Worth while upgrade to my 3x640 WD 640AAKK raid0?

[sgrinavi]

Currently it runs pretty good, seek times are not_so_hot....

280.8 MB/sec

3x 60 GB Vertex SSD
2x 120 GB Vertex SSDs
4x 60 GB ?? SSDs

OR

3x Velociraptors?

any opinions?

 

[jkresh]

as far as I am aware seek is never good on raid (or never better then individual) it is sequential speed that really benefits. that being said ssd's will definitely improve seek but most outside of the intel run into certain issues so I would recomend either going with the intel, going with some 15k drives (if you have a sas card they are nor much more than the velociraptor now) or wait a few months for ssd's to continue improving and dropping in price. One nice thing about the ssd's is that they should be safer in raid 0 then regular drives, but you are giving up a lot of space for a decent amount of money and not that much of an improvement in sequential read/write.

 

[boomhower]

I say save you money or get a dedicated card. If you insist on replacing them I would go with the Vertex's but would suggest putting them on a decent card than onboard.

 

[sgrinavi]

Actually I just bought an LSI MegaRAID SAS 8344ELP . (got a good deal on it from a forum member)

My plan is to run a 3 or 4 disk RAID 0 off the mega raid for my boot / programs then run a 4 disk raid 0+1 off the on-board for data (4x 640aaks). I do CAD and 3dsMAX work along with photoshop, premier and MSoffice. I don't care if it takes a few extra seconds to boot up as I only do it once a day....

I would like it to be a bit more responsive. My previous system was a single 640 on a 3.8 ghz 9550. The i7 running on the 3 disk raid 0 is already a huge improvement, I just want to, if possible, make it snappier.

 

[Denithor]

2-3 X25M in raid0 is going to give you the most responsive system you can have today.

Even just a single 80/160 GB X25M would fix any hesitation you've got and come close to matching the throughput of your current raid array.

 

[sgrinavi]

Originally posted by: Denithor
2-3 X25M in raid0 is going to give you the most responsive system you can have today.

Even just a single 80/160 GB X25M would fix any hesitation you've got and come close to matching the throughput of your current raid array.

I picked up 3x of the new OCZ Vertex 120's to run in RAID 0 - I know it's not going to give me the speed of the intel, but 360 GB for under $1000 is pretty damn sweet ( a single x25-m / 160 is $760) For about another $100 I could have had 3x x25-M/80's but I opted for the extra space and

a. I dont think the the real-world difference going to be significant... so it take 6 seconds to start CAD as opposed to 4... either way the reads are going to be snappy... .

b. with the new firmware the 120's are pushing close to the intels speed at 2/3 the cost

Here's a 3x 32 GB vertex raid0 avg 600 mb/sec that is on an intel raid - the LSI should do better and the 120's are faster than the 32's and 64's - lets say I get another 10% out of it for 650. From what I have been able to dig up a 2x Intel raid is about 480 MB/SEC. If I scale that up another drive you are at 720 -

I'm not after E-PEEN - For my money the extra 120 MB is well worth a 10% loss in speed. I'll be able to keep my commonly used textures and, maybe even, my photoshop swap, on the SSD...