I am thinking about getting a couple WD Raptor 74 gig SATA's (and putting them into RAID 0) in the next couple months and wanted to know some first hand advice. I have an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe with an onboard Promise PDC20378 RAID controller. Anyone use that kind of config or simular? I currently have 2 160 gig Maxtors that are not in RAID. Will I notice a huge speed boost with the 2 Raptors? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Opinions of the WD Raptor 74 gig SATA?
- Thread starter Kamakzie
- Start date
No, you won?t notice a huge speed boost. If you are dead set on going Raid 0 make sure you have a good backup policy & backup your files often. In Raid 0 if one or the other drives fail you are dead in the water. I learned this lesson the hard way.
Don't go RAID 0! Here's why: click here and read me The conclusion of the article is that RAID 0 with 2 raptors only helps for game loading. For all other tasks, it just isn't worth the money. In fact, they recommend that if you have 2 raptors, to do RAID 1.
My own take: these babies are hella fast already, and thus don't benefit that much (hardly at all) from being in RAID 0. I put together this setup (2xWD740GD in RAID 0) before I read the article, and then felt very foolish. Yes, the game loading benefit is nice, but HL2 still takes a while to load, and I would rather put the money towards a second video card for the SLI mobos that are coming out. There, at least, you'll see a tangible benefit.
My own take: these babies are hella fast already, and thus don't benefit that much (hardly at all) from being in RAID 0. I put together this setup (2xWD740GD in RAID 0) before I read the article, and then felt very foolish. Yes, the game loading benefit is nice, but HL2 still takes a while to load, and I would rather put the money towards a second video card for the SLI mobos that are coming out. There, at least, you'll see a tangible benefit.
Thanks guys. I am thinking about just keeping my 2 160 IDE's for storage and getting just one of the Raptor 74's as my OS and gaming HD.
possibly noisy. 29db? Also, those things are pricey, i forget how much, but they aren't cheap. I personally think you're better off buying a case that has good cooling for your hdd's, especially if you have a bunch of drives to cool. Ever since I put cooling fans over my hdds, I haven't had one crash. Just my 2c.
I already have 1 gig of PC2700 and a Geforce FX 5900 Ultra so I think its my HD bottlenecking. My HD was a cheapo 7200 rpm maxtor. With just one SATA drive that wouldn't be raid is there any trick I will have to do to install it?
and will be untill ram drives are avaible. there is a reason computers load everything into the ram (electiral vs physical movements).
if you got money to burn and you really want to speed things up, step up too SCSI drives. if thats too much with money burning a hole in your pocket, do what you want.
brandon
if you got money to burn and you really want to speed things up, step up too SCSI drives. if thats too much with money burning a hole in your pocket, do what you want.
brandon
I think of hdd upgrade to since i getting out of space with my 2 drives (60 and 20gb) and bandwith is only (~22MB/s).
I would go with one 70GB Raptor and something like 300GB Barracuda 7200.8 drive (only 8MB cache version is out yet).
But i decided to wait untill drives with 16 cache (improves drive spped) is out and new raptors sice 70GB raptors are out for while already.
Mainly why i need HDD upgrade is:
Have more storage.
Copy files faster.
Load games faster.
And i need QUIET drive for that so 40dB is hard limit.
Lets look at this from other side, to load games faster and copy files fast, bandwidth matters. Basically what i looking for when buying new drive is bandwidth (storage hdd dont have to have that much bandwidth as main hdd, but not less than 40 is fine for me) and quietness, for storage i buy large hdd.
I would go with one 70GB Raptor and something like 300GB Barracuda 7200.8 drive (only 8MB cache version is out yet).
But i decided to wait untill drives with 16 cache (improves drive spped) is out and new raptors sice 70GB raptors are out for while already.
Mainly why i need HDD upgrade is:
Have more storage.
Copy files faster.
Load games faster.
And i need QUIET drive for that so 40dB is hard limit.
Lets look at this from other side, to load games faster and copy files fast, bandwidth matters. Basically what i looking for when buying new drive is bandwidth (storage hdd dont have to have that much bandwidth as main hdd, but not less than 40 is fine for me) and quietness, for storage i buy large hdd.
Well guys after much thinking I just ordered one 74 gig Raptor and I will see how it goes. Do I need to do anything special as far as installing windows xp?
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