Recommended drives to use in Raid 0?

[JonSimonzi]

What are some fast drives to set up a raid 0 with? I know Raptors are the obvious choice, but since I couldn't get on the $100 Raptors from Best Buy bandwagon in time, $200 a pop is a bit much for my taste. So what are a good choice of fast drives to set up in raid 0 for about $100 per drive? Space doesn't matter that much, wouldn't mind between 300 - 500gb. I have 240gb right now and don't fill it up. Thanks for any advice, hard drives are one of the few components I never really did alot of research about. A hard drive was always a hard drive to me.

[meionm]

Western Digital 640GB looks like good drive if you want spend under $100 per drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218&Tpk=wester%2b640gb

[JonSimonzi]

As crazy as this sounds though, I don't want that much space :( I wouldn't know what to do with it all :(

[ou_phidelt]

Seagate 250GB 7200.10's. They are basically a single platter 7200.11 drive. That is about the only thing in a smallet capacity that comes to mind. The next would probably be the single platter 320GB WD but the last reviews I saw were less than impressive.

[tuskenraider]

What is it you're doing that you want RAID0 to improve for you?

[Mr.Guvernment]

i use 2 Seagate 80G drives 7200.10 and i get about 125MB average..

once you drop under $80 for hard drives, the price per gig goes way up.. even if you dont need the room, they are one of the best price per gig drives around i beleive.

[aznkc730]

As crazy as this sounds though, I don't want that much space :( I wouldn't know what to do with it all :(

porn. lots and lots of porn.:p

just kidding. Other than having a fast rpm, another way to increase drive transfer speed is by having the largest cache. For under 100 dollars per drive, there are only three that have 32MB of cache.

for 79.99 you get a seagate 250GB:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148309

for 84.99 you get seagate 500GB:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148288

for 99.99 you get samsung 750GB:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152100

I'd personally recommend the 84.99 seagate. Sure, you wouldn't use it all, but you'd never have to worry about running out of hard drive space. And I really wouldn't constrain myself to half the storage space just to save 10 bucks.

[Mr.Guvernment]

cache doesn't mean much since burst speed doesn't mean much in real life usage.

32mb is nice

as for the 500G segate if it is the 7200.10 drive i recall hearing reports of them dieing left and right, also them having that crappy firmware that limits their speed to 66MB or something

out of 6 500G Seagates i had for work 2 died within a month.

[JonSimonzi]

Thanks for all the advice on the drives guys. Still undecided on which ones to get. Need to do a bit more research.

What is it you're doing that you want RAID0 to improve for you?

Improvements are always nice. Load up Windows and games faster. Things like that. More so I just want the experience of it, I've never set up or worked with raid drives, and the only downfall I can see of a raid 0 is if one drive fails you loose everything. But honestly, that doesn't bother me, as I've never had a hard drive fail in past 12 years I've been around computers.

[JonSimonzi]

So I'm thinking of setting up a raid 0 with either this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148262) or this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136161) one. Any input? I'm leaning on the Seagate, but a little scared by what Mr.Guvernment said :(

[Mr.Guvernment]

raid 0 doesnt speed up windows, a single drive with fast seek times does, why raptor usually boot windows the fastest, where as raid 0 speeds up larger file transfers and such, but seek times dont improve with the more drives in raid 0

now myself i do have raid 0, same as you ,wanted to try it out for myself :)

Me personall, i would go western digital just cause of the bad taste seagates 500G drives left in my mouth..

now i do know segates NEW 320G drives are single platter and dam fast.. i never had any problems with their 250 or 320G drives..

[JonSimonzi]

raid 0 doesnt speed up windows, a single drive with fast seek times does, why raptor usually boot windows the fastest, where as raid 0 speeds up larger file transfers and such, but seek times dont improve with the more drives in raid 0

now myself i do have raid 0, same as you ,wanted to try it out for myself :)

Me personall, i would go western digital just cause of the bad taste seagates 500G drives left in my mouth..

now i do know segates NEW 320G drives are single platter and dam fast.. i never had any problems with their 250 or 320G drives..

Good to know, thanks for clarifying that up for me. Link to the new 320gb Seagates your talking about please?

[JonSimonzi]

Here are some graphs of what I currently have

http://xs229.xs.to/xs229/08300/hd_bench1759.png

That's the drive OS and programs are on

http://xs229.xs.to/xs229/08300/hd_bench2890.png

And that's my storage drive. I don't think those graphs are good :(

Which is why I want to get 2x new drives in raid 0 :)

[tuskenraider]

raid 0 doesnt speed up windows, a single drive with fast seek times does, why raptor usually boot windows the fastest, where as raid 0 speeds up larger file transfers and such, but seek times dont improve with the more drives in raid 0RAID0 can decrease boot times, but that doesn't mean two 72000rpm drives would be superior to a drive with a much quicker average access time like the Raptors. My most recent test of this was about a month ago and I believe it was about a 3 second difference between Raptors in single vs. RAID0. Whether or not this would be the same on a different system with different drives, I couldn't say. Though I would really look to get a WD 320AAKS drive, I don't think there has been any info on how to determine if you are getting the newer single platter version which should have performance on par with the 640GB model,or the old, slower, two platter version. I'd think Newegg would have the most recent version and I'd certainly try to ask them if they could verify that. Otherwise, two of the .10 250GB single platter Seagates wouldn't be a bad purchase.

[Abu Som3a]

With your budget , you only have one option:

(2X) $85 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218) (Coupon EMCAHCFAD) - Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB Hard Drive (make two separate orders for the coupon to work on both drives)

200MB/s average:
http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=5611525&postcount=1493

[JonSimonzi]

With your budget , you only have one option:

(2X) $85 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218) (Coupon EMCAHCFAD) - Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB Hard Drive (make two separate orders for the coupon to work on both drives)

200MB/s average:
http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=5611525&postcount=1493

As I said though, I don't want that much space. I don't like huge partitions, and maybe it's because of what I was taught back in the day, but I still am a firm believer that the bigger the partition, the greater the seek time is because it has a larger area to cover to get the information. And since I don't fill up the 240gb I have now (I still have 75gb free), I certainly don't need 1.28TB of space. The MOST space I would want is 640gb, so I'm looking for 2x 250gb - 320gb drives. I do want the fastest ones I can get without going Raptor crazy. And weather I will benefit from the raid or not, it's still something I want to set up just to experience it and work around with it.

[Mr.Guvernment]

the seek time would be something you would not physically notice, this isn't the days of old 20G hard drives, these are densely packed perpendicular hard drives, and if your paranoid about it,create a partition and don't use the rest

you cant apply old problems to new technology, doesn't work like that, todays drives are so beyond yester -year in speed, short of running some synthetic benchmark, you wont tell the diff between a file on the inner circle of the platter and the furthest outer section.

that fastest you can get is the Samsung F1 or the WD640's.

[@crilicM@n]

well, have you ever considered an OCZ SSD for the OS and your current 240gb for data? Would have 120 mb's sustained transfer rate and 0.1 ms access time... they are falling to 270 USD... 64GB