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Raptors in a RAID 0 config and SATA 150

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petchey

New Member
Joined
Jul 12, 2006
I've been reading several threads about Raptors and I now confused about the limitations of the SATA 150 bandwith limitations. I got to build a machine with very fast drives and am thinking about build a RAID 0 packed with several raptors. But with the 1.5 Gb/s bandwith limit on Raptors I wondering how many raptors will saturate the SATA channel. I read two contradictory articles.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=raptor150raid&page=5

Which claims that 4 Raptor 150 GB drives in a RAID 0 configuration will reach sustained transfers of over 300 MB/s

Then there is the Seagate white paper that speaks to the need of SATA 300 that speaks to the SATA 150 bandwith limit being reach with 4 7200 rpm drives.

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/TP-539.pdf

What is the answer here, if I do the math 1.5 Gb/s work out to 187.5 Mb/s, which should mean 3 Raptors in a RAID 0 will saturate the bandwith. If thats the case how did gamepc get over 300 MB/s through a SATA 150?
 
1st off to clarify some things. The game PC article uses a RAID card that plugged into 1 of the PCI-E 16x slots so it had all the bandwidth it needed. Secondly, although the aforementioned Seagate .pdf is technicallytrue, it is also irrelevant in the real world. That article refers to someone connecting 4 HDDs to a single SATA port. Most of us have 4-8 SATA ports on their Mobo. So even if you have an "old" Mobo with SATA 150 ports, you still cannot saturate the bus. 4x150=600 which is more than enough for even a 4xRaptor 150 array!!!!! You see SATA ports are each on their own seperate channel unlike the old IDE days with Master/Slave configs. Does this make more senese to you now?
 
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