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Best and second best HDs for RAID 0

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EyeTalk2Trees

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Aug 14, 2001
Location
NC
I'll be coming back from Iraq here soon, and I'm looking to build a new machine (all I have is a laptop, with lots of sand in it). I want to set it up with RAID 0, I understand some of the NQC HDs don't work to well in that set up. What is the top of the line "dream machine" RAID 0 setup for 2 drives? I'm looking for pure speed, I'll add a larger storage drive for space. Also building a system for my girlfriend, so I'd like a fast RAID 0 set up for her but not as top of the line, second of the line.

I appreciate your help, I have a mission coming up so I'll try to check back in a day or so, thanks
 
Well I'd suggest buying some 36GB 10K Western Digital (WD) Raptors SATA off of ebay, the two of those will give you 70 something gigs; plenty for program installs. And they are wikced fast and work great raided.

Personally what do you do that you need fast drive though? Cause unless your like, um writting 60 or 70 mb photoshop or video files or something their isn't much point.

Still i stand by the Rapots

Ofcourse you can now get drives with 16mb of cache, so that might be an option to. the WDs are old,
 
if you don't feel like busting on some raptors go with any 16mb cache hard drive. NCQ means nothing if a hard drive has it or not, just disable it when running RAID, problem solved.
 
I'll grab a set of raptors for me. How well do the SATA 7200rpm drives work on RAID 0? I just want her machine to boot up quickly, open and run programs noticeably faster than majority of other machines she has used (laptops, standard work machines). If you all are getting good performance out of most any SATA 7200 RPM on a RAID 0, I guess any of the 200-300 harddrives with 8mb of cache will work. Or am i way off?
 
7200's work fine in raid. It's all I use. Raptors are too much cost per gig for me for the performance increase. I'm running 4 80 seagate 7200's in raid now. So far I've had them in raid 0,1, and 10. They work nice and are reliable and quiet.
 
I have 2 RAID-0 Arrays in PC #1 in my sig. One is two 36Gig Raptors as my OS drive, and the other is two WD 250Gig SATA-II HD's (7200 RPM). Suprisingly, the SATA-II 7200RPM array has HIGHER sustained data rates (average bandwidth a hair over 100MB/s by HD-Tach), and the 10,000RPM Raptor RAID Array averages about 70MB/s (kind of dissapointing, but it does have small stripe size). The Raptors have the benefit of the quick access times, but the 7200 RPM SATA-II's have the benefit of raw bandwidth.

I'd say do SATA-II's in RAID-0. I doubt I would buy another set of Raptors if I was in your situation...

:cool:
 
If you grab a couple of 7200rpm 16mb cache drives and stick them in RAID 0 you'll get excellent performance, and a lot of storage. The raptors are all about speed, not storage. The only thing better than 2x74gb raptor in RAID 0 is 2x150gb raptor in RAID 0, but that will run you a lot of money.

So for your dream machine, 2 150gb raptors in RAID 0. That's about $550, but its unbeatable in terms of speed (unless you consider SCSI but thats mostly a server technology)

For the medium rig, grab some 7200rpm 16mb cache drivers and you're good to go.
 
36gb raptors are also 3+ years old.

You want the best though so don't mess around with weak IDE stuff, 15k SCSI is where speed is at. Maxtor Atlas III's.

If your on a budget though, I'd say go for hitachi's 250gb disks. SATA, IDE, SATA II...it's all marketing BS, none is faster than the other. Raptors are way over rated too (I own a 74gb one...big dissapointment...I've used 15k SCSI, now that's noticeable)
 
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