Deciding on Hard Drives

[lollerskater69]

Im building a Core i7 system that looks something like this. (Parts may change due to price fluxuation of other parts im looking at)

Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366
EVGA 132-BL-E758-A1 LGA 1366 Intel X58
OCZ Gold 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
EVGA 896-P3-1265-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 (TRI-SLI)
CORSAIR CMPSU-1000HX 1000W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91

I don't know if its woth the money to get ssd raptors or just two hdd 7200 rpm in raid 0 help!

 

[Tau]

Im building a Core i7 system that looks something like this. (Parts may change due to price fluxuation of other parts im looking at)

Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366
EVGA 132-BL-E758-A1 LGA 1366 Intel X58
OCZ Gold 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
EVGA 896-P3-1265-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 (TRI-SLI)
CORSAIR CMPSU-1000HX 1000W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91

I don't know if its woth the money to get ssd raptors or just two hdd 7200 rpm in raid 0 help!

Rapors are a waste of money anyway you look at it. i would avoide them.

SSD's are obviousely the fastest, though they are going to do the most damage to your pocketbook as well.

I would reccomend NOT going with a raid setup for the simple fact that unless you care copying to or from another raid array you are only going to see negligable increase. If however you have multiple raid arrays and a gigabit network then Raid would be worth it (raid on each side of the network).

If you needs single drive speed get a SSD, as that will be the only real benefit for game/app loads. unless again you go with multiple arrays.

 

[lollerskater69]

Damn, looks like ill have to sheel out some more cash. How much faster is a SSD than a regular 7200 rpm hdd?

 

[spearman914]

Damn, looks like ill have to sheel out some more cash. How much faster is a SSD than a regular 7200 rpm hdd?

Can't be exact but it's a lot faster but I don't think it's worth the money. Currently the fastest 7.2K drives are the spinpoint F1 750 GBs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...TC-Froogle-_-Hard+Drives-_-SAMSUNG-_-22152100 And look at the second review there. That guy thought the drive has a speed of 3 GBs

 

[LittleLizard]

you can also buy a couple of seagate, altough they price por gigabyte is a bit higher than the normal for hdd, they are the other best other than the spin f1

but by anything, if you are not going for raptor, you shouldn go with wd

 

[LittleLizard]

you can also buy a couple of seagate, altough they price por gigabyte is a bit higher than the normal for hdd, they are the other best other than the spin f1

but by anything, if you are not going for raptor, you shouldn go with wd

sorry

 

[lollerskater69]

well, i mean do raptors help?

 

[LittleLizard]

yes, but only in load times by a few seconds, so unless you are a very umpatient person or do not have anything more to buy and a good amount of money lying around there, not bought them

 

[Tau]

you can also buy a couple of seagate, altough they price por gigabyte is a bit higher than the normal for hdd, they are the other best other than the spin f1

but by anything, if you are not going for raptor, you shouldn go with wd

WD is the only manufacture of Raptors...

the fast Intel SSDs are 250MB/s read speed.

7200RPM HDDs are ~60-80MB/s read depending were the data is on the drive (beginning or end of the drive)

If you have the moeny get some SSDs, i say some because an 80GB drive wont be big enough for installs.

and the SSD would ONLY benefit loading speeds on that pc its in. data transfers to other drives, or computers is still going to be the same speed it is now, since those computers wont be able to suppor the speed the SSD is putting out.

 

[lollerskater69]

When why the hell do people buy Raptors? I mean buy another video card or something.

If SSD go down a little I may buy one and onther for raid. If Not ill go with two barracuda 500 or 640gb in raid.

sound good?

 

[spearman914]

When why the hell do people buy Raptors? I mean buy another video card or something.

If SSD go down a little I may buy one and onther for raid. If Not ill go with two barracuda 500 or 640gb in raid.

sound good?

I don't know. I think i bought mine cuz the name looks cool.

 

[Solaris17]

I don't know. I think i bought mine cuz the name looks cool.

thats why i bought my i7 that and teh case badge looks cool i spent $300 on a case badge.

 

[kysg]

because raptors are actually pretty decent or in this case were decent about been that way for about 2 years. reality is just go with a normal every day hard drive. Raid is a definate no no raid 0 isn't really worth the cash, raid 1 meh, can't imagine that happening. and if you want vista to boot up like there is no tomorrow get an SSD

 

[lollerskater69]

i think ill just get a barracuda 500gb. then when ssd's are cheap, get one and use the 500 gb for storage.

 

[Tau]

When why the hell do people buy Raptors? I mean buy another video card or something.

If SSD go down a little I may buy one and onther for raid. If Not ill go with two barracuda 500 or 640gb in raid.

sound good?

i think ill just get a barracuda 500gb. then when ssd's are cheap, get one and use the 500 gb for storage.

Raptors were never really worth the extra doller... i mean a raptor drive is only going to offer ~3-5% speed increase... since just the seek speeds will be a bit lower.

If you want some fast drives for a decent doller ammount, grab a couple 10K or 15K SCSI Hdds and a decent raid controller.

You can get 15K 74GB HDDs off ebay for ~$50-60 each, grab 3-4 of those put em in raid5 and away you go.

 

[thebeephaha]

If you want some fast drives for a decent doller ammount, grab a couple 10K or 15K SCSI Hdds and a decent raid controller.

Why.... 300GB VelociRaptor just dipped under $200... It smokes a SCSI drive in a single user environment.

(Dan don't hit me, I know you like your SCSI)

 

[thebeephaha]

Raptors were never really worth the extra doller... i mean a raptor drive is only going to offer ~3-5% speed increase... since just the seek speeds will be a bit lower.

If you want some fast drives for a decent doller ammount, grab a couple 10K or 15K SCSI Hdds and a decent raid controller.

You can get 15K 74GB HDDs off ebay for ~$50-60 each, grab 3-4 of those put em in raid5 and away you go.

Why.... 300GB VelociRaptor just dipped under $200... It smokes a SCSI drive in a single user environment. (Dan don't banstick me, I know you like your SCSI)

Two VR's are almost as fast as four older 80GB Raptors in a RAID 0. The two VRs get roughly 200mbps with about a 7.5ms access time on a good controller and even a crappy controller can do a RAID 0. My four older Raptors do about 220mbps at 8ms and even the old Raptors can beat some of those cheap SCSI drives you mention.

VelociRaptors seem like a pretty good deal to me these days.

 

[Tau]

Why.... 300GB VelociRaptor just dipped under $200... It smokes a SCSI drive in a single user environment. (Dan don't banstick me, I know you like your SCSI)

Two VR's are almost as fast as four older 80GB Raptors in a RAID 0. The two VRs get roughly 200mbps with about a 7.5ms access time on a good controller and even a crappy controller can do a RAID 0. My four older Raptors do about 220mbps at 8ms and even the old Raptors can beat some of those cheap SCSI drives you mention.

VelociRaptors seem like a pretty good deal to me these days.

Hmm i wasent aware they were that cheap now, though still pointless unless you are running multiple raid arrays IMO.

 

[LittleLizard]

anyway, i prefer to buy something that increase fps rather than something that decreases load time

 

[theeldest]

Hmm i wasent aware they were that cheap now, though still pointless unless you are running multiple raid arrays IMO.

I'm not quite sure why you think this.... maybe my thinking is messed up, but I'd assume that since you're still reading from the HDD to memory (and memory is still quite a bit faster than the fastest hard drive), you'd benefit from a quicker drive, even if you're not copying large files to another array.

Takes quite a while to fill up 4GB of memory, and if you can do it 20% quicker, then hey, why not?

 

[theeldest]

anyway, i prefer to buy something that increase fps rather than something that decreases load time

Start playing Oblivion with a few Gigs of mods, and you'll appreciate the quicker drive.

 

[Tau]

I'm not quite sure why you think this.... maybe my thinking is messed up, but I'd assume that since you're still reading from the HDD to memory (and memory is still quite a bit faster than the fastest hard drive), you'd benefit from a quicker drive, even if you're not copying large files to another array.

Takes quite a while to fill up 4GB of memory, and if you can do it 20% quicker, then hey, why not?

Copying from a raid array to a single drive you will be limited by the speed of the single drive, wich is going to be %30-40 slower then the raided drives (assuming a dual drive stripped setup).

To maintain the speed of the faster drives for file transfers you need to have equal speeds on both ends of the line, as you are only as fast as the slowest link.

On the side of raptors your not going to notice a huge diffrence, your certinly not going to notice a diffrence in file transfers, and you MAY notice a diffrence in select game/applications were there are HUGE loads.

Again the load times would eb further decreased by raiding raptors, though is spending $4-500 on HDDs for 4-8 seconds faster load times worth it? Im going to go otu on a limb and say no.

Now if you are transfering files, over a GIGABIT network then sure the speed of raided drives (on both ends) would be worth it.

 

[thebeephaha]

What does transferring file over gigabit have to do with anything at all?

A single fast drive can saturate a GB connection. Also what does transferring from a raid array to a single drive have to do with anything here?

We, as least I am, are talking loading from a drive or a raid array into the system memory for increasing load times or overall system responsiveness.

I can say with 100% that I can tell a difference between my computers with and without fast drives and raid arrays. My raid array is about 2-4 times faster than some single drives at load speeds. To some it make no difference as they don't care but to some it makes a world of difference.

In my opinion, if you have the cash why not?

 

[lollerskater69]

because you can put it towards better hardware