Step up from 2x Raptors in Raid-0

SCSI drives won't help you in a desktop environment. They are designed for different purposes.


Try a four drive RAID 0 with raptors if you really need that much speed and no data reliability. And use a real raid controller instead of that built in mobo crap.
 
you are not going to get any benefit from SAS or SCSI dirves.


The Raptors are about as fast as you are going to get. Raid 0 also has no real benefits.

The SAS/SCSI works well when you have multiple uses trying to access diferent info all at the same time. It can access and send the info at a better rate. If you are a single user, you won't max out the capabilities of the Raptor.


Hope this saves you alot of money and headache
 
"Raid 0 also has no real benefits"

Um are you serious you'd like to make that statement.. Maybe you would like to back that up?

Raid 0 is aimed for speed/access time
If you want reliability id say look elsewhere for the best of both worlds tho Raid 0+1
 
Raid 0+1 would work. Just a Raid 0 does not give you a noticable boost and opens you up to reliability issues.

This has been covered ad nauseim.
 
rasper said:
"Raid 0 also has no real benefits"

Um are you serious you'd like to make that statement.. Maybe you would like to back that up?
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honestly, I don't think he needs to back that up. Its been discussed and hashed so many many times. A search here, a search at Tom's, and you'll find a lot of articles. It is the discussions like AMD vs Intel, nVidia vs ATI, or spit vs swallow :eek:

I think it comes down to personal preference. I went from a RAID zero to single drive, better for me, but that is my preference.
 
Liver said:
honestly, I don't think he needs to back that up. Its been discussed and hashed so many many times. A search here, a search at Tom's, and you'll find a lot of articles. It is the discussions like AMD vs Intel, nVidia vs ATI, or spit vs swallow :eek:

I think it comes down to personal preference. I went from a RAID zero to single drive, better for me, but that is my preference.
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Excellent post. Thanks for defusing the powder keg.

edit - here we go again...
 
Eickst said:
SCSI drives won't help you in a desktop environment. They are designed for different purposes.


Try a four drive RAID 0 with raptors if you really need that much speed and no data reliability. And use a real raid controller instead of that built in mobo crap.
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*snicker*
You say SCSI won't help and yet recommend RAID0? :confused: Access times of SCSI are much faster than any Raptor, no matter the RAID level.

And yes, RAID0 has it's place, but if you are not doing video editing, you will not see much (if any) benefit in it.
 
tuskenraider said:
Not...........one..........measely..........benefit...............:rolleyes:. Must.........not.......I give. What an asinine statement.
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Just because you "think" you experience a performance increase doesn't mean that there is actually a real increase. It's what I call a placebo effect.

In a desktop enviroment such as your machine, you will find no increases worth raid 0'ing for... on a full server production enviroment with proper equipment and controllers, you will.
 
The original post was to find the cheapest way to add performance.

He/She was thinking of buying very expensive drieve with the hope of getting a performance boost.

Staying with the spirit of what they were asking and trying to do, I answered them. (Which is what the forums are here for)


IN REAL WORLD USAGE- Raid 0 does NOT have any real benefit over a Single Drive. If you want to spend extra $$$ for a millisecond, Enjoy. If you want to save time, money and aggrivation, then go Raid 1,.. Raid 0 will wipe you out if one drive fails.


If you like Raid 0 then God Bless.

If you want to save $$$ and possible data loss, then go Raid 1.
 
protias said:
*snicker*
You say SCSI won't help and yet recommend RAID0? :confused: Access times of SCSI are much faster than any Raptor, no matter the RAID level.

And yes, RAID0 has it's place, but if you are not doing video editing, you will not see much (if any) benefit in it.
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Actually, I never recommend RAID 0 ---excuse me, it should be called AID 0. The R should be removed.

Since SCSI is so much better, why don't you buy a few 140 GB 15k SCSI's and tell me how much faster windows loads for you.

In my opinion, AID 0 has no place, at the very least a RAID 10 would be much better if you just have to have that marginal speed increase.

If you would have read the final part of the first sentence that you quoted from me, you would have seen how I feel about AID 0.
 
Eickst said:
Actually, I never recommend RAID 0 ---excuse me, it should be called AID 0. The R should be removed.

Since SCSI is so much better, why don't you buy a few 140 GB 15k SCSI's and tell me how much faster windows loads for you.

In my opinion, AID 0 has no place, at the very least a RAID 10 would be much better if you just have to have that marginal speed increase.

If you would have read the final part of the first sentence that you quoted from me, you would have seen how I feel about AID 0.
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I never said Windows will load any faster either, but for some people, a SCSI drive would be a lot faster than a Raptor when using a few applications.
 
Just because you "think" you experience a performance increase doesn't mean that there is actually a real increase. It's what I call a placebo effect.
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Since you want to take it there, do you call me a liar then? Question my ability to run a stopwatch? Please let me know, maybe I'll make a video for you showing how good I am with a stopwatch. I hardly call shaving off 7 seconds off boot-up time, 5 seconds on load-up time of America's Army, 4 seconds for Adobe photoshop, etc. a placebo effect. This was using my "imaginary stopwatch" so I could fool myself into spending more money for less performance. Hell, even I could find seconds in the typical "anti-raid" articles quoted here. So you enjoy your OPINION and I'll definately enjoy mine.
 
I'm with tusken here. This forum is mainly for enthusiasts i believe where just the slightest increase in performance could be extremely important. Also original poster obviously is after the most speed possible going by his rig and what he's planning on doing so why are people saying raid 0 is of no real benefit. ANY benchmark ANYWHERE will show dramatic gains in performance with a raid 0 config, never mind real world cos we aint talking real world are we we talking performance hungry people so just to dismiss the idea that it might be good for those particular people because certain people didn't find much use in it themselves is ridiculous. A Raid 0 config ca give performance gains of up to 50% in many areas. That's certanly good enough for me for one. Max.
 
Maybe I can find an agreeable middle ground:
Dear IntelOwnz,

Current SCSI drives are -at best- a little faster than the current generation WD Raptor in applications that a "gaming" user runs most of the time. Given the large cost delta vs. performance delta people do not recommend SCSI drives for gaming users.

It seems that people cannot agree on the benefit of R-0 for the gaming user. Therefore I propose this: purchase another pair of raptors and run a 4 disk R-0 array. If you are happy with the performance increase, we have solved your problem. If you are not, you can try RAID-10 or RAID-5 and if none of these options satisfy your need, sell the raptors again.
 
I just say that I've felt RAID0 gives enough boost to things like bootup, program launches, software installs and of course anything that benefits from the high STR's and that it shouldn't be dismissed because of higher cost or the increase of data loss. It's noteworthy though that the top gaming PC makers like Falcon Northwest, VoodooPC, Alienware all have RAID0 setups in their top systems. As an PC enthusiast, as well as others here, yes, the small increases of RAID0 in typical desktop use matters. If you have the money to try SCSI, I'd try it. I don't believe adding more disks to your RAID0 array will help much more in typical uses.
 
tuskenraider said:
It's noteworthy though that the top gaming PC makers like Falcon Northwest, VoodooPC, Alienware all have RAID0 setups in their top systems.
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Go jump off a bridge ;) Just because it's available and has bigger numbers doesn't make it better - see for example 4x4. Two sockets, dual dual-channel memory, 4 cores... And way more power draw/heat, and not any faster.
 
tuskenraider said:
I thought that statement would bring the love. :D I'd pass that advice on to anyone who actually buys their overpriced systems.
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I didn't mean it literally, more in the sense of: If they jump off a bridge, would you?
 
I think the RAID on my system actually cost me extra time.

I had a RAID for about 6 years, and installed Windows about maybe 6 times . . . clean installs and a new PC every 12-18 months.

The time I took setting up the RAID was greater (by many times) than the speed benefit. I used a stopwatch so my results are publishable and repeatable.

To accurately repeat my experiment you may have to do them in your shorts and / or drunk at times.:D
 
The time I took setting up the RAID was greater (by many times) than the speed benefit.
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Sorry to hear that. Beyond taking a minute to create an array in the BIOS and the using F6 to install the controller driver, I couldn't imagine what could take up so much time beyond testing it to if you get benefits from it or not.
 
If you want to avoid starting arguments with people that you don't know; never discuss these three things.
1. Religion
2. Dieting, weight loss strategies etc.
3. Raid 0

It will only get you in trouble.

I have made this my new years resolution.
 
Tusken has a lot of good valid points, those who are here to bash R-0 in any way, please leave now...This is not a topic of weather R-0 is faster then a single drive. I already know the answer to that of coarse.

drizzt came through with the best answer so far, I think I may buy 2 more raptors and see how they work if that isn't fast enough I'll send the raptors back and buy a scsi drive or two.

oh by the way, forgot to mention, space is not an issue for me, anything that is remotely important to me is on my server running R-10 so I'm not worried about a drive dying and having to send it back to the manufacturer.
 
drizzt came through with the best answer so far, I think I may buy 2 more raptors and see how they work if that isn't fast enough I'll send the raptors back and buy a scsi drive or two.
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I'm not gonna tell you nothing new, but adding the Raptors will do nothing to decrease seek times, but will send STR's soaring. I'm guessing you just want overall better response in the OS, which technically, nothing is available for you but SCSI and the iRAM as mentioned. If your manipulating huge files around daily, the 2 extra drives are gonna be helpful, but just about only for that. Going SCSI means you'll get faster seeking drives, but the firmware and cache isn't optimized for single user access, so any physical seek speed advantage may be wiped out by how the drive accesses data. I'd say that only way you'll really know is to compare for yourself on your own PC. Of course, you'll also have increases in heat and power demands to deal with. Maybe a more beneficial setup would be two RAID0's. One for the OS and one for programs........... Oh, and since we're throwing money around, get another just for a pagefile. Good luck choosing.
 
drizzt81 said:
Then get an iRAM or two, or four.
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Hope the man has some deep pockets!

You'll not find a faster device than a solid-state drive. A RAID-0 of four iRAMs should provide close to 260MB/s with 0ms latency. Possibly even 520MB/s. (2 drives per chipset, 2 chipsets, 130MB/s/drive) That's between 3-6x as fast as a Raptor. SCSI can't touch it. SAS can't touch it. SATA sure as hell can't touch it. Hell, even MC Hammer couldn't touch this.

The downside is the price/gig ratio. Four iRAMs, fully populated, would cost $2300, and only give ya 16GB of space. They'd also take up four PCI slots.
 
tuskenraider said:
Going SCSI means you'll get faster seeking drives, but the firmware and cache isn't optimized for single user access, so any physical seek speed advantage may be wiped out by how the drive accesses data.
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Mostly true, but there are exceptions. The Fujitsu MAU or MAX both are set up fairly well for single users. (Also available in the sexy SAS format)
 
TeeJayHoward said:
Mostly true, but there are exceptions. The Fujitsu MAU or MAX both are set up fairly well for single users. (Also available in the sexy SAS format)
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Finally someone in this thread that seems to know what he is talking about.
 
Thanks for the links. We've seen those articles before and fortunately have come to realize that doing your own actual testing on you own actual PC gives more accurate results, go figure.
 
RAID 0 is like the Hitler argument, as soon as it's brought up the conversation is over.
 
[LYL]Homer;1030609712 said:
RAID 0 is like the Hitler argument, as soon as it's brought up the conversation is over.
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Good ol' Godwin's law. I think from now I'll just invoke Homer's law and unsubscribe from the thread.
 
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