SSD Raid 0 or HDD Raid 0 for Fraps & Dxtory?

[Kristof910]

Actually I was wondering which one does better for an only recording SSD/HDD:

The Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA3 64MB 7200rpm in Raid 0

or

The Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 60GB SATA 3 in Raid 0 too? (read 550MB/s, write 515MB/s)

I hate when the game while recording drops to 30 or even less FPS and lagging sooo much! And I think my problem is my HDD because my GPU and CPU are doing well!

My PC:

MOBO: Asus Maximus IV GENE-Z/GEN3

CPU: i7-2600K @ 4.6GHz

Cooler: Corsair H100

RAM: 2x4GB Corsair Vengeance 2133MHz CL11 Rev A

GPU: Asus GTX 670 DirectCU II @ 1270MHz

HDD: 2TB Seagate Barracuda - 7200rpm, 64MB, S-ATA 3

PSU: Corsair TX650 v2

Case: Corsair 500r

Thankyou For Answearing! 😀 and sorry for my bad english 😛

 

[tokencode]

I would get a single 128GB SSD. It will be more than fast enough without the added complexity and lesser-reliability of RAID 0.

 

[nleksan]

I would say neither... For gameplay recording, you need a combination of decent-to-high-capacity and excellent, stable sequential R/W speeds.
First of all, there's NO WAY you'd be anywhere close to saturating a single good SSD, so 2 in RAID0 would just be a waste.
Second: the WD Black you have picked is focused more on low seek/access times/latencies than on sequential throughput, which is fantastic for an OS drive, but pretty much the opposite of what you want for "Media" drives (which is what a gameplay-recording drive/array is).

My suggestion, after having some fantastic experiences with the product, is the Western Digital 1TB WD10EZEX Single-Platter "Blue" drives, specifically 2 in RAID0!

These drives cost between $60 and $80 depending on sales, but usually right about in the middle. So, for less money than the WD Black 500GB, you're getting twice the capacity per drive. I'll explain why that's an excellent thing here shortly...

These drives, because of their extremely-high areal densities, produce some astonishing Sequential Read/Write numbers, but suffer a bit in the latency area as a result.

I started out with 2 of them, and now I have a dozen in a few different machines, because they are seriously that good.

PERFORMANCE:

*1 DRIVE*
- 160-170MBs Avg Read/Write, >200MBs Peak, ~110-120MBs Minimum
- 18-21ms Latency/Seek Time

*2 DRIVES RAID0*
- 295-310MBs Avg R/W, >345MBs Peak, ~225MBs Min
- 15.5-17ms Latency/Seek Time

Now, the REAL FUN....

2 DRIVES IN RAID0, EACH SHORT-STROKED TO 500GB (1TB TOTAL IN ARRAY)
- 345MBs Avg R/W, 364MBs Peak, 311MBs Min
- 11.2-12.8ms Latency/Seek Time

The outer halves of these drive platters are simply stupendously fast, and so short-stroking each drive to 300-500GB gives you some pretty amazing performance; not just benchmark performance, either, but tangible performance that you'll notice in day-to-day use.


I currently have my storage setup as such:
- 256GB Samsung 830 SSD (OS/Boot/Apps)
- 64GB ADATA SSD ("Write-Dump" SSD)
- 256GB Plextor M5Pro-S SSD (Currently-Played Games/Audio Editing Programs)
- 3x WD10EZEX 1TB Short-Stroked to 400GB Each and in 3-Drive RAID0 (videos, current projects, etc; 430MBsec Avg Sequential R/W, 8.5-9.8ms Latency)
- 2x WD RE 4TB in RAID1 (in-computer backups)
- External Enclosure for 4x Drives holding 4x Hitachi Ultrastar 3TB in RAID10 for weekly backups (then it is unplugged and kept in a fireproof gun safe with a half-dozen of my SBR AR's)


Fast...AND Secure (especially since I have rotating off-site backups 😉 )

 

[nukemaster]

I am a HUGE fan of nleksan's idea since it IS all sequential(at least when it is on a dedicated drive or set of drives.). If it was the OS drive, the hard would most likely be doing other things and results in lots of fragmentation.

I did some WDC back short stroke with great results for a hard drive.

Just remember some games will take a hit either way and you will have to set Fraps to use the frame rate you want(50/60/ect).