Hi all
I am still in the crazy process of building a new computer for my wife. I have been doing lots of research in the effort to educate myself and keeping up with the times and also having lots of fun (Ultra Geek hat on). And have to decided to get some feedback from the rest of you.
At first I thought of using
2- 74Gb raptors
2- ATA 7200 Hard drives
The problem I came with is the following
I need data to be mirrored and I need around 120Gb of it. And I would like to get the max performance available while maintaining high availability.
I am planning to use a Asus P4C800-E DLX which can support
2 SATA hard drives in Raid0 or Raid 1 via the ICH5R chipset
and also support
2 SATA hard drives in Raid 0 or Raid 1 via the promise chipset
while also being able to do
2 PATA hard drives which can then mirror the SATA drives
So it seems like to me if I want Raid 0+1 I need to use the promise controller. Which I am not clear on how good that is versus the ICHR5 chipset. I also not clear if it wouldn't just be better to get a different motherboard and put in a PCI IDE Raid controller instead.
Ideally two Raptor hard drives in Raid0 would give the max performance but what happens to that performance when you then mirror (raid 1) that data to a set of other hard drives that are not Raptors? I am thinking that performance will go down the toilet and the strength and cost of raptors would be lost.
From my research I conclude that
- WD Raptors are the king of SATA and IDE with more developed command queing they can start to topple SCSI.
- IBM/Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 are the 2nd fastest SATA hard drive and lag quite a bit behind the Raptors.
- And I am not sure which is the fastest ATA hard drive is I am thinking it is probably the Seagate 7200.7, anyone know?
- I also going to conclude that two non Raptor SATA Hard drives in Raid 0 are as fast one single Raptor for the most part anyways. That Raptor is quite the drive.
Anyways here is my scenerios
Base System
Asus P4C800-E DLX
Intel P4-3Ghz Northwood
2Gb of PC3200 DDR400
ATI AIW 9600 Pro
Sony or Plextor Burner
2nd DVD (can I copy from DVD to DVD or is that a waste?)
Built in Sound and Ethernet.
Scenerio 1
2- WD 74Gb Raptors in Raid 1 (yes raid 1 anyone have data on how Raid 1 affects performance?)
Making up one partition swap, OS, Data.
* Over budget and I am not sure it would prove to be the best performance as OS, Data, and swap are effectively 1 spindle. Does not meet storage requirement.
Scenerio 2
2- Hitachi Desk stars 80Gb (Raid 1)
2-Seagate 40Gb (raid 1)
Deskstars being Primary drive C for OS, and DATA
Seagates being Swap and general low use storage
* cheap performance highly fault tolerant meets storage requirements. Probably a safe performer. Allows one to seperate OS, Data, and Swap.
Scenerio 3
2- Seagate SATA 80Gb (Raid 0)
2- Seagate PATA 80Gb (Raid 0)
One large drive in making a Raid 0+1
* Probably the best performance. Since of the 2Gb or system ram swap would be minimal still shared OS, Data, and swap. Faster tho than just getting two Raptors? Not sure.
Scenerio 4
Forget IDE
5-36G 10K Hard Drives in Raid 5 off of Ebay
* Probably faster more expensive, louder, generate more heat.
Scenreio 5
you guys comment.
As you can see I am trying to get this computer to perform somewhat well and have it be resilant since its for my wife (yes I am still building it, I did get Dell 2001FP awesome!).
And I have found that IO is always one the biggest bottlenecks in a computer system. And i am bit spoiled by my PCs IO speed
1- 15K 18Gb Cheetah for OS
1- 15K 18Gb Cheetah for Games (and yeah data)
1- 7.2K 9Gb barricuda for Swap
And before that I had 4 7.2K RPM barricudas on a DPT raid controller with 128Mb of Cache and in Raid 0 volume. I would say my current I/O is faster than before. I have considered getting another Raid Controller that is support on Windows 2K and XP and get some more Cheetahs or maybe just build the computer that way but 120Gb of Scsi data gets expensive quick.
I am sorry this message to is long I just trying to get some feedback.
Carlos
I am still in the crazy process of building a new computer for my wife. I have been doing lots of research in the effort to educate myself and keeping up with the times and also having lots of fun (Ultra Geek hat on). And have to decided to get some feedback from the rest of you.
At first I thought of using
2- 74Gb raptors
2- ATA 7200 Hard drives
The problem I came with is the following
I need data to be mirrored and I need around 120Gb of it. And I would like to get the max performance available while maintaining high availability.
I am planning to use a Asus P4C800-E DLX which can support
2 SATA hard drives in Raid0 or Raid 1 via the ICH5R chipset
and also support
2 SATA hard drives in Raid 0 or Raid 1 via the promise chipset
while also being able to do
2 PATA hard drives which can then mirror the SATA drives
So it seems like to me if I want Raid 0+1 I need to use the promise controller. Which I am not clear on how good that is versus the ICHR5 chipset. I also not clear if it wouldn't just be better to get a different motherboard and put in a PCI IDE Raid controller instead.
Ideally two Raptor hard drives in Raid0 would give the max performance but what happens to that performance when you then mirror (raid 1) that data to a set of other hard drives that are not Raptors? I am thinking that performance will go down the toilet and the strength and cost of raptors would be lost.
From my research I conclude that
- WD Raptors are the king of SATA and IDE with more developed command queing they can start to topple SCSI.
- IBM/Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 are the 2nd fastest SATA hard drive and lag quite a bit behind the Raptors.
- And I am not sure which is the fastest ATA hard drive is I am thinking it is probably the Seagate 7200.7, anyone know?
- I also going to conclude that two non Raptor SATA Hard drives in Raid 0 are as fast one single Raptor for the most part anyways. That Raptor is quite the drive.
Anyways here is my scenerios
Base System
Asus P4C800-E DLX
Intel P4-3Ghz Northwood
2Gb of PC3200 DDR400
ATI AIW 9600 Pro
Sony or Plextor Burner
2nd DVD (can I copy from DVD to DVD or is that a waste?)
Built in Sound and Ethernet.
Scenerio 1
2- WD 74Gb Raptors in Raid 1 (yes raid 1 anyone have data on how Raid 1 affects performance?)
Making up one partition swap, OS, Data.
* Over budget and I am not sure it would prove to be the best performance as OS, Data, and swap are effectively 1 spindle. Does not meet storage requirement.
Scenerio 2
2- Hitachi Desk stars 80Gb (Raid 1)
2-Seagate 40Gb (raid 1)
Deskstars being Primary drive C for OS, and DATA
Seagates being Swap and general low use storage
* cheap performance highly fault tolerant meets storage requirements. Probably a safe performer. Allows one to seperate OS, Data, and Swap.
Scenerio 3
2- Seagate SATA 80Gb (Raid 0)
2- Seagate PATA 80Gb (Raid 0)
One large drive in making a Raid 0+1
* Probably the best performance. Since of the 2Gb or system ram swap would be minimal still shared OS, Data, and swap. Faster tho than just getting two Raptors? Not sure.
Scenerio 4
Forget IDE
5-36G 10K Hard Drives in Raid 5 off of Ebay
* Probably faster more expensive, louder, generate more heat.
Scenreio 5
you guys comment.
As you can see I am trying to get this computer to perform somewhat well and have it be resilant since its for my wife (yes I am still building it, I did get Dell 2001FP awesome!).
And I have found that IO is always one the biggest bottlenecks in a computer system. And i am bit spoiled by my PCs IO speed
1- 15K 18Gb Cheetah for OS
1- 15K 18Gb Cheetah for Games (and yeah data)
1- 7.2K 9Gb barricuda for Swap
And before that I had 4 7.2K RPM barricudas on a DPT raid controller with 128Mb of Cache and in Raid 0 volume. I would say my current I/O is faster than before. I have considered getting another Raid Controller that is support on Windows 2K and XP and get some more Cheetahs or maybe just build the computer that way but 120Gb of Scsi data gets expensive quick.
I am sorry this message to is long I just trying to get some feedback.
Carlos
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