2 HDDs or 4 HDDs for a 160gig SATA raid?

[jaross]

I was woundering which would be better. Could I format 4 80 gig HDDs so that 2 were considered one drive, and 2 were considered the other drive and then do a raid with those? would that be faster because 2 read heads and 2 times the cache as opposed to 2 160 gig HDDs?

I ordered 2 160 gig sata from tigerdirect, $60 each, but i may cancel my order because they are taking forever to ship out. Office Max here has 80 gig sata drives for $40.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Your computer probolly wouldnt support 4 drives in RAID. The tiger deal is worth it

 

[HAVOC]

Are you talking about RAID 0?

You Can RAID 0 - (2) 80gig HDD's on one RAID Controller
Then RAID 0 - (2) more 80GIG HDD's on another RAID Controller

But, you can't RAID 0 those two independant arrays together.
I don't think???

Why would you spend $40x4 = $160 to RAID (4) tiny disc's together to only get about 300gigs of space. You're not going to get a huge preformance boost outta that.

You'd be better off picking up a OEM Seagate Barracuda 300gig and partitioning the drive into a few seperate drive letters. You could do this for $165.00. And you'd have plenty of SATA contollers left on your motherboard for future additions to storage.

RAID 0 doesn't provide a great deal of performance boost.

 

[jaross]

raid 1 does though doesnt it? is raid 1 a striped raid?

 

[HAVOC]

raid 1 does though doesnt it? is raid 1 a striped raid?

No RAID 1 isn't striping. RAID 0 is.

Here, I suggest you read this:
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RAID.html

 

[jaross]

ok^

so umm. RAID 1 is the best read proformance?

 

[HAVOC]

ok^

so umm. RAID 1 is the best read proformance?

RAID arrays aren't really about increasing performance. It's a solution in which you combined 2 or more inexpensive or independant discs to get a larger storage space.

OR

You combined 2 or more inexpensive or independant discs to give you data security. Like RAID 1 or RAID 5. Example: Take (2) 200gig SATA HDD's and configure them in a RAID 1 Array, How much storage space do you think you'll have? 400gig right? WRONG.
You'll only have 200gig because RAID one is striping with parity. Which means all the data written to 1 disc is also written to the other disc as well. If 1 disc fails, guess what you have a duplexed disc to recover your DATA from. RAID 5 is like RAID 1 but you need to have 3 to 4 HDD's - Data is striped to 3 discs, while the 4th is striped with parity. You lose one drive. You can recover all your data. These solutions are very good for businesses and corporations as it provides data security.

RAID 0 which has become very popular in desktops is more or less used to combined 2 discs say 200gig & 200gig to give you 400gig in one drive letter. A little bit of data is striped to both drives. Sure both discs will be sharing the work load when it comes to accessing data but the performance isn't going to be mind blowing. Example I want to have a 500GIG hard drive. But, the price is ($360 - roughly) OR how about if I buy (2) 250GIG HDD's and RAID 0 them at ($115 each) So that's 500GIG for only ($230). That's ($130) less then the one drive. I could even buy another 250gig HDD and get 750GIG for $345 vs. 500GIG for $360. Get it?
Performance increase is very slight in RAID 0 and most noticably in I/O performance. Applications that require high bandwidth will show noticable performance increase. One of the largest factors in a performance increase of RAID 0 is the MOBO's chipset and controllers. Some increase performance, some don't. Google this, "RAID PERFORMANCE BENCHMARKS" you'll find plenty of articles that support what i'm saying.

I hope you have a better understanding now of all RAID ARRAYS.

 

[jaross]

Ok, thanks for the help. I had thought that people get proformance out of raid.

so it looks like Im really better off getting a 10,000 RPM Raptor for that though? With 2 gigs of ram, will I really see that much of a proformance increse with that over a 7200 rpm sata drive though?

Also, on newegg, i saw a few HDDs with 16mb chache. that doesnt help it read faster does it? How is that different then ram though in terms of the proformance it gives you? Is 16mb cache a very significant proformance increse from 8mb cache?

thanks again

 

[HAVOC]

IMO - It's more advantageous to have 2GIG's of RAM, then to have HDD's with 16MB of internal cache. That cache is used to store frequent reads from the disc to minimize access times. If you have a substantial amount of system memory all of that data from the disc reads will be stored there for quick transfer from the northbridge to the CPU. Also windows uses whats called a "paging file or a swap file". These files reside on your harddrive as "virtual memory". Frequently used data is cached from the system memory to the paging file by windows to eliminate disc reads for frequently needed data.

8mb internal disc cache is more then enough for desktop usage with 1gig - 2gig of system memory. IMO

Pick up (1) WD RAPTOR 74gig @ 10,000rpms. And install only your OS and high-end demanding games and applications on it. Perfomance will be excellent paired with 2gig's of RAM. Very fast access times + substantial data storage for northbridge and CPU, will give you the performance increase you seek.

Good luck.

 

[timmer]

2hd just cause it is less confusing