View Full Version : 2 36 gig raptors in raid 0 vs 1 72 gig raptor
I'm mostly looking for speed. 72 gig is more than enough file space for me, so thats not a problem. This computer is mostly used for gaming, and I know that the 72 gig version is faster, and has more features than a 36 gig version. But I really can't justify a $400 purchase for 2 72 gig raptors. I have never run a raid setup before, and I am very curious about it. I've heard mixed reviews saying that raid doesn't really help that much, and that the people who made those reviews were wrong. Right now, I'm leaning towards getting the 2 36 gig's. What do you guys think?
theELVISCERATOR
08-31-04, 05:34 PM
I'm mostly looking for speed. 72 gig is more than enough file space for me, so thats not a problem. This computer is mostly used for gaming, and I know that the 72 gig version is faster, and has more features than a 36 gig version. But I really can't justify a $400 purchase for 2 72 gig raptors. I have never run a raid setup before, and I am very curious about it. I've heard mixed reviews saying that raid doesn't really help that much, and that the people who made those reviews were wrong. Right now, I'm leaning towards getting the 2 36 gig's. What do you guys think?
I like mine! :) Seems some motherboards use the pci bus rather than a dedicated controller so those people are limited by that.
To me the raptors raid zero completed my system and made a huge difference in system feel and operation when compared to one 7200 rpm drive with 8 meg cache....
Most who have tried the raptors in raid zero love it...but you cant please everyone......
For gaming, 1 73 GB > 2 36 GB. The only time that the two RAIDed smaller Raptors would "win" is if you work a lot with large files. Gaming benefits more from things such as access time rather than transfer rate, as has been shown in various gaming RAID benches. The 73 GB is also quieter- I have a few running right next to me, and have to put my ear up to them to hear idle noise.
phaeton
08-31-04, 08:49 PM
For gaming, 1 73 GB > 2 36 GB. The only time that the two RAIDed smaller Raptors would "win" is if you work a lot with large files. Gaming benefits more from things such as access time rather than transfer rate, as has been shown in various gaming RAID benches. The 73 GB is also quieter- I have a few running right next to me, and have to put my ear up to them to hear idle noise.
I would have to disagree. When playing a game such as Doom3 and uncompressing all the textures etc, you will get better load times on 2x 36gB. The access time increase with RAID0 is close to nothing if you got a good controller, plus to start with the raptor's its damn good. you will get better write/read performance from raid0, so if you are looking for just raw performance get the 2 36's. hell going from one 7200rpm 2mb cache to 2 7200rpm 8mb cache ide's made a noticable difference in my setup, and im now past 1tB storage !
Doom3 *might* change things a bit, but I still say from personal experience and various testing that the single larger Raptor is better overall. Also, I was not referring to access time in regards to the RAID setup, but the fact that it is better on the 73 GB to start with. I would wager that your performance increase comes from the improved areal density, cache, firmware, and other single drive factors of the 8 mb drives rather than the numerical and RAID increase. Since you did the upgrade all at once, you just didnt get a chance to notice the improvements with one drive. Just a guess, but I have made similar jumps and then scaled down afterward, and I could better see from that experience what improved by a change in drive, and what improved by a switch to RAID.
verbatim
08-31-04, 10:00 PM
Isnt it the same old story with cpu's and HDD's? 2 might not be any faster loading/playing but the whole feel of the computer is better/smoother.
lil layzie
08-31-04, 11:37 PM
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1
If you're just gaming and not dealing with huge files, I don't think you will benefit from raid as much.
Well, I went with the 2 36 gig for a raid 0. Faster or not, I've always wanted to play around with a raid setup, and from what I understand, It will be noticably faster than my old maxtor hard drive.
When I went for my Raptors over my old ATA66 MAxtor drives I was freakin amazed at the speed difference! You will too.
hawtrawkr
09-02-04, 03:36 PM
I like mine! :) Seems some motherboards use the pci bus rather than a dedicated controller so those people are limited by that.
To me the raptors raid zero completed my system and made a huge difference in system feel and operation when compared to one 7200 rpm drive with 8 meg cache....
Most who have tried the raptors in raid zero love it...but you cant please everyone......
you could get the 2 36gb raptors and at first just run one and see how everything is then raid 0 and ill all but garuntee youll like the raid setup more.
ive run raptor raid-0 for a while, and then went to single raptor, and liked it better... I then decided to sell them both and bought a 74gb raptor... which is better still.
Isnt it the same old story with cpu's and HDD's? 2 might not be any faster loading/playing but the whole feel of the computer is better/smoother.
Not necessarily. You can flood a HDD with a whole bunch of requests; added together, they may not significantly add up size-wise to stress the STR capacity that would be aided by RAID, but an improved access time, firmware, etc. would still speed up the processing of the requests. Depending on what you do, it may have a much greater impact than STR.
IMHO a lot of the deal with RAID is psycological, kinda like a placebo effect- because you've done all this work to get and set up the drives and heard about all this increased performance, you look for it and think that it happens. This isn't necessarily bad, as we're all geeks and playing around with this stuff is what we do (jeez, look at RAM timings), but its something to watch for.
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