New Build...pretty pictures within!

hopeful

christophicus wrote:

is the 6320 a new chip?? It wasnt part of the initial core 2 duo lineup was it?

It's fairly recent addition. Basically its a 6300 with 4mg cache rather than 2mb on the 6300.

christophicus

deadly so whereas the 6600 used to be teh cheapest chip that was teh exact same as the very top end (6800?) aside form clock . teh 6320 is now the cheapest that is the exact saem as the top end aside from clock??

SwampThing

hopeful wrote:

I used to use RAID...but as Anti says the speed difference is not worth the hassle, and as long as you have a sensible backup strategy the mirroring features are a bit pointless.

Anti wrote:

Raid really isnt worth it these days, hdds are fast enough on their own.

absolute pants to both!

hopeful

SwampThing wrote:

absolute pants to both!

An excellent technical summary

SwampThing

hopeful wrote:

An excellent technical summary

It's infinitely more informed than yours and Anti's 'don't use RAID - it's worthless/pointless' nuggets of wisdom. Obviously based on extensive experience

And given your own in-depth explanation for not using raid, I thought it a 'bit pointless' to elaborate.

hopeful

I for one would be interested to hear your own experiences with the technology...I was merely sharing my own views.

For me...and I stress the 'me' part...the speed increase using RAID was not worth the increased cost/heat. But then I wouldn't use very disc-intensive apps or be bothered if loading times were shaved by a second or two. I have an adequate backup policy that, thus far, has not let me down.

On a totally unrelated matter I try to remain polite and pleasant when making comments within threads....or I say nothing at all.

SwampThing

hopeful wrote:

....or I say nothing at all.

A piece of advice which should be applied, in spades, to posts about which little or nothing is known - and this is not wholly directed at you hopeful. I happen to agree with you entirely!

Seeing as you started this thread, I see little point in having a pissing contest regarding raid -you don't see the merit and I don't see the point in trying to change your mind.

If my 'pants' comment upset you...

hopeful

SwampThing wrote:

A piece of advice which should be applied, in spades, to posts about which little or nothing is known - and this is not wholly directed at you hopeful. I happen to agree with you entirely!

Seeing as you started this thread, I see little point in having a pissing contest regarding raid -you don't see the merit and I don't see the point in trying to change your mind.

If my 'pants' comment upset you...

I don't get upset at anything these days...life is too short.

I am genuinely interested in your own experiences of RAID setups though...I can always learn something new that may be to my advantage. 'Tis a couple of years since I messed about with RAID and things may well have changed.

BlackWizard

I used to have a Raptor on my old PC before I sold it. It was quite hard to come to terms with selling it because I loved it that much. I never used a single application that used really high bandwidth , but I used a few different applications at once and loading/switching times on them all improved. Even little things like opening Firefox or iTunes was that bit faster. Costly investment though.

I've never had RAID before. What sort of raid setup do you use SwampThing?
And would RAID come near to matching what a Raptor can do?

Sorry if this is like a thread hijack or what ever its called. I'm just curious about what SwampThings raid setup is like. He seems to really like it.

hopeful

BlackWizard wrote:

Sorry if this is like a thread hijack or what ever its called. I'm just curious about what SwampThings raid setup is like. He seems to really like it.

Feel free to take this thread where ever it may wander

I'll update info on my rig as we go along.

DanGerMus

Well i have 2 seagates 250gb 7200.10 in RAID 0.when i set it up i noticed quite a difference in even day to day use. just opening apps and browsing files. but most noticable was installing downloaded apps they absolutly fly. Like the BF patches which before i RAIDed were slower. And downloaded movies which often took a bit of time to load up. Any way before i did it i researched it a bit and lots of people said it was difficult and not worth the risk. But that was before. I had zero experience and found it very simple, once i found a guide that is. That and HDs are much more reliable nowadays and as long as you have a sensible back up in place it's not really a risk. If you are doin anything important you should always back up RAID or not.
I mean its really quite easy to do. Dowload RAID drivers>>put on floppy>> Turn on PC>> enable RAID in BIOS>Restart PC with Windows Disk. Follow on screen instructions. and away you go.
I forgot Connect drives to appropriate Slots. LOL

BlackWizard

I thought most motherboards have some sort of RAID driver already on them?
So now if I want to make a RAID setup, I'd have to get a floppy drive? Off to the local museum then

Since you are using two harddrives, then I guess the probability of there being a failure almost doubles.
I've never had a harddrive failure that wasn't intentionally caused. Plus I make backups of all of my Football Manager save games , so no worries there

RAID is looking pretty sexy if it's as easy to setup as you say. The extortionate prices of a large Raptor is turning me off getting another.

SwampThing

Currently I've two 250GB drives (happen to be the same as cheeryfrodo's) in RAID 0 and two WD Caviar 320GB drives in RAID 1.

The performance increase, while not earth shattering, is significant enough to make you want to use RAID.

The benefit of RAID 0 is obviously performance over reliability. Processing large files is when it really shines - video encoding, loading games, large application installations etc.

Fundamental to a good RAID setup of course is the RAID controller. Most on-board (what I'm currently using) do a perfectly adequate job but to get the most from it, a dedicated top-end controller will make a considerable difference - as will the drives obviously.

As with standard direct attached drives, smaller capacity drives with bigger caches generally tend to perform better. As a benchmark - for outright performance, three or four 74GB Raptors in RAID 0 would be ideal.

I'm thinking about possibly trying 4 x 320GB or 4 X 500GB drives in a RAID 0+1 in my new rig to see how it behaves and performs. For this setup, the controller would be key but I'll start with the onboard controller (will be a Striker Extreme mobo) and see what happens.

BlackWizard, I'd hazard a guess that a couple good, small SATA II drives in RAID 0 would compete with a Raptor easily, particularly the 150GB Raptor.
and to answer your question about the floppy drive, generally, RAID drivers are loaded during the OS installation as you need to be able to a) access the raidsets and b) set the RAID controller as the boot device.

DanGerMus

Actually the mother board drivers are already there in the BIOS the drivers on the floppy are for windows. c'mon on now how hard would it be to get your hands on a floppy drive? i dont know if there is another way to do it but you need the drivers for windows. The actual bios and setup you do before installing your OS is done first in your regular BIOS by simply setting to "enable" beside the thing that says RAID. Then you set up the "RAID set" in the RAID bios that comes up after your regular BIOS once it's enabled. Again it's as simple as following the on screen instructions. Then during OS installation it prompts you to press F8 (i think its F8 anyway). After you do windows looks at the floppy you select the driver windows installs it then you carry on installation as usual.
What stripeing are you using Swampthing? mine is at max 1024 i think. whats optimum?

hopeful

happygandalf wrote:

Then during OS installation it prompts you to press F8 (i think its F8 anyway)

F6 AFAIK

DanGerMus

F6 sounds good to me. Either way it tells you what to do. FTOSI

BlackWizard

Would it be possible to use a USB disk instead of a floppy?

hopeful

I have a feeling that some boards with allow this...I'm sure I read it somewhere.

Perhaps the best method is to slipstream the drivers onto an XP install disc using Nlite. No floppy needed at all then.

christophicus

Yes there is a way to make a bootable usb stick, I think the utility is on the HP website. They had a guid in custom pc ages ago about how to do it.

christophicus

try this.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveroptions/us/download/23839.html

SwampThing

hopeful's suggestion IMO is the better option here. The Windows installation program specifically looks to the floppy for additional drivers being loaded during the installation, so if attaching a floppy is a problem, then this is the way to go.

Making a bootable USB is fine if you have a slipstreamed installation OS on it. Not much to be gained over a bootable slipstreamed CD I guess - the hard part is incorporating the drivers, not making bootable media.

christophicus

Yeah i dont know. I just skimmed through the thread and saw someone wanting to make a usb stick fro which they can use drivers.