WD Caviar or Raid Edition?

[Nilo]

I'm thinking of buying the following parts to build my system:

E6400 - 240
P5W DH Deluxe - 230
2x512 - 140
Asus 7900GS - 215
WD SataII 16 Raid Edition 250x2 - 95x2

The total is way over my budget. If I could down the price to at least 950, it would be great.
What options do I have?
Go for WD Caviar's (90x2), instead of Raid Edition (95x2)? Maybe Seagate 7200.10 (90x2)?
Go for a 7600GT instead (183)?
Go for an E6300 (204)?

What should I do?
Can you please help me? Thanks.

 

[neonblingbling]

Question: Do you really need two hard drives?

KAZAM! $920 if you cut out a hard drive.

 

[Max0r]

I am currently using two Caviar SE16's (not in raid) and am impressed. They only have 3 year warranties though.

My friend got two 320GB RE's and they've been great so far (and low low temps too, although considering the difference between them and the non-RE's I think there might be a bias... over 15 degree difference in front of same high CFM dual 80mm fans).

For my Opt165 system I'm building, I'll be getting two 320GB RE drives for Raid-0. They have 5 year warranties. The Seagate perpendiculars also have 5 year warranties. I have no doubt that both are very reliable, but I couldn't tell you which is MORE reliable.

I think you'll be happy with either choice.


But like neon said... is it really necessary to get 2 drives? Raid-0 will make load times faster, but in some cases it won't be very noticable... i.e. long level loads will still be damn long.. like in Quake 4 for instance.

It all depends on what your priorities are. I've observed that most wasted money in computer setups is when people pay extra $ to enhance things that aren't the real priority when they could have spent that $ on something that actually counts.

 

[youngbuck]

So can you provide examples of what counts vs what doesn't count?

I've always considered hard-drives to be, overall, the largest bottleneck in pretty much any given system. Not to say what you've said disagrees with that, just looking for clarification.

 

[Max0r]

So can you provide examples of what counts vs what doesn't count?

Absolutely. Give me a priority scenario and I will give you examples of spending $ on stuff that doesn't count toward the high priority. It's easy =)

 

[Nilo]

Thanks for your help
In this case, you think I should go for just one WD RE now?
Later on, I can buy the 2nd one (let's say, in a month or two).
So, if I go for just one RE, what should I get? A 250 or a 320? Which one should be better?

 

[Max0r]

For all practical purposes, the 250 and 320 will be the same unless you want more capacity. The 320 will perform slightly better than the 250, but not enough to really be noticable.

Also, you get about the same $ per gigabyte with the 250/320, so they're both as good deals as the other. If you're really trying to save every $ you can, you can go with the 250.

Just to be sure... you're talking about these right?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136055
the 250's... i dont see the 320GB RE on egg right now but i'm sure theyre all over the place

If you want to go for a RAID-0 setup, or just more capacity, a second drive will help you. Remember that if you get a second drive later, you'll have to wipe out the old drive and start over with a new OS install when you get the RAID-0 going. If you aren't too concerned about loading stuff faster (you'll see with 1 drive whether or not its good enough for you) or more space, then a second drive won't be of much use except for backup purposes. Another nice thing is that in a couple months the second drive should be cheaper

 

[Nilo]

Yes, the WD2500YS.
So, it's a good option to just buy one 320 WD RE, and then later, I'll buy a second one.

 

[Max0r]

Absolutely, if you really want a second one I know I'll be gettin' two!

 

[JCLW]

The RE drives are designed for RAID 5 and 6 only.

In a nutshell, they have a very short error recovery timeout so that the RAID controller will not mark the drive as failed. Instead of trying to recover bad sectors, the drive just gives up and relies on the controller to rebuild the data from parity information.

RE drives will work fine in RAID 0, but they won't try very hard to recover your data if they should start to go bad.

 

[JCLW]

And also, for those of you installing on intel rigs, if you put your ICH_R controller in "RAID" mode before you install Windows (and load the F6 RAID driver) when prompted) you can install on one drive and then migrate to two drives when you buy a 2nd drive.

Just go into the storage manager, alternate click on the volume, and pick "modify volume". Or "Actions" (menu) and then "Create RAID volume from existing hard drives".

 

[Nilo]

So you're saying that I should go for the WD3200KS and not the WD3200YS, once I will only buy one now, and when I buy the 2nd one, I'll just do Raid 0?!

 

[JCLW]

Yup.

Q: What is time-limited error recovery and why do I need it?
A: Desktop drives are designed to protect and recover data, at times pausing for as much as a few minutes to make sure that data is recovered. Inside a RAID system, where the RAID controller handles error recovery, the drive needn't pause for extended periods to recover data. In fact, heroic error recovery attempts can cause a RAID system to drop a drive out of the array. WD RE2 is engineered to prevent hard drive error recovery fallout by limiting the drive's error recovery time. With error recovery factory set to seven seconds, the drive has time to attempt a recovery, allow the RAID controller to log the error, and still stay online.

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=158&Language=en

Setting Up a “RAID Ready” System:
The following steps outline how to build an Intel “RAID Ready” system with Windows XP installed on a single SATA hard drive. A “RAID Ready” system can be seamlessly upgraded to RAID 0 at a later date using the RAID migration feature built into Intel Application Accelerator RAID Edition 3.0. This technology enables you to install a second SATA hard drive and then migrate to a RAID 0 Volume without reinstalling of the OS.
1. Assemble the system using a motherboard that supports Intel RAID Technology and attach one SATA hard drive.
2. Enter System BIOS Setup; ensure that Intel RAID Technology is enabled. This setting may be different for each motherboard manufacturer. Consult your user manual if necessary. When done, exit Setup.
3. Begin Windows XP Setup by booting from the installation CD.
4. At the beginning of Windows XP Setup, press F6 to install a third-party SCSI or RAID driver. When prompted, insert a floppy disk containing the Intel RAID driver. After reading the floppy disk, the ‘Intel® XXXX SATA RAID Controller’ will be presented -- select this driver to install.
5. Finish the Windows XP installation and install all necessary drivers.
6. Install the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager software via the CD-ROM included with your motherboard or after downloading it from the Internet. This will add the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager user interface utility that can be used to manage the RAID configuration.

Post Migration Note: After completing a migration from a “RAID Ready” configuration to a RAID 0 configuration (see user’s manual for instructions), you will notice that the RAID 0 Volume is now the combined capacity of the two SATA hard drives, but the migrated partition size(s) is the same. This results in empty, unformatted space at the end of the RAID 0 Volume. To utilize this space, you will need to use Windows XP Disk Management to create another partition on the remaining empty space in the RAID 0 Volume or use a third-party application to expand the migrated partition to span the entire RAID 0 Volume.

http://developer.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-020674.htm

 

[JudgeDredd]

I went for three of the WD2500KSs to put in a RAID 5. I'm still trying to get it setup at the moment though, but they were a great price at $77.99 a drive.

 

[Audioaficionado]

If you are going to use a RAID controller card and go RAID 5, then you would need a minimum of three drives and then you might want to get those RE drives. 4 drives for RAID 6.

 

[Max0r]

JCLW, you raise a point that I find impossible to ignore. I MUST FIND OUT MORE! Any info/links for me (regarding the error recovery and how certain error recovery scenarios unfold)?

 

[greenmaji]

Instead of getting the P5W DH Deluxe consider the P5B-Deluxe non-wifi you can get it for ~$180 and it will overclock front side bus better for your low mulitpllier chip. That should save the budget
I wouldn't think about cutting too many corners in the HD speed area of a rig, You will notice the hit in performance pretty fast in this area.

 

[Nilo]

Thanks for your replies
Changing Mobo is not an option. I guess I'll have to go for the 6300 and just one HD.

 

[greenmaji]

I take it you already bought it? Because its top FSB overclock is poor for a E6400 much less a E6300

 

[JCLW]

JCLW, you raise a point that I find impossible to ignore. I MUST FIND OUT MORE! Any info/links for me (regarding the error recovery and how certain error recovery scenarios unfold)?

Over time, all hard drives develop bad sectors. Modern drives have "spare" good sectors that data can be transferred to when a used sector starts to go bad.

IIRC most modern drives ship with 512 spare sectors, but your mileage may vary.

You can see how many sectors have been reallocated by looking at the SMART data. The "Reallocated Sector Count" raw data is the number of sectors that have been reallocated.

But back to the point...

The drives firmware controls how the drive behaves when it has trouble reading a particular sector.

A long time ago drives were dumb, and you'd get the dreaded "Abort, Retry, Fail?" whenever it couldn't read a sector. Then you'd have to drag out your Norton Disk Doctor floppy and let it do its magic. It would try and read the bad sector(s), move the data to an unused good sector(s), and mark the bad ones as bad.

Now we have more intelligent drives, and the drive itself will detect the bad sector, attempt to recover the data and move it to a spare sector, and then hide the bad sector. This is all transparent to both the users and the OS.

When using a drive alone or in a RAID 0 configuration we want to give the drive as much time as possible to try and recover the data in order to maximize our chances of getting it all back. Note that while the drive is recovering data it does not respond to any controller commands. Some higher end RAID controllers (3ware in particular) will mark a drive as "failed" if the drive does not respond to a command within a certain time period (usually around 10secs). So by the time the drive has finished recovering the bad sector the RAID controller has already marked the drive as failed, and you're left with a degraded array. The only was to fix it would be to physically power cycle the drive (unplug it and plug it back in) and then rebuild the array (which can take hours, plus put a lot of stress on all the drives). And if your server is located in a different building it can be a real PITA.

So WD released a special series of hard drives (RE or RAID Edition) that only spend a maximum of 7 secs trying to recover your data. The firmware is also optimized for higher queue depths.



edit: this is what I was looking for earlier:

It is important to realize TLER-capable hard drives should not be used in non-RAID environments.

http://www.wdc.com/en/library/sata/2579-001098.pdf