My Dilemma

Sa3atsky · Sep 8, 2004

Help me out with my dilemma

I was getting a Hitachi 250gb SATA 8mb cache.. but all of a sudden it hit me..
Why dont I get two 120gb\160gb's and using RAID 0 on them to acheive greater speeds..
What do you guys think, I have in the $160 range to spare for hard drives..

I want speed, reliability and really silent - thats exactly the Hitachi.. But say I get two 120gb hitachi's and RAID them together...

Tell me what you guys think, throw in your ideas coz Id really appreciate it

hafa · Sep 8, 2004

Read This (scroll down to "stop the RAID insanity") Then read this then finally, read this you should then have enough information to decide for yourself.

Sa3atsky · Sep 8, 2004

I think the Hitachi 250gb would do me fine.. The drive is really good, cool reviews... it hasnt died on anybody yet (not that I know of) .. and ummm thats about it..
I still think RAID 0 does give out better performance, but I dunno.. its not THAT worth it to go through all that trouble..

What I'm gonna be afraid of is data loss:
So what I'm gonna do is backup the really really important data on another harddisk on another pc.. about 10gigs..

What made me change my mind
Anandtech: "Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth."
ouch..

Ocforums dude: "I've seen too many examples of a RAID array becoming corrupted and trashing 2 drives."

Just too much hassle for so little, I know I like to make the best out of everything in my system but the Hitachi would do just fine by itself

hafa · Sep 8, 2004

I'm sure you've probably read plenty about this already, but if you have $160.00 to spare, it's not so far out of your range. While it won't be quite as quiet as a Hitachi, the performance and reliability is outstanding. You could then use your existing 120G WD for storage...

Just thought I'd add that since this drive uses fluid dynamic bearings, it should be quieter than your existing WD, 10000 RPM not withstanding

fastcuda · Sep 8, 2004

Seagate and maxtor both have drives out that use NCQ (sataII) now, its supposed to be about as fast as the raptors and is a lot cheaper, I would definetely go that way for the best bang for the buck.

shadowdr · Sep 8, 2004

Before you make a decision read this. I think you will get an idea as to how people on these forums feel about rad0.

Sa3atsky · Sep 8, 2004

I know the Raptors are really great performers.. But I'm thinking what are the Seagate\Maxtor\Hitachi counterparts against the Raptor?

fastcuda said:
Seagate and maxtor both have drives out that use NCQ (sataII) now, its supposed to be about as fast as the raptors and is a lot cheaper, I would definetely go that way for the best bang for the buck.

Could you recommend me some?

I think Raptors are very overpriced for the amount of space you get..
Does the 2800rpm really give a big performance difference? Coz frankly the price doesnt suffice.. 72gb is peanuts man!

fastcuda · Sep 8, 2004

This would be a sweet one, I think theres smaller ones out also.

maxtor sata 2

Aslan · Sep 8, 2004

fastcuda said:
Seagate and maxtor both have drives out that use NCQ (sataII) now, its supposed to be about as fast as the raptors and is a lot cheaper, I would definetely go that way for the best bang for the buck.

The only problem with this is that the motherboard needs to support NCQ in order to get any benefit out of this. I believe that the only chipsets that support this are the i915 and i925 PCIE LGA775 Intel chipsets. Without NCQ the new drives will perform similarly to the Hitachi 7k250, but they're still good drives nontheless.

Another option, if you can find it, would be the Hitachi 7k400. These drives are basically the same as the 7k250, but come only in a 400gig drive.

Sa3atsky · Sep 8, 2004

WOAH, 400gigs.. I hope you were being sarcastic about that, i dunno how im gonna fill up 250~!

But woah, the maxtor seems really relaly good.. http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=22-144-359&depa=0
16mb cache thats insane! Is it that much better than the Hitachi? coz If it is I'll spend the extra bucks and get it!

But I dont think my motherboard is gonna support NCQ, its the new DFI Lanboy for the Athlon64 754...so no NCQ for me

I've seen in storage review lots of harddisk reviews and experiences.. Tell me more about this, what harddisks do you use? post YOUR experiences

hafa · Sep 8, 2004

In desktop applications, seek speed has a significant (I would venture to say the most significant) impact on overall performance and "feel". The Maxtor mentioned earlier in this thread has a seek speed of 9.3ms. Very slow. The Raptor 74 Gig, on the other hand, has a seek speed of 4.5ms; more than twice as fast.

Of course, the best performing drives in this and all other aspects are the Maxtor Atlas 15K II and Fujitsu MAS3735 SCSI with a seek speeds of close to 3.0ms and STR of close to 98 mb/S. (You don't even want to know the price on thes drives

)

For more information about the fastest, best drives, check out Storage Review's leaderboard

Xaotic · Sep 8, 2004

I run the MAS drives. They are simply awesome.

I totally agree with hafa. Any choice between disk access times and spindle speed versus potential interface optimizations with large capacity drives as your primary OS drive has to go with the faster access time. I will always pay the premium for the fastest available drives for the interface. Since you will have a SATA interface, the 74GB Raptor would be the way to go. It allows a low latency connection with excellent single user performance characteristics.

wpmegee · Sep 8, 2004

Sa3atsky said:
WOAH, 400gigs.. I hope you were being sarcastic about that, i dunno how im gonna fill up 250~!

But woah, the maxtor seems really relaly good.. http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=22-144-359&depa=0
16mb cache thats insane! Is it that much better than the Hitachi? coz If it is I'll spend the extra bucks and get it!

But I dont think my motherboard is gonna support NCQ, its the new DFI Lanboy for the Athlon64 754...so no NCQ for me

I've seen in storage review lots of harddisk reviews and experiences.. Tell me more about this, what harddisks do you use? post YOUR experiences

For that insane price you could get 2 200gb Seagates, and have a 5 year warranty and 100gb more storage.

Sa3atsky · Sep 9, 2004

Actually youre right, I'm goin way over my head here..
Right now I'm either getting the Hitachi 250gb or Seagate 200gb (I couldnt find a 250 seagate in newegg) ..They both perform the same on paper except for the 5 year Seagate warranty, I think I'm going Seagate

wpmegee · Sep 9, 2004

Sa3atsky said:
Actually youre right, I'm goin way over my head here..
Right now I'm either getting the Hitachi 250gb or Seagate 200gb (I couldnt find a 250 seagate in newegg) ..They both perform the same on paper except for the 5 year Seagate warranty, I think I'm going Seagate

I don't believe Seagate makes a 250gb drive currently.

My Dilemma

Sa3atsky

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hafa

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Sa3atsky

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hafa

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fastcuda

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shadowdr

Senior Member

Sa3atsky

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fastcuda

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Aslan

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Sa3atsky

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hafa

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Xaotic

Very kind Senior

wpmegee

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Sa3atsky

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wpmegee

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