Raid n00b (gaming): 150gig raptor or a Seagate Raid 0?

[Morvak]

I'm a Raid n00b and just did some quick research to find out how Raid 0 works, it's the fastest but if I lose a drive I lose my data.

Sounds scary. In real world scenarios, are we talking about a drive being lost from the Raid configuration itself? A drive just dying? And how often does this occur?

For my new gaming rig I"m trying to decide if I should go for a 150gig raptor or 2 of those new 7200.something Seagates in Raid 0 which some say is faster than the Raptor.

I only plan to use my PC to play games. I do some other multimedia stuff here and there, but not like i used to, plus I backup everything anyway.

Appreciate any advice, thanks in advance!

Edit: Oh, and I don't really need 150 gigs of space or more. Like I said, it's a gaming rig that will have maybe 3-5 games on it at a time, I don't have a vast music or video collection, all my photos are backed up on DVD's. So I really don't need more than 75gigs. Which brings me back to: do I really need Raid.

 

[OkydOky]

Best Solution: Two Smaller Raptors (36 or 74 GB) in Raid 0.

In Raid 0, if you lose a Drive you lose your Data. That is if One of the Drives Dies.. data is lost. It's just Like a Normal Drive, the only difference, is that data is lost on all drives if one of em Dies, so the odds are increased, no matter how small they were to begin with.

I Myself View Raid 0 as The cheaper version of Raptors... (And yes I do Use Raid 0 Myself) Where the raptors shine is their seek times.. no Other drive (other than SCSI drives) can thouch them on this. Yes, the new perp drives in Raid 0 may come close (And sometimes beat) a SINGLE raptor in some other specs, but not seek times... Put two Raptors in Raid 0 and you have teh best you can have.

 

[tuskenraider]

Which brings me back to: do I really need Raid.

Nope, stick with one Raptor as it will remain the best overall performing drive for some time still. You'll typically get a 0 to 15% increase in bootup and program launches which means a few seconds here and there depending on the RAID controller. If you're a person who needs every last bit of hard drive performance, then RAID0 is a way to do it. As far as failure rates of RAID, some people go years without a problem like me, and some get bit with their first setup. Backups and a place to keep them become essential.

 

[Thund3rball]

Raptors are much noisier than the Seagates. If you want a quiet setup go Seagate RAID 0 . Almost totally inaudible using 250GB 7200.10 and just a bit of HDD crunching w/the 160GB 7200.10, but still very quiet. I have not tried anything smaller from Seagate. Otherwise if noise is not an issue you are probably better off with a Raptor.

 

[Vrykyl]

replaced my old 74gb raptor with 2x 80gb seagate 7200.9's - not only did i get the 2 drives brand new for less than the 2nd hand value of the raptor (i sold it, bought the 2 drives and still had change), but in RAID 0 i boot faster than the raptor and my games load faster too.... they dont hum either.

 

[tuskenraider]

replaced my old 74gb raptor with 2x 80gb seagate 7200.9's - not only did i get the 2 drives brand new for less than the 2nd hand value of the raptor (i sold it, bought the 2 drives and still had change), but in RAID 0 i boot faster than the raptor and my games load faster too.... they dont hum either.

What kind of time improvements did you measure in your tests?

Noise is completely mounting and case dependant. Mine don't hum ever, they just crunch when heavily seeking.

 

[Vrykyl]

il admit 'tests' were purely subjective, but fully tweaked and optimised windows xp loading times went from 3 and a half scrolling bars (on the xp logo boot screen) to just two. Photoshop CS3 took approx 6 secs less to load, and for eg in oblivion loads were a noticable few secs quicker...

all im saying is raptor performance can be had for less money, with more storage space...

 

[tuskenraider]

il admit 'tests' were purely subjective, but fully tweaked and optimised windows xp loading times went from 3 and a half scrolling bars (on the xp logo boot screen) to just two. Photoshop CS3 took approx 6 secs less to load, and for eg in oblivion loads were a noticable few secs quicker...

all im saying is raptor performance can be had for less money, with more storage space...

In some aspects, sure. I'll note that my tests on single vs. RAID0 performance with my current NF4 setup yeilded basically no improvement in boot and application loading, so to outright believe a performance increase will happen, no matter what the drives, with RAID0 is just plain wrong. My stats below. I had some 10-15% improvements with a VIA setup before this one, but have no data for that anymore. Point is, RAID is a crapshoot for performance, a Raptor is guaranteed performance.

http://www.wideopenwest.com/~vacationdave/aa.JPG
http://www.wideopenwest.com/~vacationdave/boot.JPG
http://www.wideopenwest.com/~vacationdave/obliv.JPG
http://www.wideopenwest.com/~vacationdave/photoshop.JPG

 

[Thund3rball]

Point is, RAID is a crapshoot for performance, a Raptor is guaranteed performance.

I wouldn't say RAID 0 is a crapshoot. More like it is just not as predictable or 'easy' as a single Raptor and may require some research and good ole trial and error. Many factors go into this.

1. The drives themselves (size, performance etc...)
2. Raid controller - are you using a card or on board raid. On board seems to work fine for many but you may want to check out what others are saying about your mobo.
3. Is your RAID 0 OS only, or is it OS & data.
4. Stripe size depends on your general computer usage and average file size. Wrong stripe size can impact performance.
5. Matrix RAID?

Too easy to just dismiss bad performance from a RAID 0 as a "crapshoot". Maybe you just needed to rethink your setup? Then again, maybe you did and I am just blowing it out my *ss

 

[Charr]

Stop worrying about losing data with RAID 0, you are just as likely to lose the same data with a single drive. The array adds no stress to the HDDs, and will not cause a failure early.

With RAID, the varibles in the hardware make it a "crapshoot." For RAID systems, you have to know what your are buying. Some onboard RAID controllers are shoddy, (a la VIA and NVidia ones). Intel uses more advanced controllers supporting Matrix RAID.

Many people simply call RAID ineffective, but if you know what your are doing RAID offers a benefit as it can (both 1 and 0) double the transfer rates for reads, and (only 1) double transfer rates for writing. However, RAID can not defeat seek times, so Raptors excel in that area only versus a 7200RPM array.

 

[Thund3rball]

Stop worrying about losing data with RAID 0, you are just as likely to lose the same data with a single drive.

Actually if you are using two drives to do the work of one, you are increasing your chances for a failure. But yes if anyone is worried about it, then either go RAID 10 (ooo pricey), get good backup or don't bother with RAID 0 at all.

The array adds no stress to the HDDs, and will not cause a failure early.

Yes that's true. The HDDs are working just like normal except more efficiently. So yes, no added stress to the hardware.

 

[Charr]

Actually if you are using two drives to do the work of one, you are increasing your chances for a failure. But yes if anyone is worried about it, then either go RAID 10 (ooo pricey), get good backup or don't bother with RAID 0 at all.

Not really. When your HDD fails, it is a single drive failure on no array. When something on an array dies, it is still one drive failing, but since the array acts as one whole drive, you lost your entire "drive." You can whip out the probability formulas out, but it is not coming do come down to much difference. Like I originally said, just get quality units, and you should encounter minimal resistance. Don't let the worst case scenario scare you away, as it is not as bad as blowing a capacitor in your motherboard, which didn't scare you away from overclocking. Granted, losing your motherboard is rare, but so are faulty drives.

Anyway, this is a gaming rig, not a workstation, so data lose is not the end of the world. You could run RAID 1 which will still give you the same read performance, but you lose space and write speed for security.

 

[Morvak]

Is one Seagate 7200.10 good enough for gaming?

I don't want to drop $150 on a 75 gig raptor.

Also since the newegg Seagates are OEM, what additional parts do I need, can anyone recommend some?

I am going with the GA-P35-DS3R and Antec P180 and Corsair 520HX.

Thanks!

 

[tuskenraider]

Is one Seagate 7200.10 good enough for gaming?

Sure, though a Hitachi T7K500 drive might be a touch better due to it's superior caching.

Also since the newegg Seagates are OEM, what additional parts do I need, can anyone recommend some?

A SATA drive cable.

 

[gvblake22]

I just set up two 74GB 8MB Raptors in a RAID 0 setup to see what all the fuss was about. I can tell you that there isn't a huge difference (if any) compared to a single Raptor. I like to think I notice a difference, but I really can't say I do with any kind of certainty. As tuskenraider mentioned, a single 16MB Raptor will do you fine for performance compared to 7200rpm drives. If you want to try RAID 0, maybe going with two less expensive, small capacity 16MB 7200rpm drives would be the better route; especially after reading this article...

 

[Max0r]

Haha my friend has three 74GB 16MB Sata raptors in Raid-0 and it is #*$&(#$ BLAZIN!!!! My dual 7200 raid-0 is quite nice, but his smokes mine... omg his desktop is so smooth...

 

[Thund3rball]

Is one Seagate 7200.10 good enough for gaming?

I don't want to drop $150 on a 75 gig raptor.

Also since the newegg Seagates are OEM, what additional parts do I need, can anyone recommend some?

I am going with the GA-P35-DS3R and Antec P180 and Corsair 520HX.

Thanks!

Yes one Seagate will do you just fine. Still fast @ 7200 rpm. Load times will never be unbearable with current games. 8MB cache or 16MB cache will both do nicely as well. Of course 16 is a bit better. BTW Seagate has 5 yr warranty and Hitachi is 3 year. If that means anything to you?

Get an SATA cable. Your Corsair PSU will have the right power connector already.

 

[Enablingwolf]

Unless it is one of the newer firmware ADFD Raptors. I would go for the larger 7200RPM. I noticed the 8 megs extra does help in many cases for the simple loads. Unless your going to be pushing larger files through the bus. The Raptor will not benifit you much.

Since I had a alright speedy 7200rpm drive and using a ADFD Raptor. I only seen a bit of gain in boot times and overall general usage. As example, my boot times went from 1.5 bars to less then one. Nothing really amazing. Other things like loading programs and such are visually about the same. The largeest gain I get is moving large files around.

I want to add one final thought. The boot times are not an end all of how well a drive does. Since there is many factors involved in how each Windows boots. I can have one install boot really fast then use Windwos update. Then the boot times go to the crapper. Drivers and network loading up are another factor.

Move a 1gig files around to check how fast a drive is. Virus scanners will also effect the overall speediness of a drive too. The faster platter then shows itself over the slower one.