Will this hardrive setup provide extra performance?

[Wolfmight]

I've never used SATA or RAID before, and I only need a good 40GB of space to run faster than my IDE 7200rpm 300GB hardrive does. This is for my current game and video editing projects.

I'm thinking about buying TWO Western Digital Caviar SE WD400JD hardrives...installing them in Raid0. My motherboard already has multiple SATA slots with onboard RAID capability.

Will this setup provide a decent speed increase in read/write times? I've heard Raid0 mode in RAID makes two identical hardrives become ONE. (yes, and I already know that the space will not increase...i.e. 2 40gb drives in RAID will give me 40gb, not 80gb) The performance increase comes from dual pin activity reading those 7200rpm drives at the same time. You would think this would give a nice 50% increase in speed...but I hear it's more around 25-30%.

What are your experiences with RAID?



newegg link to the hardrive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822144173

Specifications
Model
Brand Western Digital
Series Caviar SE
Model WD400JD
Performance
Interface Serial ATA150
Capacity 40GB
RPM 7200 RPM
Cache 8MB
Average Seek Time 8.9ms
Average Write Time 10.9ms
Average Latency 4.2ms
Physical Spec
Form Factor 3.5"
Features
Features Fast
Cool Running
Ultra Quiet
SecureConnect
Warranty
Manufacturer Warranty 3-Year

[Virtualbody1234]

2x40GB in RAID0 does create one of 80GB.

You could consider a Western Digital Raptor drive.

[Wolfmight]

2x40GB in RAID0 does create one of 80GB.

You could consider a Western Digital Raptor drive.
oh ok. thanks for clearing things up.

How much faster are the raptors in Raid0?

I would think that 2x7200rpm drives would output something equivalent to a 14,400 rpm speed single drive?

Two raptors output something equivalent to 20,000 rpm, being 10,000 rpm drives?

Cheapest one is $160... leaving a total of $320. How much faster would 2 10,000rpms be than the 2 7200rpms? I know having two 7200rpm drives "should" give some kind of decent increase in speed still. (dual pins...it just has too)

Heck, if I'd have to spend $320 on that, I might as well go with Gigabytes I-Drive deal with 4gb of Ram to run a RPM-Less data solution. No needles...no hassle, but that battery whichs prevents data loss makes me feel a little odd about safety. A surge might just flash the entire set of data instantly. Still, with that kind of speed...I'd be willing to sacrifice long-term storage and capacity. I normally work on projects in single day time frames and copy my work to a massive 500gb external hardrive.

I would like atleast a good 10-40gb of space so I could play some games with less hardrive lag. I've got a 2.0ghz Althon64, 1gb DDR Ram, 256mb Geforce 7800gt, and a 200gb IDE 7200rpm. No talkie about software tweakie, because that's already taken care of. I customized an entire XP installation disk to allow maximum performance for games. I removed LOTS of extras and have it VERY bare bone. Runs games atleast 30% smoother than they do in my normal installation of XP. Goes to show XP itself causes a slight performance loss in games without advanced removal of all it's preloaded stuff. Defrag, Reg Clean, Update everything, etc...the goods.

Any sources on some good benchmarks for these guys? I figure Toms Hardware will get my vote for now.

[clocker]

Here is a direct comparison between my i-RAM and two 74GB Raptors in RAID0.

The i-RAM is decidedly faster (note the seek times).
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/mini-SprocDrives.jpg
Two i-RAMs in RAID would be a sweet setup.
The speed would not increase as it would for a spindled drive but the 8GB size would be a boon.
The blazing speed of the i-RAM ( I can defrag the 4GB in under 30 sec.) is actually overshadowed by it's greatest asset- the absolute lack of noise. The RAIDed Raptors can be noisy buggers (especially with Vista's indexing service continually thashing them) while the i-RAM is blissfully silent.
When nLite is upgraded to work on Vista I'll probably get another i-RAM to run it on.

[bigdawgfoxx]

So do you just store all the programs that you run alot and stuff on IRAM or what? How do you decide what you store on it?

[clocker]

I run a stripped version of XP Pro on it...currently the 32bit version.
Vista is too large or I'd cram that on the i-RAM instead.

[Wolfmight]

i_Ram definitely sounds fast.
Still wondering the real performance gain of combining 2 7200rpms in Raid0 compared to just a single 7200rpm without RAID.

[Duffman]

I have two WD raptors, in a raid stripe, the difference from an ide drive that was 7200 rpm's was very noticable.

[Wolfmight]

Just discovered there are SCSI adapters for a PCI slot. How does the Seagate Cheeta 15000rpm compare to Raid0 7200rpm and Raid0 10000rpm drives performance wise? 15000rpm is alotta rotation for home computers.

Also, why is I-Ram so expensive!!! arrgg $500+ just for a decent 4gb of storage! sure is fast though...

[Virtualbody1234]

Just discovered there are SCSI adapters for a PCI slot. How does the Seagate Cheeta 15000rpm compare to Raid0 7200rpm and Raid0 10000rpm drives performance wise? 15000rpm is alotta rotation for home computers.

Also, why is I-Ram so expensive!!! arrgg $500+ just for a decent 4gb of storage! sure is fast though...
Stick with SATA.

I-Ram is as fast as its bottleneck. SATA 150.

[clocker]

I-Ram is as fast as its bottleneck. SATA 150.
This is only partially true.
Actually, it's totally true but doesn't really explain the difference.
The i-RAM has no seek delay and does not slow down like a regular HDD does at the end of the disk.
It's throughput is almost dead constant, a result only approached by a RAID 0 array.

It is noticably faster than my Raptors in RAID and that's saying something.

Yes, it is absurdly expensive though.

Oh well.

[Wolfmight]

I've decided to go with a single 10,000rpm raptor for now. 74GB. WD740ADFD Raptor appears to outperform my current drive by 50%+ in the benchmark tests I've seen on various websites. (ran benchmark tests on drives to check. My system had a similar set-up, being in a good range to compare) I may buy another 74gb when I rack up the money and link em up in Raid0 for an added boost. 10,000rpm SATA150 should prove to cut my rendering times down significantly...can't wait to pop that baby in.
What would you say the percent of speed increase is from having dual raptors in Raid0? 20% or 30% of a gain in speed?

Newegg also had the 37gb raptor for $120, but it was "Open Box". Didn't want to risk getting burnt toast.

Update! I've found a peice of software that does the same thing I-Ram does, using your current ram. It's called "Virtual Drive", by farestone. Source (http://www.farstone.com/home/ensite/products/virtualdrive.shtml)

It runs data in your current systems RAM in a tiny virtual hardrive. I configured a 200mb Virtual Drive and installed Firefox within. I also moved the cache locations for both Internet Explorer and Firefox into the Virtual Drive. Definately a noticeable different in page rendering times! Cached webpages flash open. Firefox opens in a snap. I believe Firefox already stored recent pages in RAM, but this solutions stores em all in the RAM. Sweet Stuff here. Make sure you've got atleast 1gb of RAM before you grab this though.

Not exactly the same as I-Ram, but it's a start. I-Ram holds your whole OS and everything, but this program can make a few things run just as fast. Have fun.

If your a rich bastard, your still better off with I-Ram. 4GB of SUPER SPEED is the best of the best for now.

[Duffman]

I like the idea of having the operating system seperate from storage space and all but I've had lots of problems with it. When installing programs, they all default install to the drive with os, and I could not use adobe encore because it would not copy files anywhere but c:\, if there is a way around that shit, let me know.

[bigdawgfoxx]

I have a 160 gig split up as 20 for c and 140 for d(storage), but itd be awesome to have a nice raptor as c and the 160 as storage.

[Wolfmight]

I like the idea of having the operating system seperate from storage space and all but I've had lots of problems with it. When installing programs, they all default install to the drive with os, and I could not use adobe encore because it would not copy files anywhere but c:\, if there is a way around that shit, let me know.

Here's how to change it:

1. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
2. Find ProgramFilesDir whose default should be C:\Program Files
3. Change this to whatever directory you wish. I changed it to D:\Program Files for example.