDD's in Raid 0 - will I see a dramtic increase in read/write speed right?
Does anyone have any charts to show me off far off this setup would be from a single SSD?

 

[mjz_5]

raid doesn't really make a difference in real world tests... anandtech did a hard drive raid article a while ago... random read and writes are slower

 

[dustNbone]

If I were you, I'd just hold onto the 640GB Blue (it's not really that bad of a drive) until you can afford an SSD for you OS drive. That or get yourself a single Black to use as your interim OS drive, and when you get an SSD you can use the Black for the Apps/Games that don't fit on your SSD. The Black will be a little faster than the Blue in real world stuff (and alot faster on benchmarks, but those are not what matter). The longer you wait for an SSD, the more options you'll have in choosing one as new ones are being released quite often.

Dustin

 

[GreenMonkey]

If I were you, I'd just hold onto the 640GB Blue (it's not really that bad of a drive) until you can afford an SSD for you OS drive. That or get yourself a single Black to use as your interim OS drive, and when you get an SSD you can use the Black for the Apps/Games that don't fit on your SSD. The Black will be a little faster than the Blue in real world stuff (and alot faster on benchmarks, but those are not what matter). The longer you wait for an SSD, the more options you'll have in choosing one as new ones are being released quite often.

Dustin

+1

I wouldn't even bother with the 640GB Black. If you had an oldschool 80GB drive or something, that would be different..

 

[Tomson]

Before using an SSD people get hung up so much on read and write speeds when the main thing they'll start w0wing at is the access times which will make a HDD raid0 array feel like grandmas windows 98 malware box.

 

[V99]

If I were you, I'd just hold onto the 640GB Blue (it's not really that bad of a drive) until you can afford an SSD for you OS drive. That or get yourself a single Black to use as your interim OS drive, and when you get an SSD you can use the Black for the Apps/Games that don't fit on your SSD. The Black will be a little faster than the Blue in real world stuff (and alot faster on benchmarks, but those are not what matter). The longer you wait for an SSD, the more options you'll have in choosing one as new ones are being released quite often.

Dustin

Cheers mate - good advice.
I'm just a little gutted - thinking that if I pickup a Core i7 - I won't be able to make full use of it due to the HDD.

Guess I'll just need to pickup an SSD when 128Gb or 256GB versions are affordable.

 

[ToddW2]

It's all about access time for most people.

I did what you were going to do then ended up with a SSD. (new pc i7-930)

I got 4 x 640gb blacks to run Raid 0 then did a bunch more research, and checked HDTune scores in the forum here and people had that exact setup, and also ppl had the 60gb Intel GEn2 and I compared, and then searched more.

All I can say is WOW they are right.

SSD Seek time of .1ms blows away the read/write.

I got the Intel Gen2 60gb SSD from amazon for $224 shipped no tax.
So glad I did.

One of my 640GB was DOA, and another I am using as my storage drive in that system.
Still a good drive, that HDTuned faster than my 150gb Raptor.