Suggestions needed for new Rig

[davewolfs]

Hey folks,

I am looking to setup a new rig and would like to get some suggestions on what types of drives to use.

Data redundancy is important to me so I would like to use a Raid 5 setup with 4 drives.

I would like some drives with decent performance and that also run quiet if possible.

My initial thoughts are 4 Western Digital Caviar 160GB based on a hard drive round up review on Toms Hardware. At only $50 a drive it seems like a great deal too.

I was also considering a 320gb seagate barracuda or wd drive, but I am unsure if these larger drives are as good in performance. Perhaps some of you could fill me in.

Finally, in the future I would consider adding 2 additional raptor drives that would be used simply for paging and large Photoshop files that are being worked on.

If any of you could provide suggestions it woudl be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave

 

[Vertigo Acid]

Which specific model of WD Caviar 160gb drive are you looking at? I'd bet for $50 they are 1 generation back at this point. They may be a bargain, but the newer drives are going to out perform them.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148212 is what I'd suggest for IDE right now, Seagate 7200.10
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136062 for SATA (current generation Caviar, RAID Edition)

The other way to go would be 3x250gb drives for about the same price
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136055
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148141
While 4 drives may seem more reliable than three, you actually decrease the system MTBF with each additional drive you add. In addition, more drives means more power, cooling, and space.

 

[IntelOwnz]

Which specific model of WD Caviar 160gb drive are you looking at? I'd bet for $50 they are 1 generation back at this point. They may be a bargain, but the newer drives are going to out perform them.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148212 is what I'd suggest for IDE right now, Seagate 7200.10
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136062 for SATA (current generation Caviar, RAID Edition)

The other way to go would be 3x250gb drives for about the same price
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136055
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148141
While 4 drives may seem more reliable than three, you actually decrease the system MTBF with each additional drive you add. In addition, more drives means more power, cooling, and space.

RAID Edition? Whaaaatttt???

 

[davewolfs]

I had 4 drives in mind because it is my understanding that Raid 5 peforms better with more drives.

Also, what type of performance can I expect from Raid 5 vs non Raid. I plan on putting my system and critical programs on this large partition. I was under the impression that Raid 5 was slow but after reading the south bridge round up article on toms, it appears that Raid 5 works fairly well.

Here is the benchmark:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/03/the_southbridge_battle/page17.html

Also, do the 160GB drives perform better then the 250gb or 320gb drives or are the differences negligible?

Thanks!

 

[Farva]

It depends on the card you use too. If you have an Areca or LSI card, it would perform a lot better than a Highpoint (as the calculations are done on the card for the Areca and LSI where the Highpoint has the CPU do the calculations).

 

[PopeKevinI]

Do you know for certain that your controller will do RAID 5? Most consumer-level won't. Those that do tend to carry a lot of overhead; they rely on the CPU to do all their checksums.

edit: ignore that, I need to read more

If I were you, I'd get a single large drive for storage. Four 160 GB drives in RAID 5 will give you somewhere around 450 GB useable space (don't forget decimal-binary conversion). Newegg has a 400 GB Seagate 7200.10 listed at $120. RAID 5 will give you some speed advantage over that, but I don't think it would be significant in most applications. Most users just don't do enough disk reads to justify a RAID 5.

I'm thinking that the only real benefit to RAID 5 is redundancy in your case. You can get better, more reliable redundancy by setting up a simple mirror at no more cost than the RAID 5. At $200 for the drives and probably another $50+ for the controller, you could buy two 400 GB drives and mirror them. The problem with RAID 5 is it depends on the controller; without the controller you can't access your data. A mirrored drive can be accessed far more easily in the event of some major failure.

If you want speed, go with the Raptors. Get two of them and use them for your OS, apps, paging, and whatever files you want to read faster than your bulk drive(s) can provide. Try to divide your tasks between them...if you use Photoshop a lot, put your Photoshop paging on one and your OS paging on the other. In your case I'd probably get the two largest that met my budget. Use one for the OS and document storage, the other for application and game installation. I can't decide which would be a better arrangement for the paging files; I'd probably put the OS paging on the OS drive but it might warrant some testing to see if there's a noticeable difference.

 

[davewolfs]

As far as the controller goes, I was going to count on using the ICH8R south bridge.

The only thing that turned me off about it using Raid 1 are the poor performance numbers shown in this article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/03/the_southbridge_battle/page17.html

As you can see the Raid 5 config shows significantly better performance.

I have read some posts on here where some folks are getting great numbers using the Seagate Barracuda 320GB drives. Do these drives perform better then the 160GB drives?

 

[davewolfs]

After further research I would also consider a 3ware or Areca controller.

 

[Vertigo Acid]

(generally) within a given family/generation of drives, they will all have the same platter density, and just vary the number of platters, so there shouldn't be much difference between 160gb and 320gb drives