SATA Hard Drives

[wallrunnerm15]

i am looking to get 2 sata's and run them in a raid array. i am debating over these 2 right now and any others that you are using and are happy with Seagate 160gb NCQ and WD Raid Edition 160gb

 

[Insomniak]

Seagate 4 lyfe. Plus, NCQ is supposed to greatly improve SATA performance and make it something besides IDE with a really thin cable.

 

[DaFinn]

Originally posted by: Insomniak
Seagate 4 lyfe. Plus, NCQ is supposed to greatly improve SATA performance and make it something besides IDE with a really thin cable.

NCQ does nothing for normal usage performance. It only helps under heavy load/ with many concurrent connections/operations = server use.

 

[BW86]

I would go with the seagate over the western digital
has a 5 year warranty

 

[Waylay00]

Seagate Barracuda

 

[wallrunnerm15]

thanks a bunch

 

[wallrunnerm15]

does anyone know of a good raid 0 card?

 

[Shyatic]

RAID 0 is a total waste... I did it and found a negligible difference in speed. Better to keep the drives separate or get a single Raptor for your main drive.

 

[Blain]

Do you have 64bit PCI slots for the RAID controller?

 

[wallrunnerm15]

damn i dont know, how do i find out if i do, the motherboard is the stock one for a p4 ht 2.6gHz may 2003 build for hp

 

[Blain]

If you don't know if your MB has 64bit PCI slots... STAY AWAY FROM RAID! :shocked:

 

[wallrunnerm15]

i think it does because i was looking at the instruction manaul for the comp, and one of the sections was about how ot install a raid card into the system

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: DaFinn

Originally posted by: Insomniak
Seagate 4 lyfe. Plus, NCQ is supposed to greatly improve SATA performance and make it something besides IDE with a really thin cable.

NCQ does nothing for normal usage performance. It only helps under heavy load/ with many concurrent connections/operations = server use.

One thing that I've been curious about is how close a desktop machine gets to "server use" once you start trying to multitask with a P2P app like BitTorrent running in the background. Has anyone benched a desktop machine with NCQ enabled that was not only running an office productivity/content creation benchmark suite but also a file sharing app at the same time to see if NCQ starts to make a difference then?

 

[ssvegeta1010]

Go with the seagate.
The 5 year warranty alone is worth it.

 

[jvarszegi]

Originally posted by: batmanuel

Originally posted by: DaFinn

Originally posted by: Insomniak
Seagate 4 lyfe. Plus, NCQ is supposed to greatly improve SATA performance and make it something besides IDE with a really thin cable.

NCQ does nothing for normal usage performance. It only helps under heavy load/ with many concurrent connections/operations = server use.

One thing that I've been curious about is how close a desktop machine gets to "server use" once you start trying to multitask with a P2P app like BitTorrent running in the background. Has anyone benched a desktop machine with NCQ enabled that was not only running an office productivity/content creation benchmark suite but also a file sharing app at the same time to see if NCQ starts to make a difference then?

That's the annoying thing. Anand lal Shimpi boots into MS Excel and runs a few tests, and every person on this board starts brainlessly repeating that RAID 0 is useless. Any application reading or writing large files will benefit from RAID 0. Any non-sequential disk access can benefit from NCQ. Idiots on this board make it sound like a desktop never does a non-sequential access, because of Anand's one article! SHEESH. double sheesh.

 

[Blain]

Again... If you don't know if your MB has 64bit PCI slots... STAY AWAY FROM RAID! :shocked:
IF you try a RAID array, you will spend too much time in this forum asking how to get things running correctly.
STAY WITH A SINGLE HD... For all our sakes! :laugh:

 

[jvarszegi]

Originally posted by: Blain
Again... If you don't know if your MB has 64bit PCI slots... STAY AWAY FROM RAID! :shocked:
IF you try a RAID array, you will spend too much time in this forum asking how to get things running correctly.
STAY WITH A SINGLE HD... For all our sakes! :laugh:

I hope you're talking to the OP, but it doesn't matter anyway. Fact of the matter is, getting a RAID array working is not rocket science. I'd say that someone who doesn't need it shouldn't use it, period.

 

[wallrunnerm15]

i have 2 ide's now a 160 from WD and a 200 from Seagate, i want to get another hd for the tv tuner because my 2 disks are getting full. if i get a new one it will probably be an sata like a 160 or 2 120s. then i would like to raid the 2 satas

 

[jvarszegi]

Originally posted by: wallrunnerm15
i have 2 ide's now a 160 from WD and a 200 from Seagate, i want to get another hd for the tv tuner because my 2 disks are getting full. if i get a new one it will probably be an sata like a 160 or 2 120s. then i would like to raid the 2 satas

And in your case, if you're doing video capture, RAID 0 makes sense.

 

[wallrunnerm15]

what brands are good, i haven't seen too many reviews of the card itself

 

[Pariah]

From WD's own webpage for the RAID edition drives:

"IMPORTANT: Because of the time-limited error recovery feature, this product is intended for server applications and is not recommended for use in desktop systems."

The RAID edition is not a drive with enhanced RAID performance. It's actually likely the exact opposite, where it sacrifices performance for better data integrity in a RAID environment. RAID on the desktop makes practically zero sense. If performance is the goal, a Raptor will be faster than either or the original RAID choices and significantly safer for your data as well. RAID 0 doesn't even make sense for video capturing anymore unless you are doing some ridiculous raw frame capturing. With the current DV standard even a laptop drive from 5 years ago can easily sustain the necessary 3.6MB/s.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Pariah
From WD's own webpage for the RAID edition drives:

"IMPORTANT: Because of the time-limited error recovery feature, this product is intended for server applications and is not recommended for use in desktop systems."

The RAID edition is not a drive with enhanced RAID performance. It's actually likely the exact opposite, where it sacrifices performance for better data integrity in a RAID environment. RAID on the desktop makes practically zero sense. If performance is the goal, a Raptor will be faster than either or the original RAID choices and significantly safer for your data as well. RAID 0 doesn't even make sense for video capturing anymore unless you are doing some ridiculous raw frame capturing. With the current DV standard even a laptop drive from 5 years ago can easily sustain the necessary 3.6MB/s.

Even with multiple RAID threads and review site demonstrating via benchmarks that RAID 0 doesn't improve single user, desktop applications...
Some people will steam-roll ahead with RAID 0 no matter what kind of advice to the contrary they are given.

It is sad to see this RAID hysteria, but it's been here before. What's even sadder is that IF members would JUST USE THE FORUM SEARCH FUNCTION, they could have found this out, before huge threads are created.