Single 36GB Raptor vs Raid 0 80GB Hitachi 7K250's?

[JBT]

I am going to purchase either a Raptor or a pair of the 7K250's I can't choose though. 🙁 Right now I have an old 7200 40 gig 2MB cache Maxtor so anything will be an upgrade.

I mostly play games like Desert Combat, WC3 and also do a bit of photoshop and general usage type stuff office etc... I am use to not having much space but I also just got a Leadtek DLX PVR so I wouldn't mind being able to save alot more video at high quality. For both setups I will be using an off site FTP, current IDE drive, CD-R's and laptop for backups. I don't have much for mission critical data but the stuff I do have is spread across 3 disks anyways So I am not TOO worried about reliability.

THX for your opinions guys

 

[InlineFive]

For the stuff you say you do I would think another 512MB of memory would provide the biggest boost. Unless of course you are using a Maxtor DiamondMax 8+ which is slow. Then BOTH options would be good. 🙂

-Por

 

[JBT]

Nope I have an older D740X HDD its almost 3 years old and pretty slow. I would get Ram but right now but I have PC2100+ PC2700 in my system that OCs to 360DDR which would me an I would probably have to take out my current ram and still only have 512MB total. Right now I am waiting on a new CPU, RAM, Mobo upgrade before I get new ram probably at the end of summer or something. I have wanted to get a new HDD for a LONG time and I just got a Newegg Gift Certificate for my Bday so I feel it is time.

 

[MichaelZ]

RAID 0 of two 80 gigs would be better. Accessing times would be halved and not to mention increasing your systems storage capacity. How RAID 0 compares to the Raptor I'm not quite sure about, but at least you got 4 times more storage over the 36 gig raptor.

Keep in mind running RAID 0 doesn't offer much as far peace of mind on data. I prefer to keep them seperate as I can leave my OS and installed apps on one hard drive and my important data such as movies, MP3s and install exe's etc on the other hard drive. When it comes to formatting, format the OS one and that'll be that. No mucking about with backing up stuff onto a billion CDs.

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: i82lazyboy

RAID 0 of two 80 gigs would be better. Accessing times would be halved and not to mention increasing your systems

Umm... No, access times would be increased slightly in RAID-0.

 

[sharkeeper]

Umm... No, access times would be increased slightly in RAID-0.

RAID0 actually decreases access times. In extreme instances it can be substantially lower. Of course that example is a result of the controller's ram playing part however if the cache is disabled the access time is a solid 4.5mS or about 1ms better than the bare drives on a U320 controller.

Cheers!

 

[Algere]

:Q

I just recently upgraded from a 40 gig D740X Maxtor drive to 2 Hitachi 80 gig 7K250's.

As for the difference between the 2 (D740X and 2 x 7K250 in RAID 0) I haven't really done much testing but so far I've noticed that on the D740X the splash screen on Microsoft Word would appear right before the mouse pointer's hourglass animation flips over. With the 2 Hitachi's, Word almost opens up instantly after the initial mouse click.

In Halo there was a 1-2 second pause in loading in-level areas on the D740X's and on the 7K250's it loads fast enough that I don't remember if there being a 2/10th second pause or none at all.

Although I've read a online review that the K8T800 chipsets PATA IDE performance to be slightly slower compared to it's SATA interface. So the comparison between the D740X and 7K250's mentioned above may be somewhat invalid.

Anyways as for the 2 7K250's vs. WD Raptor

Between the 2 options I'd probably get the 7K250's mostly because of storage size reasons. Although there's always the option to get the Raptor for the O/S, swapfile, programs, etc. and then a second larger hard drive for storage.

I know that the 7K250's I got from ZipZoomFly (since NewEgg was out of 80 gig 7K250's at the time) has a 3 year warranty which was verified to expire 2/18/07 according to Hitachi's warranty check page. Recently NewEgg has repeatedly had their stock of 7K250's come in and out of stock. At present time it only has the 250 GB version of the 7K250 in stock. I assume most likely when they get new stock of 7K250's it'll probably include the updated 3 year warranty in contrast to their old stock which according to Hitachi's warranty check came with a 1 year warranty.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Is this a desktop system? Just get a raptor, avoid a Raid setup, not really going to help you

Also, more ram would help more in terms of speed

As for space, you decide, either 80GB or 36GB. Think about how much space you'll need in the next year or so. Another thing, I'd avoid Raid on a desktop system because it just makes it more complicated and on a desktop, the gains aren't really that much compared to a server enviroment

 

[Algere]

Originally posted by: AgaBooga
Is this a desktop system? Just get a raptor, avoid a Raid setup, not really going to help you

Also, more ram would help more in terms of speed

As for space, you decide, either 80GB or 36GB. Think about how much space you'll need in the next year or so. Another thing, I'd avoid Raid on a desktop system because it just makes it more complicated and on a desktop, the gains aren't really that much compared to a server enviroment

I'll agree there, it's somewhat more complicated. I'm still experimenting with cluster/stripe sizes.🙁

 

[tallman45]

Originally posted by: shuttleteam

Umm... No, access times would be increased slightly in RAID-0.

RAID0 actually decreases access times. In extreme instances it can be substantially lower. Of course that example is a result of the controller's ram playing part however if the cache is disabled the access time is a solid 4.5mS or about 1ms better than the bare drives on a U320 controller.

Cheers!

A drives acces time can never be less in a Raid than when a drive is running alone, the access time is a functional limitation of the drive itself. You do add a delay becuase all of the data must now run through a controller and be striped. For large files this will help but for small files such as an OS , access times will be less.

Run 2-80gb , each on a separate channel. You will get better performance, plus your data will be much safer.

 

[TSDible]

Originally posted by: tallman45

Originally posted by: shuttleteam

Umm... No, access times would be increased slightly in RAID-0.

RAID0 actually decreases access times. In extreme instances it can be substantially lower. Of course that example is a result of the controller's ram playing part however if the cache is disabled the access time is a solid 4.5mS or about 1ms better than the bare drives on a U320 controller.

Cheers!

A drives acces time can never be less in a Raid than when a drive is running alone, the access time is a functional limitation of the drive itself. You do add a delay becuase all of the data must now run through a controller and be striped. For large files this will help but for small files such as an OS , access times will be less.

Run 2-80gb , each on a separate channel. You will get better performance, plus your data will be much safer.

Access time aside, disregard that last remark.

You will get SIGNIFICANTLY better performance from Raid 0 over two drives on separate channels.

However data integrity may be better with a single Raptor.

 

[Creig]

also do a bit of photoshop and general usage type stuff office etc... I am use to not having much space but I also just got a Leadtek DLX PVR so I wouldn't mind being able to save alot more video at high quality.

A 36GB Raptor is not going to do anything to help you out with either of these problems. In fact you'll actually be DOWNGRADING from 40GB to 36GB. The slight decrease in access time you'll get with the Raptor over the pair of 80giggers in Raid-0 will not be noticeable. In fact, I believe the Raid-0 80 giggers will most likely have a higher trasfer rate than the Raptor. And since you'll be working with large files in both Photoshop and your PVR I'd say this would be the more important factor. Also, the difference between 36GB of storage and 160GB will MOST DEFINITELY be noticeable. I'd say get the Hitachi's.

 

[gsellis]

If size does not matter as you are comparing 80GB vs 36GB, get the Raptor. Theoretically, it should be more reliable.

 

[tallman45]

Access time aside, disregard that last remark.

You will get SIGNIFICANTLY better performance from Raid 0 over two drives on separate channels.

However data integrity may be better with a single Raptor.[/quote]

That depends. A Raid 0 could (very likely) be slower than those same 2 drives running independantly. Stripe sizes, controller compatability with a particular drives cache, file size, etc all determine if your setup is optimized for your own particular application.

In synthetic tests, then yes it would appear to be much faster, in real world testing, maybe no.

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: Algere
:Q

I just recently upgraded from a 40 gig D740X Maxtor drive to 2 Hitachi 80 gig 7K250's.

As for the difference between the 2 (D740X and 2 x 7K250 in RAID 0) I haven't really done much testing but so far I've noticed that on the D740X the splash screen on Microsoft Word would appear right before the mouse pointer's hourglass animation flips over. With the 2 Hitachi's, Word almost opens up instantly after the initial mouse click.

In Halo there was a 1-2 second pause in loading in-level areas on the D740X's and on the 7K250's it loads fast enough that I don't remember if there being a 2/10th second pause or none at all.

Although I've read a online review that the K8T800 chipsets PATA IDE performance to be slightly slower compared to it's SATA interface. So the comparison between the D740X and 7K250's mentioned above may be somewhat invalid.

Anyways as for the 2 7K250's vs. WD Raptor

Between the 2 options I'd probably get the 7K250's mostly because of storage size reasons. Although there's always the option to get the Raptor for the O/S, swapfile, programs, etc. and then a second larger hard drive for storage.

I know that the 7K250's I got from ZipZoomFly (since NewEgg was out of 80 gig 7K250's at the time) has a 3 year warranty which was verified to expire 2/18/07 according to Hitachi's warranty check page. Recently NewEgg has repeatedly had their stock of 7K250's come in and out of stock. At present time it only has the 250 GB version of the 7K250 in stock. I assume most likely when they get new stock of 7K250's it'll probably include the updated 3 year warranty in contrast to their old stock which according to Hitachi's warranty check came with a 1 year warranty.

Ha thats really weird we have had the same drive and now are getting the same pair. How have you liked the upgrade? is it very noticeable or can't tell that much? How are boot up times?

I posted this to have you guys help me so far you have just made me more confused on which to get 🙁 Both options sound good I think I will go with the Hitachi's though I have really liked having most my Cd's as ISO's (now I could have almost all of them) so I can just run them from disk so having that much more space will really be helpful I think. Should I just get the 160GB version of the 7K250 or get two 80GB's? Newegg said they were getting them in stock TODAY I realize its early but it looks like they completely took them off the site since yesterday. I MUST get the drives from Newegg as a I have a $100 Gift certif for them 🙂 hehe Birthdays RULE!!!

 

[airfoil]

I'd go with the Hitachis' any day. The performance gained by using a Raptor is negligible when compared to the massive amount of storage you'll have by getting the Hitachi drives.

As far as drive size goes, always buy the biggest drive which fits your budget, after making sure of its performance. The 7K250 series rule the roost when it comes to 7200 RPM SATA/PATA drives. If you dont like RAID, then go with one 160 GB drive instead of two 80s.

 

[beatle]

Raptor, easily. RAID 0 is your best bet for synthetic benchmarks. Seek times are best for real world applications, which aren't helped by RAID 0.

 

[Matthias99]

That's not entirely fair. RAID0 gives WAY better transfer rates, which DOES help a number of real-world applications (load times, and anything that uses large files: photo and video editing, and a lot of games, for instance). RAID1 or RAID 0+1/1+0 would knock down your seek times, which will help things like database servers.

 

[beatle]

RAID 0 or 0+1 will NOT help your seek times. Only faster harddrives will, or SCSI (if doing non-sequential read/writes). RAID will help you if you're indexing a large file (as in Soundforge, which is disk based) but reading from your array and writing to it will be SLOWER than reading from one drive and writing to another on a different channel. Reliability is another concern, as your likelihood of losing data is roughly DOUBLE (well, not exactly double, for you statistics majors 😉). Please, if you're going to run RAID 0, PLAN for a failure, even if using reliable drives.

My personal experience with RAID 0 wasn't all that great. After running it for a few months, I lost a drive and I went back to a single drive configuration. Much to my surprise, things didn't really seem slower.

 

[JBT]

hmmm this is getting pretty tough decideding... Does anyone know if the fluid bearing 36 GB Raptors are at Newegg yet. I have seen them in articles but they never said what places had them in stock...

 

[beatle]

Ask if they can confirm the date the drive was manufactured. If it's after Feb 1st, 2004 it should be a FDB Raptor.

 

[JBT]

nope they don't know. 🙁 and they just uped the price 2 bucks !!!

 

[jdogg707]

I personally enjoy my 74GB Raptor much more than I did my RAID 0 setup of two 120GB Western Digital SE drives. The Raptor is quiet, load times are next to nothing, and I get the reliability of have my data on a single drive. Now I just need a second 74GB Raptor and I should be good to go!

 

[Snoop]

Storage Review FAQ "Raid 0 vs. Single Drive"
In almost all 'Real World' cases the Raptor is going to blow the inferior RAID'ed drives away.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: beatle
RAID 0 or 0+1 will NOT help your seek times. Only faster harddrives will, or SCSI (if doing non-sequential read/writes).

You keep saying that seek times are higher in RAID. In regards to pure RAID0, you are correct; you are limited by the seek time of the disks. However, in RAID1, 0+1, or 1+0 (and RAID5 in some situations), you can get average seek times lower than a single drive -- in fact, this is the primary benefit of RAID1 besides data protection. This is because the data is replicated across multiple drives, and the controllers are smart enough to have the disk already 'closest' to the desired block go and fetch that block. The same sort of thing is used in SCSI/SATA with command queueing (though that is for multiple reads/writes on a single disk).

RAID will help you if you're indexing a large file (as in Soundforge, which is disk based) but reading from your array and writing to it will be SLOWER than reading from one drive and writing to another on a different channel.

Assuming you have an adequate amount of bandwith going to the controller, you will not be choking your disks by doing read/write operations simultaneously any more than you would with a single drive. In some cases, two single drives on separate channels (or using two separate disk arrays) MAY work better than a RAID0 array for tasks like this. This is a situation where stripe size, etc. can influence results considerably.

Reliability is another concern, as your likelihood of losing data is roughly DOUBLE (well, not exactly double, for you statistics majors 😉). Please, if you're going to run RAID 0, PLAN for a failure, even if using reliable drives.

You should plan for a failure (ie, back up your data) whether or not you use RAID0. That said, drive failures are a fairly rare occurrence, and even at double the normal frequency I would not lose sleep over it unless this was a mission-critical machine. You're about 1.4x as likely to have a failure in a given time window in a RAID0 configuration.

My personal experience with RAID 0 wasn't all that great. After running it for a few months, I lost a drive and I went back to a single drive configuration. Much to my surprise, things didn't really seem slower.

The performance benefits of RAID on desktop systems are restricted mostly to a few specific types of applications -- anything that reads or writes large volumes of data, especially sequentially (such as video editing programs). If you do those sorts of things regularly, it's going to be noticeable. Otherwise, it's probably not doing enough to justify its extra cost.