Needing new harddrive, two choices

B

butlermatz

n00b
Joined
May 3, 2008
Messages
36
Hi guys, at the moment i have a maxtor (SATAI) 7200, 250GB harddrive and my space is nearly 20GB left. im planning on either these two, which do you think is best?

F1 500gb's (or anything thats better) Raid 0 (two drives)
F1 1TB

thanks to anyone that replies
 
Two strong points for the single 1 TB drive:

1. You have about half the chance of losing all your data compared to the RAID 0.

2. You won't have to worry about weather or not you can transfer your RAID 0 array to a new motherboard, or temporarily transferring it to a different PC etc.

Personally I wouldn't bother with RAID 0 unless you actually do some tasks which benefit from the extra sequential transfer speeds. The decrease in reliability just isn't worth it IMO.
 
RAID 0 isn't the solution to long boot times, rebooting less often is :). If you want quick power-on times STR (Suspend To RAM) is the way to go IMO.
 
OK what's your priority? A slightly quicker boot time but have three points of failure that can lead to total data loss? (RAID 0) Or more storage at an acceptable speed? (1TB)
 
Danny Bui said:
OK what's your priority? A slightly quicker boot time but have three points of failure that can lead to total data loss? (RAID 0) Or more storage at an acceptable speed? (1TB)
Click to expand...

which would these be? i was thinking if i done Raid 0 i would back all my main things on my external harddrive, im not a photo imager or anything like that. just a gamer that enjoys his ipod etc
 
The three points of failure would be the two drives and the motherboard's onboard RAID controller. If any one of those fail, your OS is gone.

While I personally don't think RAID0 is worth the potential data loss and complicated setup, if I was doing RAID0, I'd get these drives:
Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - $115

The above drive is almost as fast as a Raptor drive. So two of those in RAID0 will scream.
 
You may get a smidge extra performance, but you wouldn't notice it at all. And as the chap above says, you'll be doubling your chances of failure with two drives.
 
but thats say i back up everything i need and wouldnt mind installating XP again like in a few years, i dont do many images and thats im only wanting sheer performance for booting XP and for my music and videos
 
Like I say, you won't notcie any peformance gains. But think you've made your mind up already though :)
 
There are two options, lets list their advantages over eachother:

Option 1 (single drive):
Less noise
Less heat
Less space used
Better reliability
Less complexity
Can be moved between all kinds of PCs and operating systems

Option 2 (RAID 0):
Slight performance increase


I think you are looking for an excuse to go for RAID 0 because it sounds cool/faster (nothing wrong with that mind you, this is a hobby after all :) ). But quite frankly the logical choice seems to be to go for a 1 TB drive.

You may also want to consider what you want to be stuck with in a couple of years. Two very small drives that are hardly worth the physical space they occupy, or one drive that may still be of some use.
 
Paendrag said:
There are two options, lets list their advantages over eachother:

Option 1 (single drive):
Less noise
Less heat
Less space used
Better reliability
Less complexity
Can be moved between all kinds of PCs and operating systems

Option 2 (RAID 0):
Slight performance increase


I think you are looking for an excuse to go for RAID 0 because it sounds cool/faster (nothing wrong with that mind you, this is a hobby after all :) ). But quite frankly the logical choice seems to be to go for a 1 TB drive.

You may also want to consider what you want to be stuck with in a couple of years. Two very small drives that are hardly worth the physical space they occupy, or one drive that may still be of some use.
Click to expand...

what kind of performance increases are we talking about here?
 
From Anandtech:

"If it is not obvious by now, RAID 0 will provide outstanding results in synthetic benchmarks but really does nothing in actual applications. We should probably clarify that statement in detail. Utilizing the best performing drives in RAID 0 is the setup to have if you are looking to publish top benchmark scores with results in PCMark05 improving by 25% as an example. That same setup will provide you with at best minimal performance improvements in most applications, or sometimes no difference at all."

For your use I believe the only time you would benefit in any meaningfull way would be when you need to transfer a lot large files from/to the drive(s), but that doesn't happen very often, and unless you are also transferring to another RAID0 you wouldn't gain anything even then.
 
butlermatz said:
so just grab a 1tb?
Click to expand...
Seriously? Every suggestion so far has been for a single 1TB drive, even tho you keep trying to get someone to tell you to go with RAID0.

If you have already made up your mind then go RAID0, if you want to do what every person who has posted in this thread so far has recommended then get a single drive.
 
This is what a friend posted about 2x500 F1s

2 F1 500's in RAID1 benched using HDtune Pro 3.00

result:
Access Time 13.6ms
Burst Rate 157.7mb/s
Transfer rates
min 47.9mb/s
ave 76.2mb/s
max 95.3mb/s

- does that add up to anything better than a 1tb?
 
Though I am usually in favor of RAID 0, and run it myself, I will recommend the 1TB in this instance, as it is just the better drive, not just in terms of space, but in platter density as well. RAID 0 does give better performance than 1 drive, and it is noticeable to anyone that has actually used it. Double the chances of failure? People preach this like it is guaranteed. I have never had an array fail except for a pair of IBM 60 GXPs, and they both failed because they were junk drives. If I would have had them as single drives, they still would have failed. If the failure rate for your normal drive is 1 in 1,000, then it is 1 in 500 with 2. And it is just as easy to lose all of you data with 1 drive. If money were no issue, I would RAID 2 of the 1TB. ;)
 
Personally I like using RAID but you really need to be dealing with a lot of large files or wanting redundancy to make it worth while. Only when you go to load large data files are you going to really notice the increase. Unless you're dealing with some form of uncompressed data it's unlikely it will be of much use.

In the past RAID-0 was more beneficial as transfer rates were much lower than they are today. 7-8 years ago I had a pair of 10k rpm drives in RAID-0 and you could definitely tell they were there. Even in games I was almost always the first person to load the maps.
 
so you think i should grab 2x500GBs or 1x1TB F1 im looking for best performance, the 1TBs are back in stock today.
 
this is a hard decision for me atm, i can go RAID 0 F1x500s or grab 1TB. i would like to make a decision before wednesday so i can get it up and in my pc :D

would the F1 500s not be fasteR?
 
You're amazing. How many years did it take you to make up your mind to buy the rest of kit in you sig? :)
 
butlermatz said:
this is a hard decision for me atm, i can go RAID 0 F1x500s or grab 1TB. i would like to make a decision before wednesday so i can get it up and in my pc :D

would the F1 500s not be fasteR?
Click to expand...

Look through everyone's post and decide. We've already stated multiple times that RAID 0 drives would be faster than a single drive.
 
If it was me I'd use a 3rd drive for windows/programs and then RAID-1 the two 500GB drives for storage, games, or other large files.

Honestly I'd just go with the 1TB drive for the time being. You can always add more later. IMHO you really need 3+ drives in a system to start considering any sort of RAID setup.
 
This thread is funny. lol

But I would recommend 2 x 500GB drives in Raid-0!

Nobody kill me! lol

But seriously... if you are that curious about venturing into Raid-0... then just go for it.

The drives aren't likely to die in the first few months, so pick up two 500GB drives and throw them in raid-0. install windows and play around for a few days. maybe even try installing windows on a single 500gb drive before going into raid with them both so you can get an idea for the speed on a single drive.

Though, I honestly think that if you went the raid0 route, you would (after a few months) end up installing your OS on a single drive and using the other for storage or whatever.

I used 2 x 160gb drives in raid0 for my first venture into raid a while back, and i did notice a slight increase in speed, copying files, booting, Photoshop (because of the scratch disk), etc. but it wasn't worth having to live with the fear of losing everything I had on that drive... i mean.. i had backups of files.. but still.. program settings, Firefox addons/extensions, registry/windows tweaks... it just wasn't worth it. I ended up taking the drives out of raid..

So, in my opinion, I think you should go for the raid because you obviously seem extremely interested in it. If anything, You'll gain slight performance increase in loading times and such.. you obviously don't seem to care about the potential data loss... so why not?

But if you are looking for the most economical/logical choice.. then forget about raid and go for the single 1TB drive...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top