Enter The Matrix: Slice out and get the best part from your hard drives

[DaPoets]

Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s







The best thing is, I have been buying these drives for $45 a piece online... I did a lot of research on harddrives before I went the route to buy 4 of them for my Raid-5. I'll be gaming, doing video editing, some wave file editing using my turntables as an input, and a mess load of MS Office stuff. Raid-5 made the most sense to me for speed and redundancy. Strip with parity for the win baby!

 

[bing]

Wow $45 a piece ! That is a really good price !

 

[winston856]

Hey you guys, I've got a question or two about which route I should take in my situation.

Currently I have a 150GB Raptor and 2x320GB Seagates as media/backup drives.

I have Vista/games/apps on the raptor and all my pictures/docs/files on my 320's.

Well now I read about this Matrix RAID and it's intriguing to say the least

I planned on just selling the 2x320GB's to a friend and picking up a 1TB HDD for storage.

Then I stumbled upon matrix RAID in this thread and started thinking well maybe I should buy another 150GB raptor and Matrix RAID them together!

Then I started thinking about how that all worked. 2x150GB raptors would be about 300GB's of advertised space (about 280GB formatted). So would I only have access to 150GB of that to take maybe 50 of and make it the "0" partition while the remaining 100GB would be the raid "1" partition while the other 150GB raptor acts as a mirror for the first one?

Then there's still the problem of me needing a media storage. I have room for 4xHDD im my P180's lower HDD chamber. 2x150GB raptors and 1x1TB HDD would sure be nice but that's about another $500 I'd have to put out and I don't think I want to do that :/


Or maybe I should just forget RAID and get that 1TB HDD....

 

[DaPoets]

After running defrag a couple times my burst went up dramatically....

 

[Vio1]

how much of a difference do you notice with these matrix setups? besides having a hugh burst speed, what kind real world improvement do you notice?

 

[johan851]

Installs and application load times are super fast. The hard drive is rarely, if ever, much of a bottleneck. So if you can think of something you do now that goes slow and makes you look at the hard drive light blinking away, imagine not having to do that anymore.

 

[johan851]

Hey you guys, I've got a question or two about which route I should take in my situation.

Currently I have a 150GB Raptor and 2x320GB Seagates as media/backup drives.

I have Vista/games/apps on the raptor and all my pictures/docs/files on my 320's.

Well now I read about this Matrix RAID and it's intriguing to say the least

I planned on just selling the 2x320GB's to a friend and picking up a 1TB HDD for storage.

Then I stumbled upon matrix RAID in this thread and started thinking well maybe I should buy another 150GB raptor and Matrix RAID them together!

Then I started thinking about how that all worked. 2x150GB raptors would be about 300GB's of advertised space (about 280GB formatted). So would I only have access to 150GB of that to take maybe 50 of and make it the "0" partition while the remaining 100GB would be the raid "1" partition while the other 150GB raptor acts as a mirror for the first one?

Then there's still the problem of me needing a media storage. I have room for 4xHDD im my P180's lower HDD chamber. 2x150GB raptors and 1x1TB HDD would sure be nice but that's about another $500 I'd have to put out and I don't think I want to do that :/


Or maybe I should just forget RAID and get that 1TB HDD....

You could just get four 320GB 7200.10's, or something along those lines. 60GB total in RAID 0 for speed, and that would leave ~900GB in RAID 5 for storage.

 

[DaPoets]

funny you say that, after I get my 4th drive I was going to look into creating a 70gb raid 0 and the remainder as a raid 5. I'll have 4 drives at 160gb a piece...

 

[bing]

After running defrag a couple times my burst went up dramatically....

Although the improvement only at the burst speed, still interesting nevertheless ! Thanks !

 

[tuskenraider]

Installs and application load times are super fast. The hard drive is rarely, if ever, much of a bottleneck. So if you can think of something you do now that goes slow and makes you look at the hard drive light blinking away, imagine not having to do that anymore.

What becomes the bottleneck at this point then? CPU, RAM or their buses?

 

[winston856]

You could just get four 320GB 7200.10's, or something along those lines. 60GB total in RAID 0 for speed, and that would leave ~900GB in RAID 5 for storage.

Got a problem, these seagate's are the drives I bought and am running now however they seem to be deactivated.

Can you point me to the new 320GB SATA drives that took their place?

Also, if I were to buy 4x320 seagates (or any new HDD's for that matter) can I set up the Matrix RAID without formatting the ones that have my media data on them?

Also I thought the Matrix RAID was a 0 slice for the best performance and the rest of the drive is 1 for protection, where does RAID 5 fit into this? I thought Matrix RAID was specifically 0 and 1.

What about 2x500GB Seagates in Matrix RAID?


EDIT -- found the new seagates I think

 

[bing]

Got a problem, these seagate's are the drives I bought and am running now however they seem to be deactivated.

What do you mean by "deactivated" ?

Can you point me to the new 320GB SATA drives that took their place?

What about 2x500GB Seagates in Matrix RAID?

EDIT -- found the new seagates I think

About the Seagate drive, I suggest you look for the one with new model since they're using latest platter that capable of 100MB/s (outer ring) than the old one.

Currently I'm not aware of that 320GB type has this new platter, I suggest you should look for model "ST3250410AS" although its 250GB, but it has these platter with fast STR, or if you're aiming for 500GB drive, look for 7200.11 series instead of old 7200.10.

Also, if I were to buy 4x320 seagates (or any new HDD's for that matter) can I set up the Matrix RAID without formatting the ones that have my media data on them?

I believe the new raided drives will not interfere with the current old drive, but again since I never did that, can anyone jump in here to help Winston ?

Also I thought the Matrix RAID was a 0 slice for the best performance and the rest of the drive is 1 for protection, where does RAID 5 fit into this? I thought Matrix RAID was specifically 0 and 1.

If only 2 drives, then the rest can be only at Raid 1, but if you have 3 drives, it can be Raid 5.

Once you reached 4 drives, the rest can be Raid 5 or even Raid 10.

Click the 1st post of mine in this thread, I put an explanation right after the picture explaining that matrix raid.

 

[winston856]

*snip*


If only 2 drives, then the rest can be only at Raid 1, but if you have 3 drives, it can be Raid 5.

Once you reached 4 drives, the rest can be Raid 5 or even Raid 10.

Click the 1st post of mine in this thread, I put an explanation right after the picture explaining that matrix raid.

Yes yes, you're right. I remember reading over that and it just slipped my mind

 

[woz101]

Bing, great thread!

Have just ordered 2 of these HD's:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148262&Tpk=ST3250410AS

Now two questions:

1. If I allocate 50 GB from each of the two drives to form RAID 0, will the performance decrease somewhat or significantly vis-a-via 40GB from each of the two HD's, which you have done?
I have a lot of apps--games, mostly. 80 GB for a bootable RAID 0 is a tad small for my need. Heck, in fact, 100GB is too small for me, too! But I don't have the money to buy three or four HD's!

2. Is it possible to install the latest Intel Matrix Raid driver without a floppy? I have Vista(32 bit, Ultimate).

I actually have a floppy drive, but I really hate to use it. If possible, would really like to use a USB thumb drive, be it formated in the FAT format or the NTFS format!

Many thanks in advance for the info!

And have also learned a lot from you!

PS: the latest Intel Matrix Raid driver for Vista 32 bit can be downloaded from here:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/fil...dows+Vista*+32&lang=eng&strOSs=164&submit=Go!

 

[bing]

Heya Woz,

Thanks, glad you like it !

1. If I allocate 50 GB from each of the two drives to form RAID 0, will the performance decrease somewhat or significantly vis-a-via 40GB from each of the two HD's, which you have done?
I have a lot of apps--games, mostly. 80 GB for a bootable RAID 0 is a tad small for my need. Heck, in fact, 100GB is too small for me, too! But I don't have the money to buy three or four HD's!

IMO, the performance will not so bad or at least not noticeable if say 80GB (40+40) vs 100GB (50+50) for the Raid 0 slice, the most important thing I believe is to keep them minimal fragmentation of your disk as possible, this way will keep them at their top performance all the time.

Heck, I'd say just shoot for 100GB Raid 0 slice if this is "really" your minimal requirement, and wait until you can afford the 3rd drive !

2. Is it possible to install the latest Intel Matrix Raid driver without a floppy? I have Vista(32 bit, Ultimate).

I actually have a floppy drive, but I really hate to use it. If possible, would really like to use a USB thumb drive, be it formated in the FAT format or the NTFS format!

Yes, Vista has native support of Matrix Raid driver, although not the latest one.
Once you've finished the Vista installation, upgrade it to the latest one downloaded from that Intel's site.

 

[woz101]

Thanks very much for the reply!

...IMO, the performance will not so bad or at least not noticeable if say 80GB (40+40) vs 100GB (50+50) for the Raid 0 slice, the most important thing I believe is to keep them minimal fragmentation of your disk as possible, this way will keep them at their top performance all the time.

Do you have a recommendation for a good disk defragging utility? Diskeeper? Any good freebie disk defragger?

Yes, Vista has native support of Matrix Raid driver, although not the latest one. Once you've finished the Vista installation, upgrade it to the latest one downloaded from that Intel's site.

This is great news to me!

Thanks very much again!

Will post the benchies once I've got my Matrix raid set up and running!

 

[bing]

There are lot of good defragger programs out there such as PerfectDisk, Diskeeper, O&O. I use PerfectDisk though.

So far I'm not aware of any good free defragger capable of beating these commercial version.

Great, can't wait to see your result here. Also if you feel adventurous , you might try to Raid 0 your whole drive to see if your 100GB spot is good enough like this HERE.

 

[winston856]

If you're running Vista I believe it defraggs the drives itself every night or something like that.

 

[woz101]

If you're running Vista I believe it defraggs the drives itself every night or something like that.

Vista's innate defragger does NOT do a good enough job.

 

[bing]

I don't believe built-in defragger capable of laying out the drive something like this -> Post #678.