Okay!
I've filled up my 74GB Raptor and I think its time to upgrade. I use a lot of space so I need a lot of space! I've been looking around and apparently, getting 2 7200RPM drives and RAID0'ing them will smoke any Raptor. Currently, I am looking at getting:
2 x 320GB Seagate 7200.10RPM 16MB Cache SATA-2 Drives in RAID 0
Here are the pros and cons of getting them:
+ Over 600GB Space after Windows Installation
+ Faster than a Raptor, and over 8x the space
+ Techgage rated 10/10 editor's choice for the drive as mentioned above
- If one drive fails, it's all failed
- I've never RAIDed before (Asus P5W DH Deluxe, does allow RAID0)
I appreciate any input, thanks!
> It would cost me less to buy 2 of those drives and RAID0 and sell my Raptor than to buy a new Raptor.
I would go with the RAID 0, because you do get alot more storage, cheaper then a 150GB Raptor, and sometimes performs better.
As for drives failing, it's rare, and highly unlikely that it would happen anytime soon.
Was this answer helpful ?
Yes No
Thanks for the input Omega!
Was this answer helpful ?
Yes No
The increase will not be noticeable unless you do a lot of hard drive intensive programs, it also provides your HD twice the chance of failure without twice the performance. However, like OMEGA said HD failure isn't that common, but when 1 fails in RAID 0 (also known as disk stripping) all information is lost. Just another side of the story. Good Luck either way.
Was this answer helpful ?
Yes No
You will notice an improvement mainly only during loading times, and hard drive intensive apps.
Was this answer helpful ?
Yes No
i say forget about it. I'm too scared to do it. Too many important things.
Was this answer helpful ?
Yes No
It's actually 596GB before installing windows but it's still a ton of space.
What do you do that requires RAID0 for performance boosting? Load times wont get that much better with recent games. When it takes a minute to load a level, RAID0 will knock that down maybe 10 seconds. IMO RAID0 is not worth it, yes it's faster but that speed is mostly on paper (ie benchmarks like PCMark)
Was this answer helpful ?
Yes No
I have two WD 250gb drives in RAID 0. I haven't really noticed any speed advantages (then again, I haven't been looking too hard), but I'd say go for it. It's a lot more storage than a raptor for a fraction of the price.
Was this answer helpful ?
Yes No
simply saying "a RAID array will outperform a raptor" is too vague
i've got one 80gb hard drive at my house that only has a transfer rate of ~19MB/s, an older 1st gen SATA hard drive that runs ~50MB/s, and a newer SATAII 500GB hard drive that runs at ~60-70MB/s, ALL 3 of which are 7200rpm drives........
Also keep in mind that the raptor's higher rotational speed speeds up seek time AS WELL AS max. read speed, where a RAID array makes no improvement to the drives' seek times.
And also, you can RAID more than 2 drives, so even if it's true that a RAID can be far faster than a RAPTOR, it's definitely a variable statement.
and as far as reliability concerns, i don't understand what you people keep on your hard drives that is so important that you can't risk a raid array crashing.......
keep your documents, etc. on a flash drive, a small unraided hard drive, or do what i do and just e-mail them to yourself.
i can't think of a single thing that's too large to fit onto a 1g flash drive, or into online storage that you couldn't replace if your hard drive died. And there's video editing/music editing/servers running 16 or more drives in RAID0, or if you want to be safe, you could run raid1+0 and be even more safe than running a single drive.
Was this answer helpful ?
Yes No
When comparing two 320GB SATA 3.0Gb/s hard drives with 16MB of cache each to a 10K SATA Raptor, the RAID array will most likely get higher transfer rates, but it wont have any faster read/access times.
Was this answer helpful ?
Yes No
