Raptors or 7200s In Raid-0?

[dgk]

I'm building a new system for heavy I/O stuff, like big wav and shn and mpg files. So Compression and conversions. I want fast I/O. 50 to 800mb files here.

The motherboard supports SATA and Raid-0 (and 1 but I don't need that). I was thinking two 36gig raptors in Raid-0. Expensive but should fly - but only 72gb.

Would two good 7200 rpm 80 or 120 mb drives (8mb buffer naturally) in a Raid-0 do a reasonably good job? It would be far cheaper and lots bigger.

I read my motherboard manual and it suggests smaller stripe sizes (16) for server apps but larger stripes (64?) for AV work. So I guess I go with 64 stripes.

Well, I'm sure of the Raid-0 part. How much better performance would the dual raptors provide over dual 7200s?

 

[deathman20]

I'd go with the bigger drives in your case. Your dealing with larger files and should have a big space to play with.

As for stripe size is an OS going on these drives? If its just Wav, Mpg, or in otherword big files I'd do 64, if it is going to contain some other things I'd suggest the 32 size.

Preformance gain would be around 20-40mb/s or so, give or take a few on that probley. You'd have nice seek times which could be a plus.

 

[Sniper_83]

This is what sandra has told me about my 2 WD SE drives in raid 0.

Hard Disk C:
Benchmark Results
Drive Index 56994kB/s


Test Status
Device Type Desktop
SMP Test No
Total Test Threads 1
SMT Test No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance No
Processor Affinity No
Windows Disk Cache Used No
Use Overlapped I/O Yes
IO Queue Depth 8 request(s)
Test File Size 767MB
File Server Optimised No


Benchmark Breakdown
Buffered Read 87 MB/s
Sequential Read 90 MB/s
Random Read 7 MB/s
Buffered Write 55 MB/s
Sequential Write 76 MB/s
Random Write 15 MB/s
Average Access Time 8 ms (estimated)


Drive
Drive Type Hard Disk
Total Size 149GB
Free Space 137GB, 100%

 

[attack]

raptors are awesome because of thier low access time. Your going for large sustained file transfer so that low access time won't be noticed.

The raptors will have a higher throughput though, but not by a very large margin.
I think Raptors in 0 are around 100mb/s where 2 IDE's in 0 are around 80mb/s

IMO at twice the price and half the storage there not worth it for this type of application.

 

[Sniper_83]

raptors are awesome because of thier low access time. Your going for large sustained file transfer so that low access time won't be noticed.

The raptors will have a higher throughput though, but not by a very large margin.
I think Raptors in 0 are around 100mb/s where 2 IDE's in 0 are around 80mb/s

IMO at twice the price and half the storage there not worth it for this type of application.

I'll agree to your statment, I've heard some ppl say that its better to not put raptors in raid 0 either. Not sure why, if some one could suport this I'm all ears.

 

[dgk]

As for stripe size is an OS going on these drives? If its just Wav, Mpg, or in otherword big files I'd do 64, if it is going to contain some other things I'd suggest the 32 size.

I would think that the OS will be on one partition along with most applications, and data would all be on the rest of the drive. So, 32 would be the compromise. Thanks.

 

[dgk]

raptors are awesome because of thier low access time. Your going for large sustained file transfer so that low access time won't be noticed.

The raptors will have a higher throughput though, but not by a very large margin.
I think Raptors in 0 are around 100mb/s where 2 IDE's in 0 are around 80mb/s

IMO at twice the price and half the storage there not worth it for this type of application.

Good points. I lean back towards some Hitachis.

 

[deathman20]

I would think that the OS will be on one partition along with most applications, and data would all be on the rest of the drive. So, 32 would be the compromise. Thanks.

Then jump out to the local store or place the online order and get some nice Hatachi drives (those are like the best 7200 drives right now)

Got to love new equipment

 

[dgk]

I just started a new thread on that. I hear the Hitachi was good but it only has a one year warranty. I see that the 120 drives have a 3 year warranty. Not a big difference in performance I think.