Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

[megawhompertoo]

'lo all. I've got a little money to spend and am itching to do a little computer upgrading/experimentation, but not looking to take the dual-core/pci-e/ddr2 $800 plunge.

I'm buying a psu and I'm looking at buying a couple of drives to replace or augment my aging EIDE's. The SMART diagnostics rate my drives at 77% and 84% "health", and I've been noticing a few errors popping up lately. Windows is noticeably slower these days (even after tweaking things) indicating I probably need to reformat, but I'd really like the "bonus" formatting onto new drives, and implementing RAID0 looks like it might be interesting (possibly challenging) thing to try this Saturday.

FWIW, current specs are:
--p4 3.0E prescHott 478 (arctic cooling hsf)
--ECS p4m800-pro (surprisingly decent little budget board allows use of either ddr/ddr2 and supports 4xPATA and 2xSATA 1.5gb/s)
--2x512mb pc3200
--x800xt AIW (arctic cooling ati silencer 1 rev. 2)
--160gb samsung spinpoing sp1604N hd, 2mb cache
--200gb western digital wd200jb 8mb cache

I am looking at getting a couple of either the seagates or the samsungs. i've had good luck with samsung's in the past, quiet and fast drives.

Seagate 120gb SATAII 8mb cache

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148161

Samsung 160gb SATAII 8mb cache:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822152053

I read a review here that seems to suggest that samsung is now implementing perpendicular recording similar to seagate:

http://forums.hardwarezone.com/showthread.php?t=1407008&referrerid=207238

Alludes to PMR in their product flyer:

http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/images/2007SSHDDPGB_1st_version.pdf

And in the specs on the site here:

http://www.esal.ro/index.php?produs=3256

Anyway, what do you folks think? I've been impressed by the samsung I've got, but I would be willing to give the seagate a shot.

Also--and more importantly--would spending a little more on a WD with a 16mb cache make a huge difference? Or are we talking nominal? This one has some marketing blurbs that suggest it may perform more reliably in an array:

Western Digital Caviar RE WD1600YS

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136062

(note that newegg imposes a limit of 9999 of these per customer)

Lastly, I've considered a raptor, but have decided against it. I'm sticking with "Pacer" components for the time being (see sig for elucidation).

just got the 2xsamsungs. and a 650W trio. and a fan controller for my p180 (for the extra fans i'm adding, not the stocks). will post again when i get xp (original w/no service pack) slipstreamed, and RAID0 installed.

edit +3 days later: Note to self, no more posting or buying components when drinking.

[Munk_Madness]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

i ahve a couple of seagate harddrives in raid0 and i love them very good harddrive, i have been iffy about western digital as my first hard drive was one of them and not very good at all, plus the guy that built my computer the first time ended up being really dodgy using cheep parts.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

i ahve a couple of seagate harddrives in raid0 and i love them very good harddrive, i have been iffy about western digital as my first hard drive was one of them and not very good at all, plus the guy that built my computer the first time ended up being really dodgy using cheep parts.

YAY!!!!! A reply!!!!!!

Already bought the samsungs. If they aren't quiet, cool, and fast, then I'll send them back and get the seagates. The seagates are a smaller, which means they may run cooler, or at least would allow more airflow around them.

Slipstreaming my xp install w/sp2+critical updates (maybe just sp2, in order to get the entire disk space/sata drivers recognized) is going to be a full weekend adventure. :)

Looking forward to the fun. If I don't post here again after Saturday, you'll know I touched the wrong thing, and that the wrong thing carried a charge.

[Mad Ad]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

aww if id have seen it id have replied, you have no patience :laugh:

anyhoo, what I would have said was, speed aside, the only other thing on a hdd worth a damn if you are planning raid 0 is platter density ....... cache, interface, ncq yadda ya makes very little real difference.

but thats no help because you bought them already :hmm:

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

aww if id have seen it id have replied, you have no patience :laugh:

anyhoo, what I would have said was, speed aside, the only other thing on a hdd worth a damn if you are planning raid 0 is platter density ....... cache, interface, ncq yadda ya makes very little real difference.

but thats no help because you bought them already :hmm:

Yeah; got a little impatient. Have a long weekend coming up, and I wanted to get the components here by Friday evening so I could spend a few hours Sat-Sun migrating components and setting things up.

You say platter density is the only thing that really matters? That's probably good that the samsungs are using perpendicular recording, then. They are a single-platter hd, according this Chinese-translated review, and the samsungs are slightly better head-to-head against the seagate I was looking at, but it doesn't tell me anything about running them in RAID0.

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babel...60919002_3.htm

The hd160hj got the little yellow bear award for being a great product.

Oh, last question: the theoretical transfer limits of 1.50 v 3.0gb/s on the controller is inconsequential right now, correct? My controller is a SATA 1.5, but to the best of my knowledge, a mainstream HD can't communicate anywhere near that theoretical capacity? Does striping the data across the drives change that equation?

Thanks.

[Munk_Madness]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

one thing i had probs with when setting up my raid0 was the drivers needed for a reinstall since i had no floppy drive .. had to borrow one from a friend but after that it was fine

[2nd-Irish]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

one thing i had probs with when setting up my raid0 was the drivers needed for a reinstall since i had no floppy drive .. had to borrow one from a friend but after that it was fine

Same here.

I just bought one for 10 bucks anyway.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

one thing i had probs with when setting up my raid0 was the drivers needed for a reinstall since i had no floppy drive .. had to borrow one from a friend but after that it was fine

going to try and slipstream the raid0 drivers into my xp install (or put them on another cd in the second optical), in case i run into trouble. got some research to do first, though.

[Munk_Madness]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

i tryed the 2nd optical also, didnt work for me at all i had to have the floppy drive and disks, even tryed to get it to reconise my usb flash stick as a floppy and it wouldnt accept that ... if your only doing the reinstall due to the new hard drives may i suggust ghosting your hard drive and just copy it onto the raid setup

[Mad Ad]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

Oh, last question: the theoretical transfer limits of 1.50 v 3.0gb/s on the controller is inconsequential right now, correct? My controller is a SATA 1.5, but to the best of my knowledge, a mainstream HD can't communicate anywhere near that theoretical capacity? Does striping the data across the drives change that equation?

Thanks.

correct, no, and no, a 2 drive stripe made from 7200rpm drives can get nowhere near 1.5gbs

[|CBW|Simon]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

You can always slipstream the extra raid drivers in :).

Hard drive cache (the 16MB thing) makes a big difference but the biggest speed difference with be rotational velocity. 10K RPM is the way to go.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

You can always slipstream the extra raid drivers in :).

Hard drive cache (the 16MB thing) makes a big difference but the biggest speed difference with be rotational velocity. 10K RPM is the way to go.

looking forward to trying 10k, when the heat/noise/price factors approach cool, quiet, and 1/3 terabyte for $100. think i will try to slipstream the raid drivers. not the foggiest clue how to do it correctly, but I'm assuming it's some method of adding the drivers into the install directory, and modifying the boot batch file prior to burning the iso to CD?

?

I've still doggedly hung onto a floppy drive from the days of yesteryear, so if necessary, I can get my raid0 recognized for xp format/install the old fashioned wayl. It might require unplugging the PATA drives so windows doesn't make dumb assumptions about where I want my O/S. If all works out, I may go ahead and spend another $30 to buy a PCI-SATA controller (mobo only has 2xSATA) and run the PATA hdd's (maybe opticals too, but I don't think I want 4 EIDE devices shouting for attention via one PCI slot. south bridge my get angry ) to it via an adapter just to reduce the number of bulky EIDE cables.

[|CBW|Simon]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

There are ways to add the extra drivers. I Believe it is in a section of that guide I sent you. If not, there are many many other guides and one of them is bound to have the driver add in section. it's been over a year since I slipstreamed my windows disk. Every time I needed to reinstall or fix a friend, I was thankful my disk was driver filled in advance.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

There are ways to add the extra drivers. I Believe it is in a section of that guide I sent you.

? Sounds like it might be prove very helpful, but I haven't received it yet.

[Munk_Madness]

Re: Choosing a hard drive for the RAID0 plunge.

i did find once a forum that told one how to made a windows install CD with the raid drivers on it so you dont need to muck about with the floppy, sounded a bit technical for me so i didnt do it but will try to find the post again for ya if you want a go at it
EDIT: not the one i was thinking of but this sounds better http://maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.html