RAID Q (yes I read the FAQ)

[gobeavers]

I am looking into hd's for a high speed system and I have some questions... How much more of a performance gain does using 2 disks in RAID 0 give you than using one? On the IS7 it says serial ATA raid, can I use RAID with regular ATA 100 drives? And would a raid 0 configuration be better than one raptor drive? It will be used as a desktop computer with occasional server duty.
Thanks for any info!

 

[smitbret]

RAID 0 would have a performance edge over a Raptor IF it is set up right. Also, the more disks you put in the array, the better your performance.
-Brett

 

[gobeavers]

what do you mean by setting it up right? Is that hard?

 

[Cloaked]

no, the only real thing you have to think about is stripe size. I am not sure if you can even change this all of the time, but it refers to the sizes of the pieces each file is broken up into. It depends if you are dealing with many small files are many large files. But for the price of a wd raptor, you could get two 80 gig eide hdds, so you would have more performance and 160 gigs os space as opposed to 36.7

 

[gobeavers]

Do you recommend any particular drives? I have read that the IBM 180 GXP's are fast, but that was with an 8 mb buffer, which is spendy for what we want. Plus, IBM doesn't sound very popular with some people due to durability issues, but it is 20 dollars cheaper for the 60 gb 180 GXP than the WD 60 gb. The only difference is IBM has a .4ms less seek time. Should I believe the IBM worries? I can always go with a 40 gb WD to save money, since I mostly want speed, but I want that speed to last.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by gobeavers on 08/24/03 00:11 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Vonkwink]

My favorite hard drives are the western digital caviars with 8mb cache. They run slightly hot, but they are very affordable and very fast. That is if you are looking for IDE drives. If you are looking for SATA, though, its your pick on what to get, my knowledge is fairly limited as far as specific brands of SATA drives go.

The reviews on this website (www.tomshardware.com) of the harddrives should help you figure something out.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Wow. I think you should be given the prize!
Someone who actaully read the FAQ BEFORE posting!

A two drive RAID 0 can be faster than a raptor, provided the stripe size is set up correctly for the kind of tasks you are going to do.

There are lots of recommendations, but often the best way to tell is to experiment for yourself.

And while the sustained transfer rate of two 7200rpm drives may be faster than one 10k raptor, the seek times for the raptor will allways be lower.

Western Digital 'JB' drives are reported to work very well in raid arrays.

<b>My Car comes with Hyper Threading enabled:
1970 General Motors Holden HT Kingswood Wagon
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Mr no integrity coward.</b>