Raptor and raid?

Zuntar

Allright, I want to speed things up. I have several options, and want to run them by ya to see what you guys think.

I have my OS and my games on my 160G sata drive (2 partitions), my 250G drive is for backups, dvds, and storage etc..... Now, I want to get my games on a different drive(s) to help speed up the loading of games/maps.

I was thinking of two options. I can get one of these Raptor 150GB 3.5" Serial ATA150 or two of these Raptor 74GB 3.5" Serial ATA150 and throw them in a RAID 0 array. Assuming that the two 74G in RAID ) would be faster, I am inclined to go that route, but will I realy knowtice the difference while playing games? I would be using the raid functionality that is on my mobo, DFI LanParty NF3 250GB UT.

I don't have any desire to put my OS in a raid setup, I would prefer just to continue with regular backups, as i also would do with my saved games.

Crazy? What do you think? I also will be upgrading to two gigs of nice ram as well as gettin a 3400+ (only 150 bucks for 400more Mhz).

madmat

Putting the OS on the array and the games on the other drives would yield the biggest payoff. Putting the games on the array won't give you any benefit at all since more time is spent by the CPU decompressing levels and other housekeeping than the drives are spending feeding the data.

Omega65

Two Raptor 74GB in Raid-0 are faster than single Raptor 150!

Overclockers.com: Who Says 2 Raptors (74GB) Aren't Better Than One? Part I

Overclockers.com: Who Says 2 Raptors (74GB) Aren't Better Than One? Part II

GamePC: Western Digital’s Raptor 150 GB with RAID-0 (4x Raptor 150GB & 4x Raptor 74GB)
Compare Raid-0 Raptor 74GB vs the Single Raptor 150GB Scores.
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mmonnin

Anything that gets a lot of read writes should be on the array. So what if one drive goes down and all that is on it is the OS and games. Just reintall. Just move stuff like My Documents and anything else you want onto another drive.

Zuntar

RAID 0 Raptors it is, thanks Omega65!!

So OS on a 74GB RAID 0 array and games on the 160GB, backups on the 250GB.

Sound good? I really hate having games and everything on on the OS drive. don't know why. Opinions PLEASE!!

madmat

I think it sounds like a plan to me.

Just make sure to disable the other drives in bios or the array will be asigned a letter other than C: for some stupid reason. I have had to do this with an nForce 4 I did a similar setup on with 2x74 gig rapties raid -0 as the OS drive and a 400 gig WD as the storage drive. Windows asigned the rapties G: and the 400 C:.

lemonlime

Just one thing to keep in mind Zuntar:

Only two of the four SATA ports on the DFI NF3 250GB are 'locked'. If you are overclocking at all, you'll need to stick with ports 3 & 4, or else you'll get some nasty instability. Is your 250GB drive a SATA drive?

Zuntar

yes, both the 160 and the 250 are sata. what do you mean? please esplain to meh!!!

lemonlime

Zuntar wrote:

yes, both the 160 and the 250 are sata. what do you mean? please esplain to meh!!!

Basically, if you use SATA ports 1&2 (the ones in the bottom right corner of the board) you'll be very limited in the overclock you can obtain. If you increase your reference clock above about 230-240MHz, your SATA drives connected to these ports will begin doing wacky things. If you are only using ports 3&4 (the ones above the AGP slot), you'll be fine. If you do not overclock at all, then there is absolutely nothing to worry about, and you can use all of the ports without issue.

Omega65

Zuntar wrote:

RAID 0 Raptors it is, thanks Omega65!!

So OS on a 74GB RAID 0 array and games on the 160GB, backups on the 250GB.

Sound good? I really hate having games and everything on on the OS drive. don't know why. Opinions PLEASE!!

Set up "C" & "D" Partions on the raided drives. Put the OS on C and your Games and Programs on D. You want your OS and Programs reading from your fastest drives for the snappiest performance.

Zuntar

But..But....I wanna push her till she pukes!!!!

Uh..... recommend any nice controller cards? Anyone?

Cuz, yah I will be overclockin!!

Omega65

Zuntar wrote:

But..But....I wanna push her till she pukes!!!!

Uh..... recommend any nice controller cards? Anyone?

Cuz, yah I will be overclockin!!

Do you have a S754 Motherboard?? That $150 could be better spent on a NF4 S939 PCIe Mobo, CPU, Video Upgrade after selling the S754 setup. Your system will be faster and you'll have 4 native SATA ports that'll OC as far as the mobo does.

Mt_Goat

Here is another solution to how to set up your drives. I have been through all the different drive configurations including RAID-0 (with up to 6 drives). Your OS and most programs utilize very short reads and writes and not high disk throughput. What this means is that a RAID-0 will do nothing good for those puposes and could even hinder your performance. A RAID-0 array will also give your CPU and memory a bit of a performance hit unless you are running a high end RAID card. After playing with my system and many different drive configs for years my old friend Tex suggested something to me that made sense after I got my head out of my butt and thought about what he was saying. I now have my OS on one 74GB Raptor and all my programs and games on another, with my files (my docs, etc) on a RAID-0 with 2 other drives and everything backedup to still another drive ( I do regular manual backups). What you are trying to do here is make each drive as efficient as possible by making the heads run completely independant operations so there is never any conflict of where a drive is trying to access. You also want and need faster access times for your OS, programs and games rather than high troughput (which only comes in at the upper end of a RAID-0 array) and is for that task completely useless. Your files and things that are larger single transfers are the things that will benefit from RAID-0. This means that the small reads and writes common with your OS and programs require faster access times and not high transfer thoughput (which are only at the opposite end of the spectrum in a RAID-0 array. Also since your drive with the OS is only working with the OS it will not be affected by other tasks like loading games or file transfers and vice-versa. Everything is segregated to its own range of tasks. Sorry if this doesn't read so well and may be redundant. Tex could probably explain it better but I thought I should throw it out there.

mmonnin

OS AND Games on the Raid. Otherwise when loading games it will be no better than what it is now.

I still dont see how putting your games on a separate non-raided disk is going to help out noticably. When the HDD gets the read task to load a new scene it is going to load it all until its finished whether the same disk as an OS or on a separate one.

Mt_Goat

mmonnin wrote:

OS AND Games on the Raid. Otherwise when loading games it will be no better than what it is now.

I still dont see how putting your games on a separate non-raided disk is going to help out noticably. When the HDD gets the read task to load a new scene it is going to load it all until its finished whether the same disk as an OS or on a separate one.

As I said, I have tried it both ways and the best overall performance is as I mentioned. The OS and the programs or games will not have to wait for each other, ever. The heads can only do one thing at a time and the OS intermitently keeps writing to and reading from the disk. The next scene loading as you mentioned is about the only time it won't really hurt but most files for each scene are not really large enough to take enough advantage of a RAID-0 array to benefit from it since they are actually a compilation of many smaller files. As far as the OS is concerned, once loaded it is only ever useing very small files that thrive on pure access times and not the high transfer rates that can only be taken advantage of by larger files. Even files like music files are marginally improved on a RAID-0 system. In addition you acually loose access time with the array. My 2 74GB raptors increased by an average of 1.4ms in a 2 disk array. I used to as well as most assume and even convinced myself that my system really went faster with everything on the array. It took a lot of effort from Tex to finally convince me to try it. Just think that he is about disk sub-systems and their performance as a lot of us are about overclocking our rigs. He has been at this for a very long time. Once I tried it I am never going back. The only thing that could possibly be better would be to have the OS on the fastest single drive you have or can get and put the games on a RAID-0 array.

Zuntar

Ok.... I'll try this again, Ive tried to post in this thread twice and been logged out and lost what I typed both times....UGGG.

I do not have the money to go to socket 939 AND have it make a difference. I will wait till the dust settles on the AM2? socket. Till then I am stuck with what I have, which is a system that while overclocked with more then two SATA drives can get possibly instable. SO....I think that I will give up the RAID idea and give the 160Gb drive to my wife (she needs a new one anyways) and get the 150Gb raptor to replace it. That should get me a nice fast drive for both the OS and the games.

What do you think? Be honest Please!!

lemonlime

Zuntar wrote:

Ok.... I'll try this again, Ive tried to post in this thread twice and been logged out and lost what I typed both times....UGGG.

I do not have the money to go to socket 939 AND have it make a difference. I will wait till the dust settles on the AM2? socket. Till then I am stuck with what I have, which is a system that while overclocked with more then two SATA drives can get possibly instable. SO....I think that I will give up the RAID idea and give the 160Gb drive to my wife (she needs a new one anyways) and get the 150Gb raptor to replace it. That should get me a nice fast drive for both the OS and the games.

What do you think? Be honest Please!!

Hey Zuntar, I think that should be a pretty sweet setup. Without going RAID-0, a single Raptor 150 is the way to go. I've been using 2x 36GB raptors in Raid-0 for two years now, and although they are fast, I honestly can't tell too much of a difference between a single raptor and the RAID. The only real difference I noticed was the OS load time. Everything else was almost the same, and gaming did not benefit whatsoever. I was actually considering to sell my pair and buying a single 150 for additonal space (thats the only problem with the 36G jobbers--too small).