Would a pair of SATA2 hdd in RAID-0 trump a single Raptor hdd, average seek time wise?

[videopho]

It lately seems much less expensive to put together a RAID0 drive using a pair of SATA2 hdds than the cost of a single 160gb Raptor drive itself, same capacity. Last check a 160gb Raptor drive goes for $300. A pair of SATA2 80gb hdd go for $110.00.
Put aside everything else but performance. Would the Raptor still be faster?

 

[BDawg]

Probably depends largely on the RAID controller card.

IIRC, Tomshardware did a story last year about RAIDs that showed the theoretical benefit was much larger than the realised benefit, espescially with cheaper and on-board solutions.

 

[Bobthelost]

It doesn't matter what RAID controller you use.

It's a 150gb raptor.

Comparison have been done using a single raptor 150 and 4 raptor 74s, the raptor 150 was better for nearly all single user tests.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
It doesn't matter what RAID controller you use.

It's a 150gb raptor.

Comparison have been done using a single raptor 150 and 4 raptor 74s, the raptor 150 was better for nearly all single user tests.

Even a two-drive RAID0 will blow the Raptor away in terms of STR. It would also be better for some server-like workloads with very heavy queue depths and a lot of randomly-placed reads (since the single drive can only service one I/O at a time).

However, STR is not what makes a drive 'fast' in terms of single-user performance. It's really only the limiting factor when you start working with enormous files (doing photo editing on extremely high-resolution images, video editing, etc.). The Raptor will always have a lower seek time, which will make more a difference than the increase in STR.