To RAID or Not? / MB or PCI / New HD or Old?

[nemiAMD]

Ok, Just about to put together my new system when I get the parts in a couple of days.

It will be for:
* Windows XP (and typical applications)
* Online Games playing (so quick level load a must to have a ?head start?)
* MP3 / MPEG 2 / MPEG 4 encoding.
* Reading and/or writing from/to CD-RW drive and DVD-RW drive (quite often simultaneously on different tasks)


I have a:
* Silicon Image chipset (software RAID) PATA IDE PCI card (from Old PC)
* 2x 80Gb 2Mb Cache W.D. 7200RPM drives (from Old PC)
* DVD-/+RW Drive (UDMA 33) x4 max DVD write speed (from Old PC)
* CR-RW Drive (UDMA 33) x52 max CD write speed (from Old PC)
* An Epox Nforce3 Ultra MB ( EP-9NDA3+) with on board PATA IDE RAID (2 channels) and SATA IDE Raid (2 channels) (on the way)
* 3000+ AMD64 and 1GB of PC3200 RAM (on the way)

I am thinking of:
*buying one or two new HD, esp. the Seagate 120 GB 8mb 7200RPM that is $45 after rebate at bestbuy this week. (if two drives then I will ask friend to help with rebate submissions).
- price is a factor, it is rebate offers or nothing.

Here is my dilemma - what is the optimum IDE interface / RAID / DVD / CD / HD set-up I should go for?

I can see from my uses I want:
* Fast OS Load
* Fast Program Load
* Fast games level load
* No (HD or DVD / CD) bottlenecks when ripping/burning form DVD-RW and CD-RW at the same time (no buffer outages)
* No (HD or DVD / CD) bottlenecks when encoding
* A backup of my valuable data - I am quite happy with scheduled backups, but RAID 0 of the 2x 80Gb drives is an obvious possibility.

Ok, so lots of review show not much improvement with RAID 0 over "normal" single drive set-up...

So:
* Am I better with a new Seagate 8mb 120Gb drive as my main drive for OS and programs/games/temp (for ripping/burning) or RAID 0 of the 2x80GB drives?

* I know 2x120Gb seagates RAID 0 will beat the 2x80Gb old W.D. - but does it significantly more than a single 120Gb Seagate? i.e. should i get two new drives?

* Will the Nforce3 ultra IDE raid 0 be faster than the Silicon Image PCI card in the system?

* Will the DVD-RW and CD-RW master/slaving cause bottlenecks when both are being used?

The combinations are endless - i would love to hear your thoughts and any reviews/benchmarks you know of.

 

[beatle]

The single 120GB Seagate will likely beat the WDs in RAID 0, depending on their age. Anandtech did a better job of explaining RAID 0's pitfalls and promises than I could, so I'll just link to the article instead of trying to explain all of it myself. The test references Raptors, but it applies to all drives. FWIW, I had 2 40GB drives in RAID 0. A couple months later I lost one (and all my data) so I went back to a single drive. I was surprised that the box didn't feel any different in nearly every situation.

You can choose to do whatever you like with the WDs. Personally, I'd sell both of them, buy a 36GB 10krpm Raptor in the FS forum for your OS (they pop up for $75-$80), then buy the Seagate. You'll end up with about the same amount of overall storage as your 2 WDs give you, but you'll have a boatload more speed. Plus, after you sell the WDs, you'll just about break even on the Raptor purchase. If you really need more space, then just run the WDs in RAID 0 (and back up!) and use the Seagate as your OS drive.

Modern optical drives have buffer underrun protection and support DMA, so the need of keeping them on separate channels for disc-to-disc burning is gone. I burn disc-to-disc on my optical drives without any noticeable slowdown.

If you buy the Seagate and keep the WDs:
Primary Master - 120GB Seagate
Primary Slave - None
Secondary Master - DVDRW
Secondary Slave - CDRW
RAID card - 2x80GB WD

If you buy the Raptor and sell the WDs:
Primary Master - 120GB Seagate
Primary Slave - None
Secondary Master - DVDRW
Secondary Slave - CDRW
Onboard SATA - Raptor

The onboard NF3 RAID won't be any faster or slower than the PCI card, FWIW. I'd sell the card along with the WDs.

 

[nemiAMD]

Originally posted by: beatle

<snip>

If you buy the Seagate and keep the WDs:
Primary Master - 120GB Seagate
Primary Slave - None
Secondary Master - DVDRW
Secondary Slave - CDRW
RAID card - 2x80GB WD

Thank you for all the comments.
I saw the Raptor RAID 0 article but I have my concerns that since the drives are so fast that you are not seeing hte imporvements you would see with 7200RPM drives in RAID 0 vs. single.

Hwoever I think I will go with the set-up above. With the 2x80Gb WD as RAID 1 for my most important data (personal documents digital pictures etc. etc).

I'm thinking of my truning my old Athlon PC into a media PC for another room so In time I may move to a Raptor and or / newer bigger drive and just mirror the 120Gb Boot drive to it as a I move on (I hope there will be no problems doing this from PATA to SATA) and use the 12Gb drive in the media PC.

I'm certianly gonna look at the Raptors , hopefully the price comes down a bit over the next fdew months... (any comptitors 10K RPM drives coming out ??)

 

[nemiAMD]

Ok - So I got the 250Gb W.D. 8MB 7200RPM PATA circuit-city offer today. I'm thinking I'm gonna end up turning my old hardware into a HTPC at some point and this will make a good movie storage drive if/when i move onto something SATA.