IDE Raid - How good is it?

[maxxy]

Hey guys,

I am currently thinking of upgrading my system to an AthlonXP system and I want to know if IDE Raid is THAT much of a performance gain? Will games run faster? Will photoshop run THAT much faster? Is it worth the 100 uk pounds more that I will need to spend in order to get it?

Cheers,

Maxxy

 

[Haribo]

<< ...and I want to know if IDE Raid is THAT much of a performance gain? >>



no, only for HD intesive stuff... running a server is a good example.



<< Will games run faster? >>



no, might load a little bit faster though.



<< Will photoshop run THAT much faster? >>



no, can't see why... PS loves memory not HD speed.



<< Is it worth the 100 uk pounds more that I will need to spend in order to get it? >>



hmm 100£ isn't that much... but do you really need it?

 

[Tripleshot]

IDE raid is fine. I use it and I've noticed a big difference in speed, for apps as well as games. I have an Abit BX133 raid 0 using the on board Highpoint 370 controller running XP and using a PIII 850 CPU.

The only ones I ever see in here bashing IDE raid are those who have scci raid or they don't have a clue about IDE raid and spout what they read. SCCI raid 5 or 10 is used extensively in a corporate environment. SCCI means "Shell out the money!" Sure,If you have money to throw away, but scci. 1000's of corporate admins just couldn't all be wrong.😉

But if you are thinking of raid on your personal computer, I can tell you it IS worth the effort. Use high speed IDE drives, get a promise controller or use an on board raid controller from abit (highpoint) or Asus(promise) If you want to save your data, empliment a disater recovery program for yourself,or configure 0+1 raid.

BTW, Promise HAS Raid 5 for IDE. It is as fast as most any scci raid set up. Go to their website and check them out. I swear, they are the best for IDE. Smart and helpful tech support too.

 

[DSTA]

For a workstation I'd put RAID (SCSI or IDE) last on the list, ie if there is budget left over after buying a decent chunk of RAM, a good vid card and a fast CPU. If you want to have an advantage in working with big files you'll need 3 hdds at least: one for the OS & apps, two for the RAID0 which would hold data.

 

[Tripleshot]

I re read your post. Yes, photoshop will run faster.

 

[maxxy]

Thanks a bunch... After reading this I've decided to save my money and not go with IDE raid if the performance gain isn't going to be substantial.
512mb ram enough for today's programs?

 

[boyRacer]

I seriously can't tell isht between my bros WD 40gb by itself and my Raid array... maybe everything is a little more responsive... but i suppose that's just because my drives have a faster seek time.

 

[ucla88]

<< For a workstation I'd put RAID (SCSI or IDE) last on the list, ie if there is budget left over after buying a decent chunk of RAM, a good vid card and a fast CPU. If you want to have an advantage in working with big files you'll need 3 hdds at least: one for the OS & apps, two for the RAID0 which would hold data. >>



i'd second this.

raid is somewhat helpful is specific circumstances. i happen to have two seagate 10k's in a raid 0 configuration as well as a separate os scsi disk. i happen to do alot of pshop. yes, raid 0 will speed up photoshop in terms of reading and writing the large files. however, it's much more important to have memory (512 is minimum for pshop, 1gb isn't overkill) AND a separate disk for scratch. if you only have two disks and want to do alot of pshop, don't raid 0 them. the ide raid performance increase won't make up for the fact that you don't have a separate scratch disk.

actually, my order for a fast pshop machine (it's really the only intensive thing my computer does)

cpu, ram, good 2d video card, separate os/scratch disks, tablet pointing device, dual monitors, scsi upgrade, raid upgrade, smp