10Krpm single drive vs 7200rpm-RAID

romansoft

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Hello,

I'm building a brand new computer and I'd like to highly customize it so it's important to take the right decission before buying components, etc. I'd need help with the storage choosing.

I'm evaluating two possible solutions:
A) Only one fast hard-disk. The model would be:
HD SATA150 150GB WESTERN DIGITAL RAPTOR WD1500ADFD 10KRPM
B) RAID (possibly a mirror), with two hard-disks. The model would be:
SAMSUNG HD501LJ (SATA/300, 7200 rpm)

The cost seems similar (Raptor is extreeeeemely expensive!!) so I'd choose basing mainly on performance (security would be a bonus). Which one would you take? Why? I plan to run a Windows OS installed on any of the above hardware solutions.

Actually, the mainboard I've choosen is very powerful (it supports RAID & SATA/300). I've choose this one:
P5B PREM VISTA S775 P965 ATX SND+2GLN+U2 +1394 FSB1066 SATA2. Mainboard storage features:
Southbridge
- 6 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s
- Tecnología Intel Matrix Storage soporte RAID 0, 1, 5 y 10
Controlador JMicron® JMB363 PATA y SATA
- 1 x UltraDMA 133/100/66 para hasta 2 dispositivos PATA
- 1 x SATA interno 3.0 Gb/s
- 1 x SATA externo 3.0 Gb/s (SATA On-the-Go)
- Soporte SATA RAID 0, 1 y JBOD (por 1x SATA externo y 1x SATA interno)

My little&own comparative:

Pros for Raptor (Solution A):
- write operations would be faster than RAID (10Krpm vs 7200rpm)
- less power comsumption (one HD vs two HDs)

Pros for "cheap RAID" (Solution B):
- it is SATA/300 based (Raptor is SATA/150)
- redundancy (mirror)
- more capacity (500 GB vs 150 GB)
- read operations faster :-? (2x7200 rpm vs 10Krpm)


* What about read operations? Which one would be faster: RAID/7200 rpm or single/10Krpm?
* In practice, would I note a notable performance increase if using SATA/300 over SATA/150? (I suppose I do if I'm transfering big files, am I right?).
* Really I don't see how a big price like the Raptor one could be justificated... Maybe I'm wrong and a 10krpm disk will beat a two-7200 raid in terms of performance...

Please, let me know which your opinion is. I'd greatly appreciate your comments!

Thank you in advance.
-r
 

russki

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Look into the newer offerings from WD and Hitachi. Almost as fast as Raptor and a much greater cost / Mb. And don't do RAID unless you plan to edit videos all day long.

And by the way interface bandwidth, obviously is not that important for a Raptor, it's still fast. That just shows you that it's limited by the mechanics, not the interface.
 

romansoft

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Thanks for both responses. Any recommended "Raptor-equivalent" hard-disk model? I would like to have a look to the specs of such equivalent disks. Thank you.
-r
 

jt001

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Go for the Raptor, RAID is nearly useless on the desktop. Of course someone will come in and disagree with that, but if you want more heat, more power consumption, more noise, over 2x the chance of data loss, for a SLIGHT gain in speed, go for it. The Raptor has much better seek times, and that's what you'd probably benefit from the most.

Really for most people, a single 7200rpm drive is fine, but if you have the money, go for a Raptor.

As far as the interface speed, it means nothing on desktop SATA, don't even take it into consideration, either 150 or 300 will perform exactly the same. Just a marketing gimmick.

Also, mirroring will not make the drives any faster(not on onboard RAID anyway), just slower if anything. Mirroring is also no substitute for a backup. It won't protect you from accidentally deleting the file, a virus taking out files, or the filesystem corrupting, only against mechanical failure, which is far less likely than the other scenarios I mentioned. In short, RAID of any form is not reasonable for desktop use.
 

romansoft

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Hi Russki,

If you're refering to:
Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 HDS721075KLA330
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3750640AS-RK

they're not equivalent at all to Raptor.

For instance, let's see Seagate vs Raptor:
- Average Latency: 4.16 vs 2.99 ms
- Read Seek Time: 8.5 vs 4.6 ms (Raptor is ~double faster!)

Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

PS: More thanks to this thread's contributors! ;) I'm not rich but I'll probably go for Raptor.

Cheers,
-r
 

russki

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No, I'm refering to the new WD and Hitachi. And you need to learn to read more than just specifications (by the way, hate to diappoint but those 2ms response LCD monitors are not really 2ms in the majority of scenarios and some times A LOT slower. Sorry. The specs do not always tell the story and a lot of times they don't even tell the truth...) Look at the benchies. They do trail Raptor, of course, but by a very narrow margin. And not all the time. For example, Hitachi outperforms Raptor in PC Mark. All that is BS, though, 'cause those are synthetic benchmarks. Look at the application performance ones and make your decisions.
 

romansoft

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Sorry Russki, but I couldn't find the WD&Hitachi models you're refering in that page :-( Please, could you specify the exact models? Perhaps the URL you gave to me was wrong? (or maybe I'm blind :-((). Thanks.
 

russki

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Hey, Paul. Quick question: I do agree with most things you post, but what's up with all the line breaks?!

romansoft: Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS and Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 HDS721075KLA330. Page 2 of the article called specifications gives you more specific data. But, again, look at the benchmarks, particularly real life application performance, before making your decisions.
 

russki

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Paul, and one other point - I am not sure I agree with you as much on the Raptor technology note. Yes, it is not vertcal recording, but I'm not sure they could implement it at 10,000 RPM spindle. And obviously it's not limited by the bandwidth of the interface. Even buffer to disk, as you noted, does not approach the 150 Gb/sec limit. So that's a non-issue. RamDisk is still an extravagant solution for most users.
 

forummd

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Look dude these people will spit out tech specs and numbers all day. but I'll give u the Dlow.... 10k HDD's spin faster and give a marginal increase in seek time. In an ideal situation you would have your OS installed on a small higher RPM HDD and keep a secondary storage drive. Since lower RPM drives with higher capacity are cheaper they are ideal for raid 0 which will offer a little performance gain out of cheap space. The only set back is u buy 2 drives and get little gain out of performance. BUT raid 0 aka striping will allow you to use the capacity of both drives while increasing speed. SO... I'd go one smaller raptor (At a faster inter face SATA 6) and use your storage as whatever is cost effective.
Remember, the hard drive is the slowest part of the information process... HDD seek time is measured in ms and memory is measured in ns... so you want to eliminate bottle necks accordingly. While also being cost effective. have fun!