Need help deciding on one of these hard drives

[UltimaSlayerVII]

Hi, so I'm torn in between a few choices of hard drives and was looking for some help as to which would give best performance. Money isnt a problem, but I wont go for the 15k drives, because those are just too expensive no matter how you look at it:

1x 300GB Velociraptor 10k rpm: This looks like a very good HDD, but for the high price, I dont know, especially because I've heard raid 0 can be better.

2x 300GB(or 150gb) Velociraptor 10k rpm in raid 0: This is even more expensive, but I'm loving the though of 2 of these in raid 0... would it be double the performance of 1? Because if it really is that awesome, this is the one I go for, but its very expensive...

Dual 74gb Raptors 10k rpm in raid 0: These are 10k rpm, and I can get 2 of them for the price of 1 velociraptor. So, in theory, shouldnt this setup kick everything else's ass? Yet some people told me its a bad idea...

Dual 7.2k rpm Seagates in raid 0: If none of these are worth it, this is also an option, because I hear it's still very fast.

So, which do you guys think would give the best performance?

Thanks

 

[geofelt]

There is generally no real world(vs. synthetic transfer rate benchmarks) performance advantage to raid of any kind.
Go to www.storagereview.com at this link: http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=SingleDriveVsRaid0
There are some specific applications that will benefit, but
gaming is not one of them. Even if you have an application which reads one input file sequentially, and writes
it out, you will perform about as well by putting the input on one drive, and the output on the other.

I have the single 300gb velociraptor, and I love it. It DOES make a difference. If you only need 300gb, then that is the way to go. If you need more, I suggest a second slower drive for backups and storage. Also, I find the drive to be very quiet, if that matters.

I have used the 15k SCSI drives, and they were not any faster than the 150gb raptor. The reason is that 15k drives are designed for server applications. Their microcode optimizes random reads instead of the more typical mix of random and sequential that we use in a single user desktop environment. Look at the performance database of www.storagereview.com for comparisons.

The older 74gb raptors are slower than the current raptors, which, in turn are slower than the velociraptor.

If you have the budget, the best performance would come from the new Intel 80gb SSD, at $600 and up.

 

[UltimaSlayerVII]

There is generally no real world(vs. synthetic transfer rate benchmarks) performance advantage to raid of any kind.
Go to www.storagereview.com at this link: http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=SingleDriveVsRaid0
There are some specific applications that will benefit, but
gaming is not one of them. Even if you have an application which reads one input file sequentially, and writes
it out, you will perform about as well by putting the input on one drive, and the output on the other.

I have the single 300gb velociraptor, and I love it. It DOES make a difference. If you only need 300gb, then that is the way to go. If you need more, I suggest a second slower drive for backups and storage. Also, I find the drive to be very quiet, if that matters.

I have used the 15k SCSI drives, and they were not any faster than the 150gb raptor. The reason is that 15k drives are designed for server applications. Their microcode optimizes random reads instead of the more typical mix of random and sequential that we use in a single user desktop environment. Look at the performance database of www.storagereview.com for comparisons.

The older 74gb raptors are slower than the current raptors, which, in turn are slower than the velociraptor.

If you have the budget, the best performance would come from the new Intel 80gb SSD, at $600 and up.

Wait, so you mean I could use a velociraptor for the performance side of things, and use a seperate hard drive for storage?

Could you please explain?

Also, you're sure dual velociraptors wouldnt give better performance than 1?

thanks

 

[cjl]

Dual would give better performance, but nowhere near double (more like a slight boost). You can absolutely use a fast drive for programs and windows, and a slower drive for storage though. You would simply set them up as non-RAID drives.

 

[geofelt]

The best hard drive performance depends.......
If you know your access pattern, and if it never changes, then one could design a hard drive setup that was somewhat faster. The problem is that what we do is ever changing. It is best to just get a simple hard drive that is a good all around performer. A case can be made for better performance with raid, but there are tradeoffs which can make raid performance worse. I don't think it is worth the hassle to micromanage the hard drive.

To reiterate my suggestion:
Get a 300gb velociraptor. Start putting the OS and your "stuff" on it.
When it starts to get full, get another hard drive. Either a second velociraptor, or one of the 1tb drives if you need a lot of capacity.

---good luck---

 

[UltimaSlayerVII]

The best hard drive performance depends.......
If you know your access pattern, and if it never changes, then one could design a hard drive setup that was somewhat faster. The problem is that what we do is ever changing. It is best to just get a simple hard drive that is a good all around performer. A case can be made for better performance with raid, but there are tradeoffs which can make raid performance worse. I don't think it is worth the hassle to micromanage the hard drive.

To reiterate my suggestion:
Get a 300gb velociraptor. Start putting the OS and your "stuff" on it.
When it starts to get full, get another hard drive. Either a second velociraptor, or one of the 1tb drives if you need a lot of capacity.

---good luck---

Alright, so 1 velociraptor will be great for gaming,and I can just buy another and raid it for extra space/performance? Sounds good. but I got 2 questions:

1)Are you sure 1 velociraptor wont bottleneck my setup? Its very high-end... 3 gtx 280s OC'd, OC'd quad core Q9550 and 8GB DDR2-1066 RAM? Or is it fine?

2)And do you think 300gb will be enough for me? I just plan to have a lot of games installed (orange box, crysis, cod4, AOC, starcraft 2, far cry 2 and many more), itunes, browsers, and some minor programs.

Thanks

 

[geofelt]

There is generally no real world(vs. synthetic transfer rate benchmarks) performance advantage to raid of any kind.
Go to www.storagereview.com at this link: http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=SingleDriveVsRaid0
There are some specific applications that will benefit, but
gaming is not one of them. Even if you have an application which reads one input file sequentially, and writes
it out, you will perform about as well by putting the input on one drive, and the output on the other.

1) The velociraptor is as good as it gets today, with the possible exception of SSD's which cost in the thousands of dollars.
2) 300gb will hold LOTS of games. Just monitor your hard drive capacity. Add a second drive later when you think you will need it.

For what it's worth, I think you will not get any value out of the third GTX280. Two is enough.