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Which two 250GB drives to buy for raid 0?

entropy1982

Golden Member
Hey guys,

The question is pretty much in the message title but i will just tell you what i have heard for now.

The WD review that i read Link was pretty dissapointing about this drive.

Also the Hitachi review on Tom's summarizes his results in the conclusion:
In the end, the T7K250 wasn't able to beat the reigning champion in the field of peak data transfer rates, the Samsung Spinpoint P120. However, the new DeskStar really shone when it came to access times, taking second place only to Western Digital's Raptor series, which spins at 10,000 RPM.
All in all, the Samsung drive gets our nod if you're only looking for an upgrade to increase your storage space. If the new drive is also intended to house your operating system, we suggest the new Hitachi drive instead.

So what do you guys suggest?
 
I'm going to give the obligatory response for RAID-0:

Not worth it, double the chance of losing everything.

That said, if I was forced to buy two disks for RAID-0 out of those two, I'd take the Hitachis.

If you really want speed, then buy a second-hand SCSI drive. Not only do those things live for years, they're a hell of a lot faster in real-world applications.
 
hehe i would hope they live for years and not months 😛 hehe

well.... i think the review you are getting this info from i read (the anandtech review comparing the raptors) The only thing is... no one has done any reviews with other drives (maybe it's raptor specific? i don't know) and also the 2-5% increases that anandtech did report are actually worthit for me because i think people are bit pessimistic about drives dying... they don't die THAT often 🙂 ... and ill have a 120gb drive that just backs up the important stuff at night so i think i should be ok. What do you think?
 
Originally posted by: entropy1982
hehe i would hope they live for years and not months 😛 hehe

well.... i think the review you are getting this info from i read (the anandtech review comparing the raptors) The only thing is... no one has done any reviews with other drives (maybe it's raptor specific? i don't know) and also the 2-5% increases that anandtech did report are actually worthit for me because i think people are bit pessimistic about drives dying... they don't die THAT often 🙂 ... and ill have a 120gb drive that just backs up the important stuff at night so i think i should be ok. What do you think?

i agree with phil and you never know, that is the problem. i have had a hdd from just about every manf take a sh@t on me, some 6mos out, others 5yrs out. the one thing that is for sure is that they will die eventually. not being pessimistic, just realistic

and the performance gains mentioned in the article are not raptor specific but hdds in general.

also, some of have used raids in different fashions and the anandtech review is pretty much right on target, for the home user, raid1 is the only way to go.
 
Originally posted by: entropy1982
well yea but i'm already backing the data i really need up anyway shouldnt that be enough?

that is up to you. you are backing up the data, but what about the hours of time you put into tweaking everything just the way you want it, the install of all the programs again, etc. in the end only you can make the decision but to be honest, benchmarks don't really matter because you will not be able to tell the difference if one drive has a str of 55MB/s and another has a str of 61MB/s, the differences are small. plus you will not have the other drives to compare to so to you the hdds you buy will work out great, regardless of what the benches say, it is all pretty much relative.
 
Do you by any chance have any other benches showing how RAID 0 affects your drives, since u know it's not raptor specific?
 
Originally posted by: entropy1982
Do you by any chance have any other benches showing how RAID 0 affects your drives, since u know it's not raptor specific?

i don't run raid0, in fact i don't run any raid at all, all of my backups are handled through acronis true image with different machines being backed up to a main server which is then backed up again to another internal drive in it. i messed around with it way before the raptors were out and what i felt was basically the sam thing that anandtech stated, i couldn't tell a difference. sure the str will be higher but unless you are going to move huge files (GB+) then you will not notice it.

also, the tech report statement "Even 15K-RPM SCSI drives struggle to sustain transfer rates that would saturate a 150MB/s Serial ATA pipe." is pretty stupid because a 15krpm hdd has a str of ~80MB/s. this statement alone made me not want to read the review but i did and as you can see, all of the amounts for most of the tests are close with the exception of the raptor, which has a 2800rpm advantage.
 
Originally posted by: entropy1982
http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/515
read em and weep 😛

Given the amount of competitor-bashing in that article, I'd take it with a bucket of salt.

Their own tests show a tiny, tiny performance difference, and the entire article seems to be written in a way that tries to poke fun at Anandtech and Storage Review.

Storage Review is possibly the most respected storage website on the net, and Anandtech is possibly the most respected hardware site on the net. Sounds to me like the author of the article was just bitter.

Even if you do take those results seriously, that's still two against, one for.
 
Originally posted by: entropy1982
http://www.tweakers.net/reviews/515
read em and weep 😛

seems like a not so big site trying to get higher on the search engine by putting anandtech and storagreviews in an article. they are just trying to make a name for themselves. no more, no less. even their test don't show these huge differences in real world usages.

honestly, do whatever you want, but from personal experience the difference was not at as they hype it up to be, and in my case not even noticeable.

also, personally i feel at least some users will have the placebo effect, "sure it feels faster because is should and i spent $$$ on it."

it is kind of like video cards and gamers, especially with sli out now. is there a difference between 30fps and 80, yes. is there a difference betwee 80 and 160, yes, on paper and the benchmark show it but in reailty over ~70fps 80%+ can't see the difference but people will tell you they can because they just spent a ton of $$$ on their dual 6800ultras in sli to run a game @ 1280x1024 and 140fps because that is what there lcd will support when in fact a single 6800ultra would be just fine and run the game @ 80fps.
 
Originally posted by: entropy1982
yea i thougth bout it for the last 20 mins... u're kidna right ... i dunno i'll have to think about it 🙂

to get back to your original post, since you are going to buy 2 hdds anyway, i would get the hitachis. you could then run your own tests and see what you like more, 2 drives seperate or 1 striped drive. either way you are going to get 2 hdds. you may want to look at the seagates because of their 5 year warranty though, which is nice and the speed differences will not be noticeable because they are all so close in performance now.
 
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