several harddrive questions

for a serious gaming rig, what is better out of the following?

8mb cache or ata133

what are the various raid configs? raid 0, raid 1, and raid 0+1, but which one uses the two hdd as one?

raid config 2 drives,8mb cache single drive, ata 133 single drive? which would be best for gaming?

serial ata is too expensive for me now....

First of all, Welcome to the Forums!!

Using 8mb cache Hard disks in RAID arrays does not speed it up that much compared to 2mb cache Hard disks. By themselves, they do perform a little better though..

RAID (Reduntant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is a way of making a set of hard drives look like a single disk on a computer.
There are a few types, the 2 popular ones for desktop systems are:

RAID 0 "Striping"
- Gets 2 (or more) identical disks and formats them as one disk. two 80 Gb disks look like one 160 Gb disk, for example. The data is shared equally through the array, by "Striping" the data. One chunk goes to one hard drive, the next chunk goes to the other, and it interleaves. RAID 0 arrays are very fast, and mine did 55 Mb/second on a good day. If one hard drive breaks, you lose ALL the data.

RAID 1 "Mirroring"
- Takes 2 disks and copies the data identically to both hard drives. Two 80Gb drives look like an 80Gb disk in Explorer. If one drive breaks, the other takes over and you keep the data. Used when data is very important.

There are other types as well: 3, 5, 0+1...


If you decide on a RAID 0 array, backup and store the important data. RAID 0 is fast but a little less reliable..

pvc_and_frost said:

for a serious gaming rig, what is better out of the following?

8mb cache or ata133

Click to expand...

There's little gain in using ATA133 over ATA100, the 8MB cache might be worth it, but I don't think you'll really notice a difference.

pvc_and_frost said:

what are the various raid configs? raid 0, raid 1, and raid 0+1, but which one uses the two hdd as one?

Click to expand...

RAID 0 uses 2 HDD's as one, but it if 1 HDD goes bad all your data will be lost, RAID 1 is a more secure way but there's no performance gain, RAID 0+1 is fast and offers security as well (4 HDD's are needed)

pvc_and_frost said:

raid config 2 drives,8mb cache single drive, ata 133 single drive? which would be best for gaming?

Click to expand...

If it's for your current rig (The one in your sig) I suggest you upgrade your CPU (Tualeron) and get some RAM, as that will be alot cheaper and it will get you alot more performance than a RAID setup.

**EDIT** Here's a site with (almost?) all possible RAID setups (RAID 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,10,53 and 0+1).

what you could do is get another ibm desktar 12.7gig hd (from sig) and make it RAID 0, use that as the "fast" drive, and get a backup disk.

A RAID 0 array with 2mb disks will beat one 8mb disk by itself any day of the week

pvc_and_frost said:

for a serious gaming rig, what is better out of the following?

8mb cache or ata133

Click to expand...

Go for the cache. In tests at Storage Review the 8MB version of the Western Digital drive outperformed the 2MB version by over 20% in the game tests. (That's more than the difference between the 7.200 RPM ATA100 Caviar SE and the 10,000 rpm S-ATA150 Raptor.)

Buying a larger cache drive is just one of the smartest performance investments you can make.

pvc_and_frost said:

what are the various raid configs? raid 0, raid 1, and raid 0+1, but which one uses the two hdd as one?

Click to expand...

RAID0 (they write it that way, don't ask me why) is the one you are thinking of. It won't give you a huge performance boost in most desktop applications or games. But it is a little better and it's fun to play around with.

pvc_and_frost said:

raid config 2 drives,8mb cache single drive, ata 133 single drive? which would be best for gaming?

Click to expand...

I wouldn't build a system around having a RAID array, but if the motherboard I wanted came with onboard RAID I'd set up an array.

A pair of 8MB cache drives in RAID0 will give you the best gaming performance, but its not going to be a huge difference. RAID for a game rig is more of a toy than a performance advantage. Nothing wrong with that, but don't expect to pick up 20FPS over a single drive setup.

In RAID0 the data is divided, block by block, across both drives. That means if one drive fails you'll lose all the data on both drives. If all you have on the drives is your operating system and programs you installed from CD's this isn't anything to worry about. But anything you create on the computer should be backed up religiously if you're running RAID0.




Hope this helped-

BHD

pvc_and_frost said:

serial ata is too expensive for me now....

Click to expand...

serial ata is too expensive for most people now....

well, its not for my current system, i'm finally building a new one. are maxtor drives reliable? i found a 120 gig with ata133 and 8mb cache.....

pvc_and_frost said:

well, its not for my current system, i'm finally building a new one. are maxtor drives reliable? i found a 120 gig with ata133 and 8mb cache.....

Click to expand...

I've used maxtors before no problems whatso ever.

The majority of people here tend to go for Maxtors or Western Digital. Seagate is ok, quiet but slightly slower.

I have a maxtor diamond max 9 80 gig w/ 8mb cach and its quiet and reliable.

aight....looks like thats what im getting

Side Note: Maxtor's customer support, and RMA service is excellent IMO. No complaints whatesoever. Fast, helpful, and friendly. Can't say I've dealt with WD's or Seagate's though.