RAID is good?

[TheDave]

i have two sata sockets on my board doing nowt. what would be the benefits and complications of RAIDing 2 hard-drives on them. ideally i want my games to load twice as fast. how realistic is this?

[S!X]

i have two sata sockets on my board doing nowt. what would be the benefits and complications of RAIDing 2 hard-drives on them. ideally i want my games to load twice as fast. how realistic is this?

I dont think they'll load twice as fast. From what i hear SATA drives are pretty good. Whats your current specs?

[TheDave]

athlon64 3000+ @ 2200
512 ddr
fsb@200mhz

how fast does a hard-drive read? i think its 25 MBps (SATA or IDE)
i know with a RAID card 2 striped drives can act as one hdd at 50 MBps

i'm wondering if its possible/easy to RAID my two sata slots (in windows is probably best, bios settings scare me)

all this is presuming they arent on the same channel :unsure:

[Spicker]

LMAO u guys crack me up...

theres is no BIG advantage of SATA over normal IDE slots except SATA cables are very thin so it saves space :01:

and no ur games wond load twice as fast :lol:

[TheDave]

LMAO u guys crack me up...

theres is no BIG advantage of SATA over normal IDE slots except SATA cables are very thin so it saves space :01:

and no ur games wond load twice as fast :lol:
maybe i worded it wrong.

-----

on my board i have

IDE 1
master: 120gb
slave: dvd reader

IDE 2
master: dvd writer
slave: empty

sata 1: empty
sata 2: empty

-----


i'm not happy with the speeds stuff loads :snooty: , i blame this on the hard-drive.

it looks to me the cheapest and most hassle-free way to fix this is to get two cheap (small) sata drives and stripe them. then i can use them as temp, swap space and install games on them. i'm wondering if it's possible and if its easy to do this

[S!X]

Dave you mean your fsb is at 2000mhz? Cuz I know for a fact that AMD64's arent at 200 :blink: what pc is your ram? For games to load fast im pretty sure that it mainly depends on your ram/cpu but im not 100% sure im not a comp guru. Just one in the making :D

[TheDave]

i cant remember quite how it works, just vague memories from scanning over stuff when i built my pc.

my processor is 11 layers each at 200mhz(fsb) totalling 2200mhz :unsure:

[S!X]

i cant remember quite how it works, just vague memories from scanning over stuff when i built my pc.

my processor is 11 layers each at 200mhz(fsb) totalling 2200mhz :unsure:

Search on google for a little app called CPU-Z its tells you about your cpu speed, fsb ect. Unless you have sisoft sandra or somethin like that on hand. Eaither or is good :)

[TheDave]

reading

I/O properly initialized
Linked ISA BUS at $0290
Linked nVidia nForce3 250 SMBUS at $1C00
Linked nVidia nForce3 250 SMBUS at $2000
Scanning ISA BUS at $0290...
IT8712F/IT8705F found on ISA at $290
SuperIO Chip=IT8712F
Scanning nForce2 SMBus at $1C00...
Scanning nForce2 SMBus at $2000...
LM75 found on SMBus at $4E
SMART Enabled for drive 0
Found Maxtor 6Y120L0 (122.9GB)
End of detection
CLOCK GENERATOR set to nVidia nForce2


info

Scanning SMBus at $1C00...
Decoding DIMM #0
Memory type is DDR
Module Rows : 2
Levels : 2.5V
Parity : NO PARITY
Refresh Rate : 7.8us
Total Size : 512MB
Scanning SMBus at $2000...



:blink:



AMD athlon 64 processor
3000+
2.08 GHz, 512 MB of RAM


:blink: :blink:
:blink:
:blink: :blink: :blink:



-----------edit-----------

anyway, thats irrelevent. i know my RAM can shift stuff faster than a HDD

[clocker]

i have two sata sockets on my board doing nowt. what would be the benefits and complications of RAIDing 2 hard-drives on them. ideally i want my games to load twice as fast. how realistic is this?
Not very, unfortunately.
Although you might notice a slight improvement ( I have RAIDed my system twice, desperately hoping to see a big difference...didn't happen), the risk involved is significant.
Any problem (hardware or data) on one drive and the entire array is junk.

Your best bang for the buck (and even this is debatable) is to use a Raptor ( preferably the bigger, faster 74GB) for your OS and apps.

LMAO u guys crack me up...

theres is no BIG advantage of SATA over normal IDE slots except SATA cables are very thin so it saves space
Huh?
Of course there is a speed increase using SATA over IDE...it is easily measured and hard to deny.
Whether his applications will utilize that increase in a noticable way is arguable, but the basic superiority of SATA is not.

[Virtualbody1234]

maybe i worded it wrong.

-----

on my board i have

IDE 1
master: 120gb
slave: dvd reader

IDE 2
master: dvd writer
slave: empty

sata 1: empty
sata 2: empty

-----
Remove the optical drive from that IDE. Never put an optical drive on the same cable as your primary HDD.

Move it to the other IDE cable with the writer or just remove it altogether.

[lynx]

Option 1: Raid. Won't give you any noticeable benefits.
Option 2: Get an extra small drive, use it for swap (set max and min size the same), browser cache, temp storage. This will give you a noticeable improvement, also easier defragging.
Option 3: Get more ram, don't use a swap file. Potentially risky (in theory) but speeds things up tremendously. I've used this method for quite a while now, and I haven't had a single probl

[lynx]

Remove the optical drive from that IDE. Never put an optical drive on the same cable as your primary HDD.

Move it to the other IDE cable with the writer or just remove it altogether.Sorry, VB, but that's out of date.

It used to be true with the original WD IDE specification, but the later ata specs mean that it doesn't matter a damn. All those drives conform to ata specs.

The layout is optimum for direct disk to disk copying or writing from hd to cd/dvd. The only area of poor performance would be copying from dvd-rom to hd, which can be avoided by putting the source in the dvd-rw drive if necessary.

[Storm]

there is no real reason to get RAID, unless you need alot more bandwith......

for loading games/apps, running games/apps, RAID offers no real improvement......

a Raptor will get you slight improvement, but again, this is more for if you have bandwith shortages (servers, video editing ect.)

the only way you'll really notice any difference is through benchmarking....... but then again, do you want to spend all that time and money just to improve your benchmarks?

[TheDave]

:(

so theres no way to get my loading times up?

would putting a 40 one of those satas for temp make a reasonable difference?


p.s. the dvd reader isn't really used for much other than checking disc protection on games. i left it there rather than on the second cable incase i ever want to copy on-the-fly, is that right?

[lynx]

:(

so theres no way to get my loading times up?

would putting a 40 one of those satas for temp make a reasonable difference?


p.s. the dvd reader isn't really used for much other than checking disc protection on games. i left it there rather than on the second cable incase i ever want to copy on-the-fly, is that right?Getting an extra disk for the page file will improve your performance for this reason. When you load a new app, your system has to dump some of the stuff in real memory into virtual memory. If they are on the same drive you get the situation where it dumps something to the page file to make space, then loads part of your app, then it dumps some more to the page file, then loads more of your app, and so on. Consequently the disk heads are flying about to perform this. If they are on different drives the heads don't have to move much, so load times are considerably improved.

If you go for the above you don't need the drive to be SATA, it won't make that much difference, but since they are almost the same price these days you may as well go for SATA rather than PATA.

If you get rid of the page file that will improve performance all round since there won't be ANY swapping ever, but you can't do that unless you get more memory, at least another 512MB.

Which one is best for you depends on whether you actually need more disk space anyway, whether you've got room for more memory, and which one you can afford.

About your DVD-ROM, you've got that exactly right.

[TheDave]

:unsure:

cheapest i can get 512 ddr for is £55 i think, but i reckon i could get a hard-drive for £30. come to think of it, i still have an old 20gig but my mobo didnt used to get on with it...

[TheDave]

now this is an odd situaton. i mixed up before about dvds, it was actually;

1
120gig
empty

2
dvd-rw
dvd

anyway i put the dvd on primary slave and it wouldn't boot.
....
now it's

1
120gig
empty

2
dvdr
20gig.

time for some speed tests to see if it's worth the extra disc changes :unsure:


edit: the odd situation is that i cant have anything on primary slave

[Snee]

Lynx, I've run XP without pagefiles for quite some time without running into any problems, despite having a mere 512Mbs of RAM. I would still be doing just that had I not run into the miraculous piece of software that is soulseek. :dry:

I got better speeds than with a pagefile, and didn't have any issues at all with too little memory before soulseek.

Depending on what applications dave is trying to run, turning off pagefiles might work just fine with his current RAM.

But then again, if you want to play recent games like I think you do dave, I'd go with an extra stick of RAM if you can afford it.

That older disc may slow you down if it's too old.

[TheDave]

when i started it up with the second drive in it was constantly spinning and slowing the pc down :blink:

i changed the pagefile or whatever you call it to be on d: instead of c: and now it's faster than ive ever seen it go :w00t:

time to try it out on a game


edit:
yesh! desert combat loads in about 1/3 the time, maybe less :01:

[Snee]

Have you gotten the dvd-rom to work yet as your primary slave? :unsure:

[TheDave]

nah, i dont think owt'll work on it. which is it likely to be? board, cable or hard-drive

[Snee]

Jumpers set wrong? Might be set wrong on the master even, like cable select.

Made that mistake a couple of times.

[TheDave]

next time i turn it off i'll check.

so... CS on primary master can mess up in combo with primary slave even though bios detects them both?

[Snee]

If you have cable select set, you have to have it set like that on both drives.

If not it might not boot at all.


Did that on an intel mobo 'cos I'd looked at the drive upside down when setting the jumper.
It couldn't use any drives on that channel. That was the slave I'd set to CS tho'.

Took me a few attempts to figure out what was wrong that time too.

That was only the last time tho', I've prolly screwed up jumpers in any way possible at some point, 'cos I didn't have the sticker left onna drive.

[lynx]

Some hdd's have different settings for single and master, maybe that's the problem.

512MB ram (http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=195&category_id=107&manufacturer_id=0) for £28.41 plus shipping.

[TheDave]

bookmarked :naughty: . thanks, i'll probably getting that sometime in the week :01:

[GepperRankins]

yesterday i had to phone the bank to put money from the savings account into my current account cos i was short for t'internet bill. i decided to shift an extra £30 so i could buy this ram. ten minutes it took. i then went online and started ordering it and signed up for an account then realised i'd need an extra fiver for postage :frusty:

[lynx]

yesterday i had to phone the bank to put money from the savings account into my current account cos i was short for t'internet bill. i decided to shift an extra £30 so i could buy this ram. ten minutes it took. i then went online and started ordering it and signed up for an account then realised i'd need an extra fiver for postage :frusty:See if you can borrow some from TheDave. :dry:

Edit: or drive down and save the postage (but spend it on petrol).

[GepperRankins]

i spent it on kickass headphones instead, saved me £15 apparently :01:

i think i can handle the RAM puzzles with some time management, which means don't play games and use bittorrent at the same time. maybe i'll get the RAM in may when bf2 and STALKER come out

[Livy]

have you moved the tempfile and internet tempfiles, this should also help with other things.