New to RAID

[Dorkenstein]

I am curious about Raid 0 for game installs. Can anyone recommend two fast inexpensive drives that, when put in RAID 0 will be good for game installs? Thanks.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
I am curious about Raid 0 for game installs. Can anyone recommend two fast inexpensive drives that, when put in RAID 0 will be good for game installs? Thanks.

fast and inexpensive are kind of mutually exclusive...which do you want?

You want fast or you want inexpensive?

 

[Dorkenstein]

I guess I meant a good compromise between the two, but if I had to choose, I choose fast.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Western Digital black series. Or if you are going RAID, then the RE3 drives. But I would probably just do a WD Black drive by itself.

 

[Dorkenstein]

Does it matter if its the 640 or 1tb version? I mean, is one faster than the other? Thanks.

 

[SickBeast]

If you want the ultimate raid-0 performace, you should go with a couple of SSDs if you can afford them.

IMO you should wait for a bit, or else get a cheap drive like the 640gb Black to tide you over. Apparently a bunch of cheap and fast SSDs are coming out. IMO, an SSD for your operating system plus the 640gb Black for your photos, music, and other archival type files would be an ideal combo.

 

[rarebear]

I did some reading on drives last two weeks and I would go with the WD Black drivers as they say those are best for running APPS and Seagates are best at DATA so for RAID I would say WD Black but the WD Raid drive also scored just as high as the Black but was $50 more than the 1tb Black the Raid is a WD RE3 if I remember right..

Unless you want the WD Velociraptor but that $$$$

 

[Shmee]

Well, I have heard that blacks dont do well with RAID 0. May want to use spinpoint F1's, like I am Got both of them at $70 each, both 750 GB

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: rarebear
I did some reading on drives last two weeks and I would go with the WD Black drivers as they say those are best for running APPS and Seagates are best at DATA

Did those articles mention Seagate drives that were dropping dead, out of the blue?

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
I am curious about Raid 0 for game installs.

If you're new to RAID... Don't!

 

[Andrew1990]

RAID 0 didnt offer much in game loading times when I set mine up a few days ago. It offered maybe a 2-3 second at most time increase.
It does a lot though when transferring large files.


Also, you might want to look at a single platter drive for better performance. The WD 640GB drive I heard is great. My budget only allowed me to get these single platter 250GB Drives though.

 

[Dorkenstein]

Just a quick bump to see if the 1tb caviar black and the 640gb caviar black are any different speed wise. How much slower than the caviar black is the caviar blue?

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Not too much of a difference between black and blue.

The 1TB drive uses 3 platters. The 640GB drive uses 2 platters.

Actually, just don't do RAID0... Maybe RAID1 (still good read speeds)

 

[Blain]

Blue - 16MB cache
Black - 32MB cache

TechReport:
"<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15363">Speaking of the VelociRaptor, the Caviar Black inherits one new trick from Western Digital's 10K-RPM mini-monster.
The Black features not one, but two processors, effectively doubling the horsepower it has available to calculate how to move, collect, and cache data on the drive.</a>"

 

[Dorkenstein]

Thanks, I'm not going to go for RAID, just need one Caviar Black 640gb by the sound of it.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
Thanks, I'm not going to go for RAID, just need one Caviar Black 640gb by the sound of it.

Since RAID0 carries its own risk of loss due to failure, you can limit the risk and loss with frequent backup, and use two Caviar Blacks in RAID0. As I say on another post -- the specialty RE3, RE2 and Seagate ES models implement TLER, or time-limited-error-recovery, so that drives don't "drop out" of arrays if there is a problem with one of them. But I've had some five RAID0 arrays and two RAID5's using mainstream consumer drives, and haven't had a problem with them.

 

[Dorkenstein]

Regarding the Caviar Black 640gb drive, am I looking for the one with '6400' in the model number or '6401'? Thanks.

 

[Blain]

You want the drive with the 32MB cache & 5 year warranty, not 16MB cache & 3 year warranty.

 

[Dorkenstein]

Thanks. Just out of curiosity, someone on another forum was saying they use two Velociraptors in RAID 0 for their OS and games. Apart from being too expensive for me, what are the dangers of doing that?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
Thanks. Just out of curiosity, someone on another forum was saying they use two Velociraptors in RAID 0 for their OS and games. Apart from being too expensive for me, what are the dangers of doing that?

Only the dangers of living with RAID0. If one drive "goes south," the data on both drives is lost, and there's no way to recover it. So you back up your data files frequently (or as often as you can under acceptable losses, like a week's worth of e-mail.)

There have been about six RAID0 arrays in my extended family's computers (most built by "yours truly.") My sis-in-law's went south about two years ago. Another -- relatively "new" in a six-month-old "experimental" system built so I can play with VISTA 64 before deciding to use it for serious stuff -- died in December. That's about two out of six, and my sis-in-law's rig was fine for about four years before her disaster. [I still suspect that she went into the RAID controller BIOS and messed with stuff, but I also have a paranoid tendency.]

Another rig has a two-drive RAID0 on a Highpoint controller that has been running 24/7/365 since summer, 2004. Another rig has the boot volume as a two-drive RAID0 -- with a three-drive RAID5 on another Highpoint controller. The two-drive RAID0 has been running continuously since January, 2003. Since that rig had become a file-server, I need to find a single disk to clone the RAID0 volume for safety. The files shared on the LAN are on the RAID5, and backed up to a hot-swap drive in a removeable cage.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Dorkenstein
Just out of curiosity, someone on another forum was saying they use two Velociraptors in RAID 0 for their OS and games.

Someone else in a different forum said they were using a 15k rpm SCSI drive.