Velociraptors? in Raid 0? or Spinpoint? or SSD? I always thought

[jlaavenger]

Velociraptors? in Raid 0? or Spinpoint? or SSD? I always thought my ideal PC would have two 300GB Velociraptors in Raid 0. Those running about $229 each. But I've been told that I should get a SSD instead. I read that the problem is for a 64gb or 128gb SSD they fill up quick and slow down, especially with restore points turned on. Someone suggested the Samsung Spinpoint saying it was faster than a Velociraptor in boot times but I'm not sure if that's true. What would you recommend? Would just one 300gb Velociraptor be the ideal OS Drive?

 

[sminlal]

If fast boot and application load times are what you're looking for, then an SSD is your best bet. There were a lot of serious issues with writing for of the old SSDs, but newer ones such as the OCZ Vertex seem to have ironed out most of those problems. Intel's X25M drives are still the most highly regarded, but are somewhat more expensive.

 

[jlaavenger]

I don't think I can afford much more than a 64gb SSD right now, and I read that because of restore points a 64gb will fill up in nothing flatt.

 

[sminlal]

64GB is probably a little tight. You can get a little more space by disabling hibernation and moving the pagefile to another disk, and you can change the system restore settings to limit how much space it uses.

 

[jlaavenger]

I was able to look at my old drive. It was a 300gb Seagate drive and I'd used 279gb of space so I'm thinking because of cost and size that the SSD might not be good for me. I'm leaning closer to 1 300gb Velociraptor or possibly two in raid 0. Then maybe pay for online back ups.

 

[sminlal]

Most of that 279GB is probably applications and your data and possibly some deadwood. The applications and your data you could put on the hard drive - but frankly even if you could get it onto a 64GB SDD I suspect you'd be constantly fretting about space on that drive, so until SSDs come down to the point where you can afford a larger one then you're probably better off with the Velociraptor.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The Velociraptor just doesn't hold up well compared with today's newer drives:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-3.5-desktop-hard-drive-charts/h2benchw-3.12-Avg-Read-Throughput,1010.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-3.5-desktop-hard-drive-charts/Drive-Surface-Temperature,1015.html

 

[sminlal]

The Velociraptor just doesn't hold up well compared with today's newer drives:

People keep saying this over and over again, but they're only looking at half the picture. A lot of the newer drives have transfer rates that are comparable to the Velociraptor, but their access times are still much slower. This means the Velociraptors are still better at random I/O, and that's what really counts when booting and loading applications.

 

[jlaavenger]

Wow I could save a lot of money buying the 1TB F3, but boot and load times are important too. Decisions, decisions. Would two 500gb F3's in raid 0 be better than one 1TB F3?

 

[sminlal]

The RAID 0 will be somewhat faster for booting because of it's ability to service concurrent I/O requests. Best would be two 1TB drives partitioned to half their capacity (ie, 2 x 1TB in RAID 0 = capacity of 2TB, so partition the set to use only 1TB). This is because you'd be restricting the data to the fastest part of the drive and limiting the heads from having to travel too far to access the data.

Frankly, I couldn't tell you whether this would give you faster boot times than a Velociraptor or not. My hunch is that it wouldn't be quite as fast, but that's all it is - a hunch.

 

[jlaavenger]

The RAID 0 will be somewhat faster for booting because of it's ability to service concurrent I/O requests. Best would be two 1TB drives partitioned to half their capacity (ie, 2 x 1TB in RAID 0 = capacity of 2TB, so partition the set to use only 1TB). This is because you'd be restricting the data to the fastest part of the drive and limiting the heads from having to travel too far to access the data.

Frankly, I couldn't tell you whether this would give you faster boot times than a Velociraptor or not. My hunch is that it wouldn't be quite as fast, but that's all it is - a hunch.

So would you recommend the Velociraptors of the F3's based on Windows 7 boot time? I'm getting down to the wire on my build.

My build specs are:
COOLER MASTER Storm Sniper SGC-6000-KXN1-GP Black Steel, ABS Plastic, Mesh bezel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Antec TruePower New TP-750 Blue 750W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.3 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC "compatible with Core i7" Power Supply



Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition Bloomfield 3.33GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor



COOLER MASTER Intel Core i7 compatible V8 RR-UV8-XBU1-GP 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler

ASUS Rampage II Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard

CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1600C8D

XFX HD-587A-ZNF9 Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card w/ATI Eyefinity (in X-Fire)

HIS H587F1GDG Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card w/ATI Eyefinity (in X-Fire)

NZXT SEN-001LX Sentry LX Aluminum dual bay fan controller

Koutech IO-FPM220 3.5" Floppy Drive & Multi Card Reader Front Panel

LG Black 8X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 40X CD-ROM SATA Internal Combo LG Blu-ray Reader & 16X LightScribe DVD±R DVD Burner

MSI SATA 52x CDRW/DVD with Lightscribe

I just need to decide on the drive(s).

 

[jlaavenger]

Small 32GB SSd for the boot drive, Two WD black's in R0 for apps. Works great

Access Time > All

I'm a bit of a noob in a lot of areas despite having built a PC in the past. I thought the operating system and applications had to be on one drive or a raid 0 set up and the other drive served as storage. In otherwords I didn't think Apps would run unless they where on the same drive as the operating system. What ssd would you recommend? Bestbuy has a 64GB PNY SSD for $128 but one of the reviews said it filled up fast and then everything slowed way down. My last drive was a 300GB Seagate and I had 279GB used just prior to my MOBO crashing. I'm still leaning towards the V-Raptors despite the cost. But I'm listening.

 

[sub mesa]

If you buy an SSD, buy a good one. Its only a little more expensive, but Intel's SSDs are technically the best right now (highest random write IOps). Its a drive that doesn't have any particular weakness and is just a great all-round system drive.

I do recommend you seperate user-data (stuff in your my documents) from system data, for example you keep C for the system+installed programs and D for all personal files relating to you.

 

[sminlal]

I thought the operating system and applications had to be on one drive or a raid 0 set up and the other drive served as storage.

Almost all applications give you a choice of install folder when you run their setup program. There's no reason you can't create a "Program Files" folder on the "D:" (or other) drive and install the applications there. Of course if that drive isn't an SSD then you won't get the same load time benefits that you would if it was.

 

[jlaavenger]

Almost all applications give you a choice of install folder when you run their setup program. There's no reason you can't create a "Program Files" folder on the "D:" (or other) drive and install the applications there. Of course if that drive isn't an SSD then you won't get the same load time benefits that you would if it was.

From what I've read SSD's might not be right for me now. Would you recommend me going with just one 300GB Velociraptor as the OS Drive and 1TB Samsung F3 as storage or Two 300GB Velociraptors in Raid 0, and not upgrade, in otherwords use my existing my 300GB storage drive. Also I've never partitioned before and if I remember right the last time I had a partitioned drive I had problems with it but that was maybe 10 years ago. Do you recommend partitioning?

Dell used to recommend in they're system configurator's two Velociraptors in raid 0 as best performing but it looks like lately they prefer 1 velociraptor for the OS and one of the new large drive dedicated to storage instead. Other builders still tout the two V-Raptors in raid 0, so that can be a little confusing. I tend to fill up drives with Large PhotoShop files from time to time and I do light gaming. I tend to run many applications at once and even new Security Suites seem to continue to hog my resources and slow things down. Still it seems like it's speed I need. Right now I turn the PC on, walk away while it boots up, come back connect to the internet and take another break while thing load. But that's on an outdated P4 system.

 

[sminlal]

Again, it depends on what kind of I/O load you're going to be putting on the drives. If you want faster boot and application load times, then random I/O performance is probably the most important. In that case (and assuming you don't want to use an SSD which would be by far the fastest) a single Velociraptor is probably your best bang for the buck.

Two Velociratpors in RAID 0 would probably give a slight, but not major improvement in boot/load times (because of their ability to service two concurrent requests), but would be of a much bigger benefit for large sequential transfers.

 

[jlaavenger]

Again, it depends on what kind of I/O load you're going to be putting on the drives. If you want faster boot and application load times, then random I/O performance is probably the most important. In that case (and assuming you don't want to use an SSD which would be by far the fastest) a single Velociraptor is probably your best bang for the buck.

Two Velociratpors in RAID 0 would probably give a slight, but not major improvement in boot/load times (because of their ability to service two concurrent requests), but would be of a much bigger benefit for large sequential transfers.

Can you explain what you mean by "I/O load" and "sequential transfers" I'm a real novice I guess and I'm sure some would argue that I shouldn't be building a PC but that's how we learn right?

 

[sminlal]

Indeed, that's exactly how you learn.

Think of it like using a book. "Random I/O" is equivalent to the time it takes to FIND a particular page and paragraph in a book. "Sequential transfers" is equivalent to how many words per minute you can read once you've found the passage you want.

Some activities on your computer, such as booting it up and loading applications, read a LOT of little bits from all over the disc (ie, "book"). To get good performance with that type of activity, how quickly you can FIND the bits is a lot more important than how quickly you can read them ("words per minute) once they've been found.

For other activities, such as copying large files, you only need to FIND the file ONCE, then the rest of the time is spent reading and writing. In that case the FIND time is nowhere near as important as the "words per minute" (which in disk terms is Megabytes per second (MB/sec)).

When I say "I/O Load" I'm referring to the TYPE of I/O happens when you do whatever you do on your computer. If you're mostly interesting in speeding up how quickly your computer boots up and starts programs, then you need a disk subsystem which is fast at random I/Os (the "FINDing stuff in the book" analogy). If you copy large files or use programs that always read or write very large files, then you need a disk which can transfer large amounts of data quickly (the "reading words per minute" analogy).

 

[jlaavenger]

Indeed, that's exactly how you learn.

Think of it like using a book. "Random I/O" is equivalent to the time it takes to FIND a particular page and paragraph in a book. "Sequential transfers" is equivalent to how many words per minute you can read once you've found the passage you want.

Some activities on your computer, such as booting it up and loading applications, read a LOT of little bits from all over the disc (ie, "book"). To get good performance with that type of activity, how quickly you can FIND the bits is a lot more important than how quickly you can read them ("words per minute) once they've been found.

For other activities, such as copying large files, you only need to FIND the file ONCE, then the rest of the time is spent reading and writing. In that case the FIND time is nowhere near as important as the "words per minute" (which in disk terms is Megabytes per second (MB/sec)).

When I say "I/O Load" I'm referring to the TYPE of I/O happens when you do whatever you do on your computer. If you're mostly interesting in speeding up how quickly your computer boots up and starts programs, then you need a disk subsystem which is fast at random I/Os (the "FINDing stuff in the book" analogy). If you copy large files or use programs that always read or write very large files, then you need a disk which can transfer large amounts of data quickly (the "reading words per minute" analogy).

So am I right in thinking I'd install the OS and Antivirus on the V-Raptor drive and my other programs like PhotoShop and games like WOW, Aion, Sacred 2 and Diablo 2 on the 1TB drive? And also do I just plug in the 1TB drive and go or do I set it up in the bios somehow like a partition? It's late, I might not be thinking straight here. Besides the OS what programs benefit more from being on the V-Raptor and what programs benefit more being on the 1TB drive?

 

[sminlal]

You'd need to partition and format each drive you use, and I'd suggest just one partition per drive that fills the entire drive. The partitioning and formatting of the OS drive is done when you install the OS.

As a very approximate rule of thumb, the larger and more complex the program, and the more you use it, the more likely it is to benefit from being on the faster drive.

 

[jlaavenger]

So I guess I'd add PhotoShop to the V-Drive, but
Can you better explain partitioning or direct me a link that explains it better.

 

[sminlal]

Here are some links:

Partitioning during OS installation: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348

Partitioning a second drive after OS installation: http://www.ehow.com/how_6026_format-hard-drive.html

 

[LePhuronn]

If the cost of a SSD is an issue for, I recommend dropping the i7 975 in favour of an i7 920 and just overclock it - the money you'd save would easily cover a top-end Intel M SSD.

Oh and switch the Coolermaster V8 for something like a True Black Rev C or Megahalems with a pair of fans on push-pull - works much much better than the V8.

 

[BigEasyOne]

i know this thread is most likely dead but there are more ways to boot faster maybe even the fastest without investing in an ssd... provided that faster boot times is the reason for going to an ssd. there are solid state embedded boot-able usb drive modules that attach to the motherboard usb bus. these modules hold the os and boot code/cashe in non-volatile memory. check it for yourself here http://www.memorydepot.com/ssd_diskonmodule_usb.asp. it is exactly what you are looking for. if you want to boot fast don't pay for more ssd than you need for your purpose. many only look for fast boot times, fast storage is another topic all together. do you really need faster storage?