RAID 0 and 2.5" drives

Grimner

Member
Nov 12, 1999
176
1
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Recently, I went from one Seagate 7200.8 160 Gb SATA 3.5" drive to two Samsung SpinPoint M40S 60 Gb SATA 2.5" drives in RAID 0.

Why?
Well, I got worried about heat from the Seagate, a little tired of the noise (yes, the rest of the system is very quiet) and I had to reinstall Windows anyway - any excuse in a storm :)

As for heat and noise, it is gone.

The speed record is somewhat spotty. Without any benchmarks before/after, you'll have to trust me :)
These two 5400 rpm drives are as fast as the old 7200 drive.

Loading times are better, but only when there are lots of data involved. Windows starts in 4-5 seconds less, while OpenOffice, Dreamweaver 7 and B2 is considerably faster than before.
The rest seems snappy enough, but won't move the earth.

Worth it for noice and heat, not so for speed - I think.
I had more of a "speed shock" a few years ago when I went from a 5400 rpm 3.5" drive to a fancy 7200 rpm 3.5".

Once prices start coming down for 7200 rpm 2.5" I'll look into it again.



The Seagate is now happy as an external backup drive.
 

Vegito

Diamond Member
Oct 16, 1999
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i was thinking of doing the same thing.. there was a site that did a comparison.. he had 4 2.5 7200s in raid.. it was quiet...

too bad these new 100 gb 7200 are around 220 each... if it goes down more.. i would totally jump on it.. as i'm on a 60 7200 right now..
 

Grimner

Member
Nov 12, 1999
176
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The converter being a little, green board with receptors for the 2.5" on once side, and pins for normal IDE and power on the other side? I've used them, and they are not as flimsy as they look - unless you plan on tugging the cables on a regular basis :)
 

bob4432

Lifer
Sep 6, 2003
11,727
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Originally posted by: Vegito
yes, 2.5 are notebook drives..

those little guys do run pretty good. just got a ibm t42 and i think it has a 5400rpm(will need to verify this...) 40GB hdd and i must say, i am impressed with its performance, pretty much equal to a 7200rpm hdd 2MB cache hdd.

did a bit of research and here is the hdd in the laptop -
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/5k100/5k100.htm

5400rpm, 8MB cache, silent and very cool (temp wise)