GPs in RAID0

[Franklinwallbrown]

You guys think that the WD GPs would be any good if you put them in RAID0. I would assume that you would get better than a 10k HDD speed, but half the power consumption along with WAY less noise and WAY less heat. What do you think? (I'm looking for articles on the subject, but I'm not being very successful)

 

[TIGR]

Depending on your RAID controller, two GPs in RAID 0 should offer better throughput than a Raptor and similar or better throughput than a Velociraptor. 10k drives will generally offer better access times than GPs in RAID 0 of course.

As for heat and power consumption, however, two GPs will use more power and generate more heat overall, than one 10,000rpm drive, especially the Velociraptor. It's less concentrated, but overall more.

Personally ... yes, I would prefer two GPs in RAID 0 over one 10,000rpm drive. But that's mostly due to cost. Between seek times, transfer rates, and varying drives within each type, the GPs in RAID 0 will trade blows with 10k drives when it comes to performance, with each winning some battles. It depends on what you're using it for.

This is just my second post here, but I hope it helps. I don't have any hard data so the only source I have to reference is that I build custom computers professionally.

 

[Deleted member 3]

Access times often are a lot more noticeable, plus, RAID 0 offers extra risks of losing data. Either due to array failure or drive failure.

 

[TIGR]

Access times often are a lot more noticeable, plus, RAID 0 offers extra risks of losing data. Either due to array failure or drive failure.

....for which reason I'd recommend Matrix RAID, with a RAID 0 array for performance needs and a RAID 1 array for important data.

That still leaves the 10k drives winning for access times, of course.

 

[Franklinwallbrown]

What about 0+1?

What about sound?

 

[TIGR]

I'm using Matrix RAID with four 1TB Ultrastar drives in a 558GB RAID 0 array and a 1721GB RAID 10 array, and consider it a great solution for both performance and redundancy.

Four GP drives on a Matrix RAID controller, I imagine, would run 250-300MB/sec sustained transfer speeds with a ~9 second access time, on the RAID 0 array. And in RAID 10, I would guess, should hit around 125MB/sec sustained and ~12ms access time. Both arrays would beat a Raptor or Velociraptor by a wide margin in throughput and lose by a few milliseconds in access time. Noise would be likely lower than with a Raptor and higher than a Velociraptor. This is all speculation, but fairly educated speculation.

Hope it helps!

 

[Franklinwallbrown]

Well, the GP is $70 for 500GB. So, I don't know if you can beat 2TB that is faster than a Velociraptor. What about random seek times?

 

[TIGR]

If you were just going to make one huge RAID 0 array across those GPs, a Velociraptor would put a serious hurting on them when it comes to access and seek times. The average access time across the entire 2TB array would probably approach double that of a Velociraptor (~7ms).

However, if you did create a, say, 150GB RAID 0 array at the beginning of the drives, the access times for that array would come down to within a few milliseconds of the Velociraptor, with 3-4x the Velociraptor's throughput. The Velociraptor would still be "snappier" in Windows and programs, but the four-drive RAID 0 array would offer more overall muscle for things like video editing.

I'd rather have the muscle than the snappy response, personally.

With a small RAID 0 array at the beginning of the drives, you can then have your RAID 10 for important data.

Hope it helps.

 

[Deleted member 3]

What about 0+1?

What about sound?

You need four drives for that. RAID 5 is a better options there.

 

[TIGR]

The problem with RAID 5 is it requires a fair amount of overhead to calculate parity, so unless you have a nice hardware controller, the performance won't be great. It will give you 17-25% more overall drive capacity than RAID 10, but for enhanced speed and peace of mind, I think RAID 10 is worth it.

Hope it helps!

 

[Franklinwallbrown]

AH, W/E. I'll just one of my 36gb Raptors for my OS and maybe get a Velociraptor for games and a GP for storage.