CDsDontBurn

i have been thinking about which setup is better. the intent for this is to simply install games onto it. i'm just curious as to which set up will perform best in terms of load times (disregard capacity, as it is obvious).

having 1 36Gb raptor

having 2 80Gb seagate HDDs in RAID 0 (the ones in my sig below)

having 1 74Gb raptor

(not placing the 150Gb raptor because it's too expensive for me ATM).

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niceguyrichy

I'd have said first, though I can't see that the difference would be altogether noticable regardless tbh

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swimtech

Theoretically, the Raid 0 setup should be faster for loading times, depending on stripe size.

...however, it is possible that for a single user using a single app (a game), that a single raptor will beat the raided Seagates. You could test though yourself CD. Run HDTach on your Raptor 36, then on your Seagate Raid volume and compare the results. A 74G Raptor will outperform the 36G overall, and figure that into your consideration.

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PangingJr

yep, but test them by setting them up on every possible combination of setups would be the best way to find that out.

CDsDontBurn

stripe size would be a total of 160Gb.

but what about realistically? not theoretically

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swimtech

Check my edited post above... sorry for the double post - now I have to report myself to Admin...

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It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

PangingJr

160 GB is total size of all RAID volumes in the array.
when swimtech was saying stripe size i'm sure he didn't mean the total size of RAID volume or array.

CDsDontBurn

lol, i had totally forgotten about HD Tach! thanks for the link swimtech .

i'll do the quick benchies and come back w/the results

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swimtech

Right Panging, I've received quite an education over the past year by reading your and Judas' posts concerning Raid... Stripe sizes range from 4K on up, right?

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It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

PangingJr

depending up on the controller and its BIOS's programed,
but yep, most of the on-board controllers (that i know of) can have the stripe size ranging from 4 - 128KB.

many (true) hardware-based RAID controller (card) allows you to set a more higher stripe sizes...

CDsDontBurn

here are the results. what i noticed was that even though the two raided seagates had a higher data transfer spead, the average access and read times of the rapter were still lower than the two seagates. how does that come into effect for my intended purposes?

36Gb raptor - quick test



segate raid 0 - quick test



36Gb raptor - long test



seagate raid 0 - long test

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swimtech

I think your testing confirms the Seagate's (being a third faster) are going to be the likely candidate for speed kings in your rig CD. The difference will be most apparent with large files that are not fragmented. Access time is the least consideration for reading large unfragmented files because it'll take much longer to move the data than to access it - the access times are very small in comparison.

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It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

CDsDontBurn

cool . i know where i'm installing my games to now . and the raptor will stay as the OS drive

after i get a large HDD to move all the stuff off my raid and free up 135Gb

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swimtech

Sounds like a winner! You really do have a quick drives setup there...

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It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

PangingJr

use the 74 GB for operating systems and a paging file - one big primary partition, or otherwise don't use the other partitions that exist on the same drive as for:- paging file or aplications, but to use it for storing files that you often do not use them.

partition the 36 GB drive with only one extended partition and one logical drive - use this drive for anything and a paging file.

2x80 GB with the a stripe size of 32KB or 64KB in one extended partition and one big logical drive for installing applications, small programs, users profiles and a paging file.

CDsDontBurn

lol.....thanks .

sad part is, i still want better . but i'll live w/what i've got.

as far as better goes.....

1. 74Gb raptor for my OS

2a. keep my seagate raid setup

2b. 150Gb raptor for installing games (but now i'm double thinking it since these benchmarks i just did. though i don't know how a 150Gb performs over the 74Gb raptors)

3. get one of those large seagate 750Gb drives for storing all my stuff

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CDsDontBurn

i have been thinking of getting like a 2Gb-4Gb flash drive and use that solely for virtual memory.

but, as to splitting the drives up like that, how much of a performance increase will i see in terms of windows booting up, or when playing a game?

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PangingJr

well you just said... "i'll live w/what i've got"...
so, test them by setting them up on every possible combination...

CDsDontBurn

well......one thing though.....i don't have a 74Gb raptor. i've been wanting to purchase one for installing games onto, but now that i found this out about my seagates AND that there are 150Gb raptors available now, i'm not so sure anymore. Now, if i were to get a 74Gb raptor, it would be for installing my OS onto it really.

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PangingJr

well my suggestion went with that info.

CDsDontBurn

lol, sorry for the confusion/misunderstanding

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H3X4D3C1M4L

For games the hard drive speed isn't that important... capacity will end up being important because games suck up space like mad.

The Raptor would help for things like paging files, a temp volume...the O/S...stuff like that. As long as you're not uber picky about load times most 16M cache 7200 RPM drives work just fine

CDsDontBurn

don't the 150Gb raptors have a 16Mb cache?

that's what i heard, but i haven't looked into it.

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H3X4D3C1M4L

Yeah but even still 7200RPM drives are more than enough for games especially when RAIDed

Judas

some controllers today max out @ 64kb block size (stripe size) while some reach 128kb or i had a board with what i consider one of the best raid controllers for IDE anyways, being the highpoint tech 374, which it's maximum was 2mb.


@ 2mb stripe size, video transfers or loading or generally large file movement performance was great, while the smaller lost.

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Judas

Raid arrays and rpms still effect games and every program noticeably (if they are large enough that really depend on seek and transfer rates)

Some games with my 4x raid 0 array, specially online, i can litterly load up some places before the screen even gets a chance to load up the loading screen.

I hate loading screens, i love raid.

Raid 0 4x on a set of 150gb raptors is imo, quite a difference from raid 0 4x on 160gb maxtor drives.

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H3X4D3C1M4L

Yeah but thats if you've got a relatively fast CPU and it depends on the game. It does improve just not much in some cases, it depends on if the game has everything in a raw format (not compressed), but if theres some form of ZIP going on then its down to the CPU for loading

CDsDontBurn

so explain to me how block sizes are important? and why do they matter. i never did get to understand that bit

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Judas

ok as far as i could gather.. and make sense out of it,

Block size is like the size of your plates.

Each plate NEEDS to be filled before the next is comes in line.

For example:

You have a 64kb block/stripe size. This being across 2 drives (each extra drive adds another 64kb block to the whole senario)

Anyways, 64kb block size, 2 drives, and we'll take for starters a 64kb file. Now on a raid array, the file would end up on the first Drive filling one plate but leaving the other empty, this means that raid 0 means nothing and you only get the performance of 1 drive.

you take a 128kb file, it gets evenly split onto the 2 drives (aka, full raid 0 being utlized).

you take a 192kb file, the first 2 junk are evenly split but the last ends up on either drive A or B. And so on and so forth.

The larger the block size, the quicker larger files are managed and split (it's alot easier to split up a 500mb file using 2mb block size vs 64kb block size as it's just that much more that has to be handled)

the only advantage of smaller block sizes is dealing with smaller files.

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CDsDontBurn

so then, i should have 128kb block sizes because i have about 80Gb of images no smaller than 550Mb?

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