Who says 2 X 74GIG Raptors isnt better than one? Anandtech?

[dominick32]

Well, my main rig has had a single 74g raptor in it since the summer of 2004. I have other rigs with 7200 8mb sata's but I don't game on them. Overall, it's just as I expected, everything seems/feels faster. For windows, I really dont do much besides surf and play music. Gaming wise I only play BF2 atm, and beta test a game called Vanguard. Loadup and map changes is where the raid shines. I really wish I would have set this up years ago. I guess I got caught up in all the single drive hype. What a great addition this was to my rig, now I can't really think of anything else to upgrade....Dare I say, I'm done?

I was just thinking the same thing tonight. hehe
I am at the max, besides over clocking my memory up the wazoo, and cpu to Vapochill or Mousepot high Ghz numbers I am basically at the max. THere is nothing else I can do. I must be done as well, at least until the next best video card is released.

Dom

 

[Jibly]

Yep, video card maybe

 

[veryhumid]

great review, very good post. thanks for the info, I would love to pick up another 36GB.

 

[dominick32]

great review, very good post. thanks for the info, I would love to pick up another 36GB.

Thanks for the kind words. It is greatly appreciated over here.

BTW- I believe Newegg has the 36G raptors on sale for $99 or something like that with a rebate. Hint Hint, raid???

 

[krag]

Aah-ight! I'll show my 2x74 Raptors with a 16k stripe.

Not as fast as Dominicks...proly due to several failed OC attempts that resulted in crashes. i need to repair my OS proly...

BTW, this is with a MSI K8N Diamond Plus...using NV raid.

 

[thegreek]

What causes mine to spike so much, processes?

defrag the drive

 

[Jibly]

After defrag I lost 19 mb/s burst speed? And it still spikes

 

[billb]

After defrag I lost 19 mb/s burst speed? And it still spikes

Here's mine with the (short) 8mb test. I have no idea about your spikes. I'm not an expert on HS issues. I can install/format etc, but when there's trouble I replace.

 

[steelle]

Ok, so the "150Raptor vs x2 74Raptors" is still up in the air..but what about 32k stripe vs the 16k stripe gaming wise?

 

[krag]

defrag the drive

Been there done that...no better. Well, maybe a bit better...192mbs. But hardly much of anything. My DFI DR-SLI gave me 215-222 with these drives. I might go back to my DFI Expert though.

Is anyone using the new NV mobo drivers? Or...the ones off the CD?

 

[krag]

Mehh, the 8mb test is even worse.

 

[adamwinn]

i defragged and my spikes didn't change. i did however notice that i have a spike for every partition on my hdd- might just be coincidence though

 

[dominick32]

i defragged and my spikes didn't change. i did however notice that i have a spike for every partition on my hdd- might just be coincidence though

You hit the nail on the coffin my friend. I noticed that as well. Right around my 40GB partition I get my only huge dip.

Dom

 

[thegreek]

i defragged and my spikes didn't change. i did however notice that i have a spike for every partition on my hdd- might just be coincidence though

looks like thats it, Krag do you also have any partitions on your drive?

 

[FM53]

It's been a few years since my last Raid configuration so after reading this thread I ordered up another Raptor from New Egg. According to them, (or a link on their site) there is a way to mirror your present OS to the new drive so as to avoid needing to FDISK. If anyone is in the know on this, I would really appreciate any advice or feedback you might have.

Thanks

 

[kayson]

If you have a spare hd, you can get software that will ghost your drive onto the spare. Then you build your RAID 0 and copy the OS from the spare drive to the raid set up. I'd say just back up whatever documents you need and reformat. It'll be worth the crazy speed when you first set up the array. For the software, I believe Norton Ghost will work if you really want to do that.

Does anyone have a 150gb raptor to test against 2x74? That would be interesting to see...

 

[dominick32]

Been there done that...no better. Well, maybe a bit better...192mbs. But hardly much of anything. My DFI DR-SLI gave me 215-222 with these drives. I might go back to my DFI Expert though.

Is anyone using the new NV mobo drivers? Or...the ones off the CD?

Krag,
I am using the new NV mobo drivers.

Dom

 

[dark_15]

I hear the newer ones are quite a bit quieter. Could be wrong.

I have 15k SCSI drives in my work rig (seagate cheetahs with 36GB of starage). They make a little noise at startup, but I cannot hear them over the fan inside the shuttle box which they are housed. I will try and get some benches on the drives as well.

Dominick, excellent review! I realized the same things you did when I raided 2 SATA Barracuda's together in another rig.

 

[krag]

looks like thats it, Krag do you also have any partitions on your drive?

Nope, its all one big partition.

Thanks Dom...


OK, seasoned noob question time. Heh!

Its been a long time since I have had to manually initialize an extra drive. The initialization and Convert disk wizard does not appear for my in disk management when I plug my back up 320gig WD sata in my mobo...I can't even see it ion the directory or disk management layout. Anyone got any ideas as to how I can get this dricve to initialize? It has all of my backup files on it and 3 yrs worth of games. I would really like to keep th einfo.

 

[dominick32]

Nope, its all one big partition.

Thanks Dom...


OK, seasoned noob question time. Heh!

Its been a long time since I have had to manually initialize an extra drive. The initialization and Convert disk wizard does not appear for my in disk management when I plug my back up 320gig WD sata in my mobo...I can't even see it ion the directory or disk management layout. Anyone got any ideas as to how I can get this dricve to initialize? It has all of my backup files on it and 3 yrs worth of games. I would really like to keep th einfo.

Does the drive show up in the bios?
If it does show up in the bios, is your raid controller disabled on that inidividual SATA port? My WD2500 wouldnt show up until I disabled NVRAID SATA on channels 3 and 4. I left channels 1 and 2 to NVraid for the raptors.

Dom