Is raid 0 helpfull in games and general computing

[uriah]

Hello,
I have a WD 300 G Velocirapter, WD 500 black and a 2 T Samsung. I can pick up the 300 for $95, the 500 for $55 and use either in raid 0. I can not afford a 256 gig SSD and do not want a 128 gig.

Basically I am wondering how much improvement I will see if I set up either as raid 0 and if its worth the extra $50 to get another raptor over the 500 black.

Asrock z68 f4 -I 7 2600k 16 gigs Corsair 1600 dominator

 

[Supermuncher85]

Personally I think the raptor is a waste. I used them until I bought a 128gb ssd and since then my raptors been sitting in the closet. An ssd is so much faster than a raptor I don't see the point in paying their premium. If you need space, buy the 7200 rpm drives. If you want speed, save up for an ssd.

 

[sminlal]

RAID-0 can potentially improve transfer rates, but it can't improve access times. So it's good for applications that need to read or write a few big files at a time, but it doesn't really help much when you need to read or write a lot of little files at once.

In practical terms, that means RAID-0 won't significantly speed up tasks like booting the system or starting programs (that's where SSDs really shine), but it will speed up things like large file copies.

 

[uriah]

Best answer selected by uriah.

 

[MrBig55]

In gaming a raid-0 array will load your games and each levels faster, but that's about it. You won't gain anything else.