Raid Me

DanGerMus

Hey guys i'm looking into setting up RAID on my new PC, hard drive is the last thing i have left to do and my old one isnt "doin" it for me. i see the two kind to go for speed are RAID0 or RAID5(better security).
Questions. i'm getting at least 3 drives and i see 80 gig drives for less than 50 quid. now i know the more i spend the better i'll get but i'm gonna put a budget of €200 on it and i'd like as many drives as possible. now here's the thing would it be better to get say four €50 drives or two €100. With the four setup i'd have around 320 gigs and with the two i'd have 640. now i really think dat 320 GB is loads and loads for me. That CApacity would be just fine. but would the larger drives be faster as they do seem to be ieSeagate320 7200.10's i mean. i have a gygbite DS3 . with a C2D e6700.

8T8

The RAID 5 capability built into SATA motherboard controllers is not worth using if you care about speed as there is a significant drop in performance. The only way to offset that if you want to use RAID 5 is to get a proper dedicated controller but that can cost a couple of hundred euro.

If you want speed RAID 0 is the way to go but the third HD would have to be for backup/storage in case anything happened.

You also can use JBOD whereby all the drives appear as one large HD the main advantage of JBOD over RAID 0 is that if a drive fails in a RAID 0 array all data is lost but in JOBD only the data that was on that drive is lost the rest remains. Of course you do not gain any of the speeds benefits from RAID 0 either.

Dabs.ie have a much better selection of hard drives for example they have WD 120GB HD for €52 which is a good way to maximise your capacity. Put two in RAID 0 and use the other two as storage.

Alternatively if redundancy is important to you get two WD SE 320GB HD for €91 & put them in a RAID 1 array so it will mirror the content on both drives.

L31mr0d

I´d personally recommend going the extra mile and getting a 4th HDD and setting up a RAID 0+1. This is basically 2xRAID 0´s raided together in a RAID 1, it gives you the redundancy of the RAID 1 and the speed of a RAID 0. Only downside? You lose the capacity of 2 of your drives.

The other alternative is to have a RAID 0 setup with only the OS and games installed on it, all your other program files and documents you can store on the 3rd large drive (note i´d also recommend having a 4th external drive as another backup)

8T8

Forgot about RAID 0+1 that's a good idea from L31mr0d you can still pull it off staying just within budget if you get 4 WD 120GB HD's I linked to for €52.

Any recent Intel 9xx series chipset should support RAID 0+1

DanGerMus

well this is what ive decided on, 2XSeagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB S300 just a lil less than 150 for the pair deliverd. i just couldn't live with the GB:€ ratio of 80 and 120gb drives. so i went for these. i'm hoping there reliability will hold up wont store important stuff on em for now i have plenty memory in other drive i'll use that for storage and in a fewmonths will buy two of the same drive for less and set up a RAID zero plus one or maybe just have four drives in Raid zero that would be cool. Any way wait n see

awhir

nice1 seagate rock !!

DanGerMus

hey guys i've a problem with dabs i ordered 2 seagates ST3250820AS but got 2 maxtors STM3250820AS. as you can see the serials are almost identical. now i see the these companys have merged is there a chance these are the same drives. well i'd like to find out for deffinate before i send em back. also on the off chance the maxtors are better i'll hold on to em?

8T8

They are very similar in specs so probably worth holding onto;

ST3250820AS - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA

Capacity: 250GB
Speed: 7200 rpm
Average Read Time: 8.5 ms
Cache: 8MB

STM3250820AS - Seagate/Maxtor DiamondMax 21

Capacity: 250GB
Speed: 7200 rpm
Average Read Time: 9 ms
Cache: 16MB (Dabs say 8MB but other sites say 16MB)

DanGerMus

No according to seagates specs the maxtor is only 8mb. Maxtor are owned by seagate and have there specs on their site. Plus there are a few features it doesnt have that the proper seagate does. sending em back it's just a B@lls.

8T8

B@lls indeed, I couldn't see the part number on Seagates site but the one thing Maxtor do have going for them or did was NCQ performance almost everyone's else's hindered performance in some fashion whereas Maxtors implementation was the only one which actually gave benefits across the board.

Still it's not what you paid for

DanGerMus

Well got the disks up and running together in raid. just wondering if anyone has RAIDed on a DS3 with gigabytes drivers. on the disk it lists 6 different drivers (during the windows installation). just dont know if i'm using the right one r not. i have a rev 1.0 ds3.

Also what are the better and best RAID0 cards out there... lets suppose someone wanted to RAID0 4 raptors. theoretically.

8T8

The Gigabyte P965 DS3 has two RAID capable SATA controllers;

1) Native Intel RAID controller as part of the south bridge (yellow SATA ports).

2) JMicron SATA RAID controller branded as Gigabyte SATA2 RAID (purple SATA ports).

If you are using the Intel RAID controller then use these drivers for the Windows F6 preinstall environment.

If using the JMicron RAID controller then use these drivers for the Windows F6 preinstall environment.

Ideally for RAID0 then I would go with the native Intel RAID capability or get a dedicated PCI-e Adaptec RAID controller which may improve performance though I have not seen benchmarks comparing the two the dedicated hardware should help.

{note the PCI-e card uses a PCI-e x4 connection which means it will only work in an x4, x8 or x16 slot it will not work in an x1 slot.

DanGerMus

hey unfortunatley i have a rev 1 board that only supports RAID on the Jmicron. the 2 purple ones. Intel RAIDs came on subsequent REVs only. Sucks for me. Any way would i be right in assuming that a PCI express RAID card would have a long lifespan. they're a lil expensive but would be worth it i think? I'm not really seeing a great performance increase with my boards native RAID controller. Although i have no point of reference. You know if the card you suggest would be much better?