Another "which setup is faster" thread

Ok, which one is faster:

2x Raptor 150's (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136012) on a Matrix Raid: 50Gb shared Raid 0 for OS and programs and 125Gb Raid 1 for storage.

-or-

1x Raptor 74Gb (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136033) for OS and programs and 2x Caviar RE WD250's (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136055) on Raid 1 for storage.

-or-

2x Raptor 36Gb (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136033) on Raid 0 for OS and programs and 2x Caviar RE WD250's (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136055) on Raid 1 for storage. **This is the option I like the most b/c it's the fastest for the money and has storage space**

Thanks in advance for any help.

-Mobious-

2x raptor 150s for sure... espically on matrix raid they will tromp anything else.

you could always do 2 raid 0 drives on the 150s.... a 50gb raid 0 for apps and OS ... and a 250gb raid 0 for storage... but its up to you.

Well, if I were you, as nd4spdbh2 said I will stick to option 1.

Here my 2 cents, since from the beginning you're aiming for Raid 1, meaning you're expecting protection, hence, the performance will not as good as Raid 0 right ?

Now, regarding reasons on your options, remember, on raid thingy always think scalability for the future, this translate into same drive spec to avoid headache in the future for mixed bag of drives. Dunno bout you, for me this is the most important criteria to consider when planning into raid world.

Option 1 :
Make it matrix as you aimed, this will ease for future upgrade like adding more same 150GB Raptor. Personally, I feel this model will not be obsolete (discontinued) soon. Again, of course you should aware that your "typical" usage doesn't use "heavily" between those Raid 0 & 1 volumes at the same time, it will suffer from perfomance lost since those poor heads need to hop around those two raid volumes.

Option 2 :
1 Raptor 74GB as Boot/OS and 2x Caviar RE WD250 in Raid 1.
If you utilize "heavily & concurrently" at both Raptor and Raid 1 volume for your "typical" usage, of course this config beats 1st option. But for scalibility into the future like adding drives, this will create more headache.

Option 3:
2x Raptor 36Gb in Raid 0 for OS/Boot and 2x Caviar RE WD250 in Raid 1.
The best performance if you do both volumes "oftenly" as I said above, but if you dont, I think its a waste (worst than option 2). And its nightmare for raid scability in the future.

For ordinary home user (yes, thats includes gamer), most of the time the heavy activities will be on boot/os & apps drive, which is Raid 0. Unless you do weird setup like make your OS at raid 0 while put your game /apps in Raid 1 which is unlikely.

Again, just my 2 cents.

my vote is go for 2x250 perp seagate drives for $68 a piece in raid 0 or go with a single 16mb cache raptor and a storage drive, I have had everykind of arrangement imaginable and in the end I chose a 16mb cache raptor and a fast big storage drive. All I do is game, watch movies, listen to music, screw around with music/movie files, talk on TS while I game and read alot/web surf oh and there's that pR0n thing. I havnt found a licks worth of diff between raid and a single raptor that my senses can tell me or I can percieve in anything aside from a split second slower boot speed with a single raptor. Unless i run fake synthetic benches

To answer your question, option 3 will be fastest.

I was thinking the same thing tuskenraider. But, bing, you're correct about the matrix raid being really stressful on those heads and possibly decreasing performance. If I was looking for expandability I'd go with matrix raid, but I'm simply looking for gaming and program performance as well as security for my data storage (as well as best bang for the buck). Matrix raid is the most expensive, and has the least ammount of protected storage (about 1/2 the size of the others) plus its partitions so the two drives are gunna be working like crazy. Option 3 (the one I will probly do) does have more physical drives, does have that expandability issue, but then again those are things I'm not too concerned about. OS/programs on the the Raid 0 for bat-outta-hell performance, and if one of em dies: swap it and reload everything and just keep on truck'n. Storage stuff on the Raid 1 so I don't lose any of it and to give some read error protection. Cheaper than the matrix raid, and I can do it a system without an Intel chipset (which I might or might not do). Only issue I'll have to worry about is cooling, but I think a Cooler Master 4-in-3 should do the trick just fine (replace the fan too). So, I think I'll go with option 3 on this one, and then see what happens from there. Thank you guys for helping me out w/ my decision, and if there's anything you want to add further, please feel free to do so.

-Mobious-

Mobious said:

I was thinking the same thing tuskenraider. But, bing, you're correct about the matrix raid being really stressful on those heads and possibly decreasing performance. If I was looking for expandability I'd go with matrix raid, but I'm simply looking for gaming and program performance as well as security for my data storage (as well as best bang for the buck). Matrix raid is the most expensive, and has the least ammount of protected storage (about 1/2 the size of the others) plus its partitions so the two drives are gunna be working like crazy. Option 3 (the one I will probly do) does have more physical drives, does have that expandability issue, but then again those are things I'm not too concerned about. OS/programs on the the Raid 0 for bat-outta-hell performance, and if one of em dies: swap it and reload everything and just keep on truck'n. Storage stuff on the Raid 1 so I don't lose any of it and to give some read error protection. Cheaper than the matrix raid, and I can do it a system without an Intel chipset (which I might or might not do). Only issue I'll have to worry about is cooling, but I think a Cooler Master 4-in-3 should do the trick just fine (replace the fan too). So, I think I'll go with option 3 on this one, and then see what happens from there. Thank you guys for helping me out w/ my decision, and if there's anything you want to add further, please feel free to do so.

-Mobious-

Click to expand...

I'll add that using RAID1 as a backup, isn't really a backup. What happens to the file on one drive will happen on the other, whether it's file deletion, corruption, etc. Ultimately, I'd use an imaging program to image your RAID0 install to your RAID1 storage setup, that way you'd be up and running in less than a half hour if you lost a drive in the array. I just use a single data storage drive, and even then I copy my valuable files to a USB drive and sometimes keep an extra copy on my RAID0 OS/app array. Chances of them both going out at the same time is slim to none.