Which HDD for what i do ? Raid or no ? Please help

[Candymancan]

Ok my problem is this. Iv been neglecting my computer's HDD's forever never really payying attention to HDD speed. I want to change that.

Right now im using just a single WD 160gb Caviar and i belive its just a 7200RPM 2MB cache drive.


Im having some serious slowdown issues when i extract large files or try to compress large files or move files around. If i extract say 1 5GB file my computer will start to hickup a little my mouse will be a little jerky but i dont have many problems openeing APP's that much and it only takes like 10min to extract a file that large. However if i try to do it with 2 files at one time that big it will take double the time for each file like 20 minutes for each one, and i cant really open or do anything else on my computer until there done. If i do something else kinda intensive while thats happening my computer will hang and i have to end the process.

Im just sick of having slow HDD's. My raptor is only the 36gb 8mb cache drive and its been in my brothers computer for a year almost now cuss his HDD died and i had no money to replace it .

Im ignorant when it comes to HDD speeds and which is good for what RPM, Cache size ect i have no clue what does what TBH its one area i never really paid atten to when building and overclocking computers. I know 10kRPM drives like raptor's have faster loading times for games windows ect, but what about things like i mentioned ?


What kind of HDD setup under $200 is the best for me and what i do ? I dont do all this often just maybe once a week or sometimes more depending on whatever. I mainly just game on my PC, playing MMO's for the most part ect and i dont really notice slow loading times with the current drive just the issues i mentioned above.

My choice's that i have come up with is

1x 150GB Raptor X
2x 74GB Raptor 16mb cache
2x 500GB Seagates 32mb cache 7200RPM i Guess these drives are kinda new

The reason i say 2x is because i keep reading people doing RAID 0 for speed, to tell you the truth iv never done raid so i dont know what RAID 0 is really besides combining both HDD's for speed. I heared its prone to corruption and data loss can you explain to me what exactly would cause this ? 1 drive fails you lose data i get that but that data is just data you were working on at the time correct ? Not stuff thats been on the HDD for awhile i hope ?

If you guys have any other choices or suggestions other then what i came up with lemme know please. Try to keep it under $200 cuss im a poor man lol. I kinda need around 200gb of space but i can work with 100-150gb i am now with my current drive

 

[DSF]

RAID 0 "stripes" your data. I'm going to oversimplify things a bit here, but the gist is that it takes each file that will be written to the hard drive, cuts it in half, and puts half on each drive. This way when it goes to read or write, it can theoretically do so in half the time by reading/writing half the file to each drive.

That means that if a drive fails, you lose everything, not just what you were working on. The other drive only has half of each file, so anything that tries to read it, even a sophisticated data recovery program, will just see gibberish. It's really not worth it, as the real world performance boost is minimal.

Even with an old Raptor, if your mouse gets jerky when you're extracting a file I'd almost wonder if the drive is going bad. (Although it's also a small drive.) Has this always happened, or only recently?

 

[Madwand1]

I suggest getting one or two new drives, and keeping them as simple drives. This will give you the least trouble, be the most portable, etc., and can also give you a nice speedup when you split tasks among the drives (e.g. extract from one drive to the other). I'd probably move the swap and temp files to the second drive.

Most current drives should perform very well. I'd look for deals and expect to find a couple of them for well under $200. Look for comparative reviews if you want to get into the fine details.

I recently installed Vista on an old Raptor 36 GB, and then transferred that to a Hitachi 500 GB. The Hitachi seems faster and is also a lot quieter. The Hitachi gets a better drive performance index from Vista, but I don't know exactly how Vista evaluates that, so take it with a grain of salt. The point is that drives have been getting faster, and adding even an ordinary modern one can sometimes fix some sluggishness problems.

BTW, if you don't have a lot of RAM and are using large apps/data sets, then you might consider upping that instead -- the drive could be being hit because applications are running out of RAM.

 

[Candymancan]

Originally posted by: DSF
RAID 0 "stripes" your data. I'm going to oversimplify things a bit here, but the gist is that it takes each file that will be written to the hard drive, cuts it in half, and puts half on each drive. This way when it goes to read or write, it can theoretically do so in half the time by reading/writing half the file to each drive.

That means that if a drive fails, you lose everything, not just what you were working on. The other drive only has half of each file, so anything that tries to read it, even a sophisticated data recovery program, will just see gibberish. It's really not worth it, as the real world performance boost is minimal.

Even with an old Raptor, if your mouse gets jerky when you're extracting a file I'd almost wonder if the drive is going bad. (Although it's also a small drive.) Has this always happened, or only recently?

This only happens on the 7200rpm 2mb cache caviar not the raptor when i extract a very large file like extracting an ISO from a 6gb file my mouse will become a little jerky on this Caviar. I never noticed that on my 36gb raptor so i assume it cuss this caviar is much slower and has only 2mb cache.

Cuss my raptor has been in my bro's PC for a year now

Maybe i should just get a Raptor X 150gb, and then save some money up later for a storage drive like the 500gb seagate. That will cost like $260 which i dont have but the 150gb on the raptor will suit me for awhile so i can get the other one later

I only thought about Raid 0 with 2x500GB seagate's cuss there cheaper together then the raptor and i assume them in raid would be faster then the raptor would. I dont like the notion tho of losing data like that

My full system specs are

Opteron 165 @ 3GHZ
4GB G.skill HZ Pc4000
8800GTS 640mb
DFI NF4 SLI-DR
650W Antec trio 12v

My PC is pushing 3 years old now when i built this, and im still using this old Caviar. The drive isnt dying i know that its super silent no ringing or clicking. No random lock ups not a hitch. Only when i extract large ISO'S or when i do 2 ISO or file extractions that are large like 1-2GB + is when this drive starts to make my mouse jerk around and PC really slows down specially with 2 large ISO'S

This 7200 RPM 160GB 2mb cache WD drive isnt not fast enough

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Originally posted by: Candymancan
What kind of HDD setup under $200 is the best for me and what i do ? I dont do all this often just maybe once a week or sometimes more depending on whatever. I mainly just game on my PC, playing MMO's for the most part ect and i dont really notice slow loading times with the current drive just the issues i mentioned above.

My choice's that i have come up with is

1x 150GB Raptor X
2x 74GB Raptor 16mb cache
2x 500GB Seagates 32mb cache 7200RPM i Guess these drives are kinda new

Are you limited to only these choices? Because none of them are that great.

I wouldn't get either raptor you have, since the newest 7200rpm drives are faster than them. Only the brand new Velociraptor 300gig drive is faster then the current top 7200rpm drives (but it is almost $300).

I wouldn't RAID your drives, it generally isn't worth it and you have a bigger chance to lose data.

The current best 7200rpm drives are the WD 640Gig, the new WD black 1Tb (*not* the caviar GP 1tb, which is a 5400rpm drive), and Samsung 1Tb. All are within ~5% of each other, and only ~10% slower then the Vraptor.

I would go with 2 of the WD 640Gig drives, they are only ~$85-90 right now. That would let you put apps on one drive, and OS on another, as well as have page files on both drives.

Or just get one of the 1tb drives, they are ~$180-200 right now.

Either way, that should be fine. The two drives will probably be a *little* faster then one big drive, but not by much, you probably wouldn't even notice the difference.

 

[Candymancan]

No thats just what iv been looking at.


How sure are you that this WD 640 drive is faster then a raptor ? Cuss i cant find any reviews on this

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Originally posted by: Candymancan
No thats just what iv been looking at.


How sure are you that this WD 640 drive is faster then a raptor ? Cuss i cant find any reviews on this

Storagreview link

They don't have the 640gig tested, but it's basically the same speed as the WD 1tb or Samsung F1. All three of these drives use the newest 333gig platters. Older drives have less dense platters, which reduces their STR.

The 74gig raptor is the worst drive, the 150gig raptor is equal in speed to the WD 1tb and Samsung 1tb, but the raptor holds way less, and uses a bit more power.

The Velicoraptor is faster, but $300 for 300gig is a bit expensive, IMHO. Espeically when you can get 2X the storage for ~30% of the price with the WD 640gig.

Here's another good website with several of the drives compared as well (but not the WDblack 1tb)

Techreport

 

[geofelt]

When you process large files sequentially, performance can be very good, just so long as you are processing just one file. That is because the HDD read/write head can stay positioned on the relevant part of the HDD , resulting in minimal seek time.

If you want to process TWO such files, you will get a drastic decrease in performance. The reason is that the read/write head now has to constantly move from one file to the other. The problem is aggravated when the HDD starts to get full, and the files are located further apart.

You can mitigate the problem with a faster seeking drive like the velociraptor.
The better approach would be to add another drive like Madwand1 suggested, and try to separate the input files from the output files.
Better, yet, if you have the funds, do both.