RAID question... Raptor 76GB vs 2 Everyday 7200 rpm in raid

[RockGuitarDude]

Using SATA, does anyone have any benchmarks comparing 2 standard 7200rpm western digital or whatever drive with 8mb cache in raid 0 verses a raptor 76GB. Game load times would be great. Thanks all!

 

[TerryMathews]

If all your doing is playing games, don't bother. End of story.

RAID is for work, just like SMP.

 

[RockGuitarDude]

I don't just play games, I'm just curious in that area because I do a lot of multitrack audio recording and I know that when you're dealing with huge audio file raid 0 will molest a single drive.

 

[TerryMathews]

A 2-drive stripe would probably break even with a Raptor for sustained R/W performance. A 4-drive would hand it it's ass. Of course a Raptor would beat it on random access and seek time.

 

[paperfist]

I'd love to know that answer as well and am surprised anandtech didn't throw a couple of 'regular' drives in RAID0 for that benchmark suite they just did a few days ago.

 

[nitromullet]

The reason you aren't getting a straight answer is because when it comes to RAID 0 setups there are a lot of variables. Mainly, your use for the system, the stripe size, and the size of the files. You might want to check out http://www.storagereview.com/ and make your own conclusions.

I built a RAID 0 array with 2 36GB Raptors with a 64k stripe size, and from my own personal experience these are things you might want to consider...

1. My first time around, I built it with a 128k stripe size, the 64k is faster for my purposes.
2. I didn't really think it was much faster at first. Most of what I do is play games, surf, the usual stuff - no really large files. Then I built a few pc's for other people, one with IDE ATA133, and the other with a single SATA 80 WD drive w/ fluid bearings. I never did any benches, but the RAID array has a much quicker feel than either of these systems did. Is it the Raptor? Is it the array? I dunno, I've never run these drives singly.
3. Raptors in a RAID 0 array is an expensive (not very large) hard drive.
4. People have cited decreased reliability as a detracting factor of a RAID 0 array. In my experience, hardware has gotten pretty reliable, also consider that the Raptors were orignally designed as an enterprise alternative to SCSI, so they are built as industrial components not home user parts. - You get what you oay for.
5. If you are considering it, do your research beforehand, not after... You will always find people telling you that you wasted your money, and no one needs that... Also, most of these people don't have a Raptor RAID 0 array, so what do they know anyway?

 

[TerryMathews]

16kb is the accepted general-purpose block size for a RAID 0.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: TerryMathews
16kb is the accepted general-purpose block size for a RAID 0.

The stripe size depends on your application and file sizes of your files. Also, stripe != block. They are not the same thing. 8k and 16k have been regarded as good general stripe sizes in the past, however, technology moves on and files get bigger. For example, the OP wants a RAID 0 array for storing/retrieving high quality, multitrack audio where the file sizes are most likely in the multiple GB range. Therefore, a stripe size of 16k would be ridiculous. He should probably go for the 128k stripe.

 

[Boogak]

This isn't a "real world" benchmark but still interesting nevertheless, I used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test 3 different storage devices, results from left to right:

SATA 74GB Raptor on Asus P4P800 Deluxe
2 x PATA 80GB Western Digital 8MB SE Drives in RAID0 Array on Asus P4P800 Deluxe VIA RAID controller
2 x PATA 80GB Maxtor 8MB Cache Drives in RAID0 Array on ABIT NF7-S using onboard SATA controller via Serillel PATA to SATA adapters

Results

 

[TerryMathews]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: TerryMathews
16kb is the accepted general-purpose block size for a RAID 0.

You obviously don't know what you are talking about. The stripe size depends on your application and file sizes of your files. Also, stripe != block. They are not the same thing. 8k and 16k have been regarded as good general stripe sizes in the past, however, technology moves on and files get bigger. For example, the OP wants a RAID 0 array for storing/retrieving high quality, multitrack audio where the file sizes are most likely in the multiple GB range. Therefore, a stripe size of 16k would be ridiculous. He should probably go for the 128k stripe.

The OP doesn't know what he wants. First it's games, then it's multimedia. And to adress your other point, the FastTrak TX4000 and SuperTrak SX6000 in my system seem to indicate I know a little bit about RAID.

Stripe, block, chunk, call it what you want. The point got across, didn't it? 16kb is widely regarded to be the ideal general purpose size not only because it targets mid-sized files, but it also doesn't hamper performance of either extreme of file size, be it large or small.

And if you want to get technical with your example, if you wanted to target just multi-gigabyte files that were to be read sequentially, you would want the largest stripe size your controller could handle.

Then again, if we're dealing with multi-gigabyte files like that, we probably want a hardware caching controller, which is going to throw a whole monkey wrench into this discussion.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Boogak
This isn't a "real world" benchmark but still interesting nevertheless, I used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test 3 different storage devices, results from left to right:

SATA 74GB Raptor on Asus P4P800 Deluxe
2 x PATA 80GB Western Digital 8MB SE Drives in RAID0 Array on Asus P4P800 Deluxe VIA RAID controller
2 x PATA 80GB Maxtor 8MB Cache Drives in RAID0 Array on ABIT NF7-S using onboard SATA controller via Serillel PATA to SATA adapters

Results

Interesting. Looks like your 80GB Maxtors are doing you proud I wonder if this has anything to do with the RAID controllers. Also, is the stripe size the same on both arrays? I'd like to see the benches for 2 Raptors on your SATA controller as well.

 

[Pariah]

16kb is widely regarded to be the ideal general purpose size not only because it targets mid-sized files, but it also doesn't hamper performance of either extreme of file size, be it large or small.

Maybe years ago, but that is no longer the case anymore. If it were still true, why don't any ATA RAID controllers default to that stripe size? One should assume that hardware makers set the default stripe size to the optimal size for the largest percentage of users in their target market. They all default to higher sizes than 16k, usually 64k or 128k.

 

[nitromullet]

Stripe, block, chunk, call it what you want.

There is a correct and incorrect terminology when discussing these things - confusing stripe with block is a good indication of a n00b. I see from you last post that you are obvioulsy not, so you should already know this.
I actually edited the part about not knowing what you are talking about out of my post, it was a bit too confrontational IMO. My intention wasn't to offend, sorry you read that before I did my edit. I felt it necessary however to offer the OP a different viewpoint than the following:

If all your doing is playing games, don't bother. End of story.

RAID is for work, just like SMP.

I may not have as many posts on AT as you do, but I try to offer a little bit more info that just, "forget it" with no additional info to back it up. Your previous 1 and 2 line posts didn't seem to offer much info for the OP to work with, so I was trying to offer a bit of personal experience with a setup similar to what the OP is considering. My experiences with my RAID array have been mostly positve, and there are a lot of people who would have talked me out of it had I listened to all the naysayers.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Pariah

16kb is widely regarded to be the ideal general purpose size not only because it targets mid-sized files, but it also doesn't hamper performance of either extreme of file size, be it large or small.

Maybe years ago, but that is no longer the case anymore. If it were still true, why don't any ATA RAID controllers default to that stripe size? One should assume that hardware makers set the default stripe size to the optimal size for the largest percentage of users in their target market. They all default to higher sizes than 16k, usually 64k or 128k.

This was the case with the ICH5R controller. Intel seems to recommend a 128k stripe size for general purpose desktop usage. Personally, I think that is a bit large, but the 64k stripe size seems to work quite well for me. I suggest testing out what works best for you and not going by guidelines or recommendations. One of the points often missed when comparing a single HD to a RAID 0 array is that one is not only comparing hardware but configuration as well.

 

[Pariah]

Probably the reason for defaulting to 128k is because of how little sense it makes to split up files smaller than that in an attempt to improve the transfer rates for them. When hard drives are churning out 60MB/s+, the amount of time it takes to "stream" an 80k file is so minimal that from a practical standpoint, it likely makes more sense to let the file reside on one drive, so that only one drive as to search for the file instead of risking a seek penalty if a 2nd drive takes longer to find its part slowing the whole process down enough so that the time gained from the striped read is lost in the seek step.

Hard drives today have an STR 10 times what they did just over 5 years ago, and the average file size is considerably larger. With that in mind, if 16 used to be the optimal size, multiply that by 10 and you end up with 160k stripe size now, meaning 64-128k are realistically pretty logical settings.