Best Drive Setup For New Build

[GMon]

System will be used mainly for gaming. Not sure if I want to do RAID 0, is there a substantial performance increase with it?

P5Q Deluxe
E8500
Thermalright Ultima-90
Mushkin DDR2 1066
PC P&C Silencer 750w
2x WD6400AAKS 640GB SATA HDD's
1X WD1600YS 160GB SATA HDD

1) What would be some array options for these 3 drives?

2) If I do use RAID 0 is my onboard ICH10R good/easy enough to set it up or is a separate hardware RAID controller recommended?

3) If I do RAID 0 should I short stack? Say a 100GB RAID 0 array for OS/Apps/Games

Any help you can offer this 40 year old noob would be greatly appreciated.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

RAID 0 doesn't really help much for regular usage, and doubles your risk of data loss (if either drives goes bad, you lose your data). RAID 0 is useful for applications that write large continuous files to the HD, like in video editing.

Just asking, why the 160Gig HD? Is it an existing drive? I'd just run the two 640gig WD as separate drives (no RAID), and put a page file on both, to allow Windows to use whichever drive has the lighter load.

Old HD's usually are noticeably slower because of platter density improvements, so you may be slowing your system down if you put apps/data on the old 160gig. A good use for this drive might be for backups only, or storing seldom-used data.

 

[GMon]

Yes...the 160GB HD is an existing drive that is not being used. SATA 16mb cache. I thought of throwing it in there for backups or something.

I do like the idea of using the two 640GB drives as separate drives. What about partitions? Should I create a smaller partition for os/programs for better performance. Should games go on save drive/partition as OS or should they go on the other HD or on same HD as OS but different partition?

 

[DSF]

Are these parts purchased yet? If not, I think you could make your computer considerably more cost-effective without losing any performance.

Edit: And what graphics card are you using?

 

[GMon]

The two 640GB have been purchased. What would have been your idea?

Video card is one that I got a couple months back before the 4850 & 4870 came out...it's a XFX 8800GTS G92 512mb Alpha Dog

 

[DSF]

The 640GBs are great, I was referring to the other parts in the system.

 

[GMon]

Oh...duh. Sorry about that. Everything has been delivered except for the 2 640GB's & memory which shipped out today from the egg and the psu is on the Fedex truck as we speak for delivery today. Got the psu from zipzoomfly since it saved me $12 for the blue version. Bought the case (Antec Nine Hundred) and mobo locally for a few bucks cheaper than what newegg was offering. Got the E8500 OEM for just $215/free shipping and that's the only reason I went for it over the $190 E8400. Otherwise the price to performance ration wouldn't have justified it but $25 diff seemed ok. 2 days after I bought the E8500 OEM it went up to $249 and now sits at $229.

 

[EarthwormJim]

I wouldn't bother with a raid array, it can be more of a headache than it's worth. I would not under any real circumstances go with RAID 0 (especially with 1.28tb worth of data). The parity RAID levels (5 and 6) and mirroring RAID levels (0+1, 1+0, 10, 1) are the only ones I'd use.

Just have your main OS on one of the WD drives. If you want you can split it up into two partitions, one for the OS and one for data. That way if you need to reformat, you don't wipe out the whole drive just the one partition.

Use the second drive for data and/or backup. Why not throw the 160gb drive into an external housing, it's always handy to have one.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Originally posted by: EarthwormJim
Use the second drive for data and/or backup. Why not throw the 160gb drive into an external housing, it's always handy to have one.

This is a good idea for backups.

As to partitioning the 2 640's, I usually have three partitions for my one hard drive (but that is just me). I have one for the OS, one for my games, and one for my pictures/data/saved files.

This isn't for speed or anything, just for ease of use. If I screw up windows and need to reinstall, I can reformat the OS partition without losing data or saved game files. Games are seperate so I don't acidentally lose any saved games files or game data. My picture/data partition is separate so I can have everything that I want to backup in one easy location. But again, this is just the way I do it, I am sure many other ways are better.

Probably putting OS on one drive, and apps/games on another will help a little, as well as putting a page file for windows to use on each drive. That might help a little as well.

Are you planning on OC'ing your system? Because that RAM is really meant to be used on an overclocked system.

 

[The Odorous One]

The P5Q series also utilizes Drive Xpert Raid. There are 2 special SATA ports on the board that run off of a SIL5723 controller on board. Just plug 2 similar hard drives into it and select Drive Xpert Super Speed in the bios. The drives will be automatically configured for Raid 0 and the OS will load with no need for drivers. Setup couldn't be easier and just as fast as ICH10R from what I have read. I am using it on P5Q-E and performance is excellent.

Those WD's should smoke in Raid 0, I am using Seagate 320GB x 2, 7200.10

I will have to try ICH10R too...

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: The Odorous One
The P5Q series also utilizes Drive Xpert Raid. There are 2 special SATA ports on the board that run off of a SIL5723 controller on board. Just plug 2 similar hard drives into it and select Drive Xpert Super Speed in the bios. The drives will be automatically configured for Raid 0 and the OS will load with no need for drivers. Setup couldn't be easier and just as fast as ICH10R from what I have read. I am using it on P5Q-E and performance is excellent.

Those WD's should smoke in Raid 0, I am using Seagate 320GB x 2, 7200.10

I will have to try ICH10R too...

RAID 0 with both WD drives would only leave him with 160gb to backup potentially 1.2tb of data.

I would not use RAID 0 for anything.

 

[The Odorous One]

Originally posted by: EarthwormJim

Originally posted by: The Odorous One
The P5Q series also utilizes Drive Xpert Raid. There are 2 special SATA ports on the board that run off of a SIL5723 controller on board. Just plug 2 similar hard drives into it and select Drive Xpert Super Speed in the bios. The drives will be automatically configured for Raid 0 and the OS will load with no need for drivers. Setup couldn't be easier and just as fast as ICH10R from what I have read. I am using it on P5Q-E and performance is excellent.

Those WD's should smoke in Raid 0, I am using Seagate 320GB x 2, 7200.10

I will have to try ICH10R too...

RAID 0 with both WD drives would only leave him with 160gb to backup potentially 1.2tb of data.

I would not use RAID 0 for anything.

There's nothing wrong with Raid 0. A smart user has a good backup plan anyway....

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I have a RAID 0 setup with 2 150 Raps in my Q9300. It is faster than my 8400 with 1 Rap... e.g. boot up, game load (haven't noticed map loads being any faster)

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: The Odorous One

Originally posted by: EarthwormJim

Originally posted by: The Odorous One
The P5Q series also utilizes Drive Xpert Raid. There are 2 special SATA ports on the board that run off of a SIL5723 controller on board. Just plug 2 similar hard drives into it and select Drive Xpert Super Speed in the bios. The drives will be automatically configured for Raid 0 and the OS will load with no need for drivers. Setup couldn't be easier and just as fast as ICH10R from what I have read. I am using it on P5Q-E and performance is excellent.

Those WD's should smoke in Raid 0, I am using Seagate 320GB x 2, 7200.10

I will have to try ICH10R too...

RAID 0 with both WD drives would only leave him with 160gb to backup potentially 1.2tb of data.

I would not use RAID 0 for anything.

There's nothing wrong with Raid 0. A smart user has a good backup plan anyway....

And based on the drives he currently has, 2 640gb drives and 1 160gb drive, he doesn't have enough space for a proper backup (unless he uses tons of DVDs).

The performance gains are not worth it, believe me I've had multiple RAID setups including two 15,000 rpm drives in a RAID 0. It's just more of a headache than it's worth.

There's better areas to spend your time tweaking than with RAID.

 

[The Odorous One]

Actually setting up Raid 0 on a P5Q is easy as pie using Drive Xpert. Do you have a P5Q EarthwormJim?

Even Intel raid is pretty straightforward to setup these days, not a lot of mystery or headache to it.

I'll agree the OP should invest in a bigger data drive, but as far as Raid 0 with those WD's he'll unquestionably have great performance.

Raid 0 is not a scary thing.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: The Odorous One
Actually setting up Raid 0 on a P5Q is easy as pie using Drive Xpert. Do you have a P5Q EarthwormJim?

Even Intel raid is pretty straightforward to setup these days, not a lot of mystery or headache to it.

I'll agree the OP should invest in a bigger data drive, but as far as Raid 0 with those WD's he'll unquestionably have great performance.

Raid 0 is not a scary thing.

Setup wasn't the headache I meant. No drivers are needed for the ICH9R (ICH10R) either if he's using Vista. RAID setting up is stupidly easy now days.

Lost data, and having to reinstall Windows are the headaches I mean. Even if you use an imaging program like Acronis, it can't see most raid volumes in the restore disk environment (possibly with BartPE you can).

Again the supposed speed increases (which really are not significant in any way) are not worth it. I'm speaking from experience with multiple RAID setups. Synthetic benchmarks (HDTune) show higher scores, but not day to day usage (programs loading, bootup time etc).

 

[The Odorous One]

I've never lost data on a Raid 0 platform in the 5 years I've been using it. Acronis TI11 works great with Raid 0 on the P5Q-E with Drive Xpert, no problem with volume detection. Recovery is easy.

 

[Modelworks]

You don't have to dedicate entire drives to a raid setup.
An example is 2- 250GB hard drives configured as one 400GB Raid0 partition with one 50GB Raid1 partition.

The 50GB partition gets any data that I need protected till I can burn it to a dvd.

Your going to see lots of people with serious data loss as drives get bigger.
People tend to just cram the drives full without ever backing up then complain when a drive fails.

That is the reason I made the raid1 partition small.
Forces me to do backups

 

[DSF]

Interesting, I didn't know you could do that. I'm not one to bother with RAID anyway, but that's good to know.

 

[GMon]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
You don't have to dedicate entire drives to a raid setup.
An example is 2- 250GB hard drives configured as one 400GB Raid0 partition with one 50GB Raid1 partition.

The 50GB partition gets any data that I need protected till I can burn it to a dvd.

Your going to see lots of people with serious data loss as drives get bigger.
People tend to just cram the drives full without ever backing up then complain when a drive fails.

That is the reason I made the raid1 partition small.
Forces me to do backups

I've heard of this but I thought since the RAID 1 partitions are on the same 2 drives as the RAID 0 partitions that you loose the performance gain that you normally get with RAID 0 because RAID 1 slows things down. Any truth to that?

Also I know you can make a drive image to a external drive using something like Apricorn software but can you make a image of two internal drives in RAID 0 to the external? Or does having the drives in RAID prevent you from creating a image? If that is possible then I could put the two 640GB's in RAID 0 and then the 160GB into an external enclosure and just create a image to it from time to time for back up.

When you make an image does it become the same size? I mean if you have 200GB used on your internal drive and you want to create an image and put it on your external, will the image be 200GB also or is it "condensed".

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: GMon

Originally posted by: Modelworks
You don't have to dedicate entire drives to a raid setup.
An example is 2- 250GB hard drives configured as one 400GB Raid0 partition with one 50GB Raid1 partition.

The 50GB partition gets any data that I need protected till I can burn it to a dvd.

Your going to see lots of people with serious data loss as drives get bigger.
People tend to just cram the drives full without ever backing up then complain when a drive fails.

That is the reason I made the raid1 partition small.
Forces me to do backups

I've heard of this but I thought since the RAID 1 partitions are on the same 2 drives as the RAID 0 partitions that you loose the performance gain that you normally get with RAID 0 because RAID 1 slows things down. Any truth to that?

Also I know you can make a drive image to a external drive using something like Apricorn software but can you make a image of two internal drives in RAID 0 to the external? Or does having the drives in RAID prevent you from creating a image? If that is possible then I could put the two 640GB's in RAID 0 and then the 160GB into an external enclosure and just create a image to it from time to time for back up.

When you make an image does it become the same size? I mean if you have 200GB used on your internal drive and you want to create an image and put it on your external, will the image be 200GB also or is it "condensed".

I think Modelworks is referring to Intel's Matrix RAID which does do this. I don't think most RAID controllers can do this (correct me if I'm wrong). You still get the benefits of RAID 0 on the partitions that are striped, but the redundancy of RAID 1 on the partitions that are mirrored. Good luck migrating to a new (different raid controller) mobo, or trying to get another computer to read the drives. Also RAID 1 doesn't slow anything down, it just doesn't speed anything up (maybe faster in reading).

You can create an image of a RAID drive, the whole point of RAID drivers and controllers are so OS's and software only see one physical drive. I made images of my 4x 500gb RAID 0 array. Only 100gb of data was used at the time (resulting in a 100gb image), and I eventually moved that image to a single WD 640GB drive (same as yours). Imaging programs don't really care about the hard drive, they just look at the actual data.

Depending on the imaging program, you can compress the image. It's not magic, but you could probably save 20gb on a 200gb image. You can also make an image of the whole drive, unused sectors included.

Again, RAID 0 is not really worth the time. You'll be left with 1.2tb of data, and only 160gb of space to backup. There's better areas to tweak your computer that actually result in noticeable differences. Hard drives are not as limiting to performance as many people think.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: EarthwormJim

I think Modelworks is referring to Intel's Matrix RAID which does do this. I don't think most RAID controllers can do this (correct me if I'm wrong). You still get the benefits of RAID 0 on the partitions that are striped, but the redundancy of RAID 1 on the partitions that are mirrored. Good luck migrating to a new (different raid controller) mobo, or trying to get another computer to read the drives. Also RAID 1 doesn't slow anything down, it just doesn't speed anything up (maybe faster in reading).

Its actually becoming quite common now to mix and match raid layouts.
I have some SAS connected raid cards that are made by LSI that allow any combination of raid .

You can create an image of a RAID drive, the whole point of RAID drivers and controllers are so OS's and software only see one physical drive. I made images of my 4x 500gb RAID 0 array. Only 100gb of data was used at the time (resulting in a 100gb image), and I eventually moved that image to a single WD 640GB drive (same as yours). Imaging programs don't really care about the hard drive, they just look at the actual data.

The whole point of raid is redundancy. Using it for speed came about when we couldn't get scsi drives that were cheap enough and fast enough to keep up with uncompressed video.

Again, RAID 0 is not really worth the time. You'll be left with 1.2tb of data, and only 160gb of space to backup. There's better areas to tweak your computer that actually result in noticeable differences. Hard drives are not as limiting to performance as many people think.

Raid requires very little time to set up. Its maybe 30 seconds to configure the drives in the bios of whatever chipset your using and maybe 2 minutes to install drivers in the OS.
If you do any video work or lots of file copying it is well worth it.

Also with the price of drives as cheap as they are, I see no reason why someone who is concerned about what they have stored to not use a raid1 array.
Other than the cost of the drive and the power it uses, raid1 gives the user total peace of mind.
Not saying everyone should do it, but if your motherboard already supports it, then why not , especially if its used in a business setting.

 

[The Odorous One]

Originally posted by: GMon

Originally posted by: Modelworks
You don't have to dedicate entire drives to a raid setup.
An example is 2- 250GB hard drives configured as one 400GB Raid0 partition with one 50GB Raid1 partition.

The 50GB partition gets any data that I need protected till I can burn it to a dvd.

Your going to see lots of people with serious data loss as drives get bigger.
People tend to just cram the drives full without ever backing up then complain when a drive fails.

That is the reason I made the raid1 partition small.
Forces me to do backups

I've heard of this but I thought since the RAID 1 partitions are on the same 2 drives as the RAID 0 partitions that you loose the performance gain that you normally get with RAID 0 because RAID 1 slows things down. Any truth to that?

Also I know you can make a drive image to a external drive using something like Apricorn software but can you make a image of two internal drives in RAID 0 to the external? Or does having the drives in RAID prevent you from creating a image? If that is possible then I could put the two 640GB's in RAID 0 and then the 160GB into an external enclosure and just create a image to it from time to time for back up.

When you make an image does it become the same size? I mean if you have 200GB used on your internal drive and you want to create an image and put it on your external, will the image be 200GB also or is it "condensed".

You can do exactly what you say want to. Put the 160 GB drive in an external enclosure and save the Riad 0 image to that drive. Then do a recovery from the external drive. I do that with Acronis TI11, it's a breeze.

As long as the machine is stable, updated, and virus free, I keep making additional images. But, I always save the first image after a fresh install. This will always give you a good starting point if things go haywire. I usually keep the first, the last and next to last images to be safe.

To give you an idea of image file size, a fresh install of Vista x64 with all the updates and one game installed (UT3 patched), the image size is 16.3 GB with default compression. You can use a higher level compression but I am not sure what size would result.