OK whats the best Hard drive config

[CHOPS123]

Ok I was just given a 74 gig WD raptor 10000 rpm drive. I have not installed it yet. Im wondering what the best way to set up my drives for speed. Currently I have 2 250 gig drives in raid 0...They have my OS and games installed on them. If I throw this new drive in how should i use it?? Should I just load my OS non raided and then raid the 2-250 gig drives and install games etc on them? Any suggetions would be great
Thanks

[juneau]

Raptor - OS, Games, Apps
2-250gb (standard setup) - Storage, Pagefile.

No real need to raid them now. You'll be just losing HDD space.

[CHOPS123]

So you think the one raptor will be faster that the 2-250gigs in raid 0 ?

Thanks for the info Juneau. Wish the Raptor was bigger...But 74 gig should be plenty I dont run a ton of apps or games

[DougBob]

If you had another Raptor I would say run them RAID 0 with your OS and run the 250 just like you got them for apps.

No real need to raid them now. You'll be just losing HDD space.

By the way you don't lose space with RAID 0.

[mapes]

If you had another Raptor I would say run them RAID 0 with your OS and run the 250 just like you got them for apps.



By the way you don't lose space with RAID 0.

+1
Yep raid zero is no redundancy. It's two drives merged together. You do get a speed increase as your splitting read and write operations over two spindles.

If you had another Raptor I'd say raid0 the two Raptors for speed and put the OS on it. Then Raid1 the 250 GB for data protection and put your apps on that. You needs may vary.

[CHOPS123]

Well I only have one raptor..Do you think it would run faster than my current raid 0 with the 250 gigs?

[juneau]

If you had another Raptor I would say run them RAID 0 with your OS and run the 250 just like you got them for apps.



By the way you don't lose space with RAID 0.

True. But is it really worth it for storage?

[Rand{CLR}]

I personally wouldn't go with a RAID 0 array. I've had one drive fail, and one come right to the edge--borked OS despite reinstalls, but I can still access most data using it as an external drive. This past experience reinforces the fact that drives fail, and if you go with a RAID 0, your data is split on those drives, and I for one would not trust an attempt to re-create that data if one if the drives goes down.

RAID 1 FTW.

-Rand

[mapes]

I personally wouldn't go with a RAID 0 array. I've had one drive fail, and one come right to the edge--borked OS despite reinstalls, but I can still access most data using it as an external drive. This past experience reinforces the fact that drives fail, and if you go with a RAID 0, your data is split on those drives, and I for one would not trust an attempt to re-create that data if one if the drives goes down.

RAID 1 FTW.

-Rand

Yeah I geuss I consider my windows installation expendable. I mean come on it's just a matter of time till I reinstall. Thats why I said raid 0 for the OS and Raid 1 for Apps/Data. Performance wise Raid0 does give you better read and write times. Raid 1 will give you better read times but slower write times. Personally I'd really push for Raid 5 even though I raid 1 a data drive on my Linux box. The box serve pics and music via a a web server. So I don't care about speed I just don't want to lose the data.

[CarbonFire]

While I agree that RAID 5 is better if you want both redundancy AND performance, it's still an expensive option (requires 4 identical drives).

Another option would be to have 2 smaller drives to run in RAID 0 (like the Raptors), and then image that drive onto a backup or external drive in case of failure. A large (but slower) drive should be cheaper than the raptors, so you can feasibly store all your important info on the backup, and also image the RAID 0 array just in case one of those drives fails.

[CHOPS123]

Ok Im still trying to figure out if one raptor will run faster that my 2/ 250 gigs in raid 0. Thats the main question i have now. I dont plan on buying another raptor and raiding 2 raptors in 0. So the question is....One 10000 rpm drive faster than a normal 7200 rpm raided?

[juneau]

Ok Im still trying to figure out if one raptor will run faster that my 2/ 250 gigs in raid 0. Thats the main question i have now. I dont plan on buying another raptor and raiding 2 raptors in 0. So the question is....One 10000 rpm drive faster than a normal 7200 rpm raided?

All depends on the Raid drives performance. If they're something like WD AAKS or Seagate 7200.11 drives then it's going to be close for overall read speed, but the raptor will always be faster for access and burst speeds which means a lot when loading games etc.

[mapes]

While I agree that RAID 5 is better if you want both redundancy AND performance, it's still an expensive option (requires 4 identical drives).

Raid 5 only requires 3 drives..

[CarbonFire]

Raid 5 only requires 3 drives..

Oops....you're right I was thinking Raid 0+1

[Duke{CLR}]

I am running three Segate 250s in RAID 5 and I notice slightly faster performance but I haven't run any kind of benchmark to prove it. I do like the fact that if a drive fails I wont loose any data.