RAID 0 vs. WD SE drives

[MrDudeMan]

would two 120gxp 60gbs be significantly faster than a 120gb 8mb in raid 0? or would it be better to just have 1 big drive?

i am interested mostly in playing games, and it will be on a p4 2.4+ ghz.


thanks

 

[SocrPlyr]

they would be a good deal faster, but you must also remember that w/ 2x the drives there is 2x the possibility of failure, also a bunch of raid setup (not a huge deal, but more than a single drive setup...)
if you are interested here is a link go to this link and look at the sandra benchmarks in it... it shows both setups (the 800JB should perform identically to the 1200JB)
Link
as for you it is up to you whether or not you think it is worth it...

Josh

 

[Yobbo]

I would be a little hesitant to go w/the IBM drives. I've had 1 IBM drive and I had to get it RMA'ed...My seagates have never quit on me and aren't that much slower...I've heard a lot of horror stories from IBM drives and I'm one of them *sigh*

 

[MrDudeMan]

do you think it would provide any advantage in games? RAID i mean....or is the JB series fast enough?

 

[QuestionsandAnsweres]

JB is fast enough.

 

[mastertech01]

I have 4 X15s in Raid... it doesnt make games play any better..

 

[cleverhandle]

This is an apples and oranges kind of choice, though people often make them out to be the same. RAID is not going to help you much with games (except maybe level load times, slightly) - RAID's strength is in large file transfers, which most of us don't do very much of. For small file operations (usual day-to-day work), the better cache and firmware of the WD SE's is going to perform better. Now if you were a video enthusiast and edited big files all day, it would be a different story.

 

[ANY2]

I'm too interested to know what is better, for home-use:

2x40GB Maxtor D740X (FB) - Raid 0 - on a HighPoint HPT372 controller OR:

1x80GB WD SE w/8MB cache


10x!

 

[SocrPlyr]

for home use i would suggest getting just the single drive, but really it is up to you to decide whether or not you want to have bragging rights...

Josh

 

[MrDudeMan]

i was thinking along the same lines are the rest of you

but i was really curious if there was a noticeable advantage!

i think ill just go with a single 120gb WD SE drive, thats WAY more than enough space, and WAY more than enough speed

the inner tracks are faster than the outer tracks, right? i will probably only use 20gb at most, so will it be anywhere close to its theoretical limits in speed?

you guys are the greatest! someone always knows the right answer

 

[Zuluwarrior]

Well, I just got the 8k3a+ raid board from Epox with the Highpoint 372 controller onboard
and I added two of the Maxtor 740X drives with the new fluid bearings/ ata133 etc.

I am now thinking that this RAID thing isn't all it's cracked up to be. After infinite tweaking
with a VIA RAID latency patch, updated drivers from highpoint and a tweak for the hd's,
and every stripe size imagineable, I'm still left with Sandra benchmarks that are lower
than my old 75GXP 40 gig drive by itself.

THen I read on some newsgroups that the highpoint card doesn't really benefit this drive
and that I should use IBM drives as they RAID much better, also I should revert back to
old drivers for the highpoint and even flash an older bios that worked better.

Hell with all that.......

I'm just gonna get that Western Digital drive and be done with it. Does anyone want
a new pair of 40 gig Maxtor Ata133 fluid bearing drives?

 

[Zuluwarrior]

Well, I just got the 8k3a+ raid board from Epox with the Highpoint 372 controller onboard
and I added two of the Maxtor 740X drives with the new fluid bearings/ ata133 etc.

I am now thinking that this RAID thing isn't all it's cracked up to be. After infinite tweaking
with a VIA RAID latency patch, updated drivers from highpoint and a tweak for the hd's,
and every stripe size imagineable, I'm still left with Sandra benchmarks that are lower
than my old 75GXP 40 gig drive by itself.

THen I read on some newsgroups that the highpoint card doesn't really benefit this drive
and that I should use IBM drives as they RAID much better, also I should revert back to
old drivers for the highpoint and even flash an older bios that worked better.

Hell with all that.......

I'm just gonna get that Western Digital drive and be done with it. Does anyone want
a new pair of 40 gig Maxtor Ata133 fluid bearing drives?

 

[RazeOrc]

That's too bad to hear Zulu, there are numerous problems with the Highpoint 372 controllers on AMD boards for some reason, at least there were problems with the ABITs and the Epox as far as highpoint said. I personally have an on board Highpoint 370 controller with my TH7-II RAID and man does this thing wail, with 2 x 800BB WD drives I get sustained transfers of around 70+MB/sec, I will be recieving 2 1200JB WDs which I hope to test either with the onboard or with another HighPoit controller as I have had good luck with them and performance has been excellent. You may look into a Promise RAID card as they seem to be a bit more "compatible" and besides they only cost 30 bucks or so for the 2 channel variety.

 

[vedin]

RAID will actually make loading games slower from what I have heard. It makes sense that it would too. Instead of getting to read everything straight from one drive, now your PC has to switch back and forth between them to look for bits of a file/files to load a program. The only RAID I would suggest to the end user is mirroring. You can never have too many ways to backup.

 

[RazeOrc]

Vedin, that's not how RAID operates at all, please read an FAQ instead of posting "what you've heard." That being said here's a general review, a RAID 0 array improves performance by splitting data and sending half, one fourth, ect (depending on the number of disks in an array) and theoretically improves performance by 100% in terms of data transfers, however in real life its more like 70-80% improvement with a good controller card. RAID 1 which is just mirroring does not improve performance at all as all it does is copy any contents of one drive to another, esentially making a backup copy. then there are various other array formats 2,3,4,5,ect and to find out about those check an FAQ, AnandTech did a good job in their explanation....

 

[QuestionsandAnsweres]

Ive had both raid and single 120GB Western Digital 8mb cache hd. must say not much of a difference in load times. actually i believe the singe wd 8mb cache hd is tad faster for that. But i didnt clock it or anything. But i could tell the difference between a WD 8mb cach and a reg maxtor hd.