1x120GB WD Sata2 VS. 2x120GB WD Raid

[BiGg RiE]

Hey Guys, I have a Gigabyte x58a ud3r Mobo, and here's what I'm thinking:

 

Right now with my one 120GB Western Digital my boot takes about 1 minute 30 seconds from post to desktop.

 

I feel like this is way too long.

 

I'm wondering what kind of performance gain I'd get from striping this 120 with another identical drive in a stripe 0 for my OS and programs.

I would connect these two sata2 drives to the Sata3(will this yield better speed than using sata2 ports?) ports on the mobo, and use a stripe0.

 

I don't wanna redo all my installing but I'm really feeling like 1:30 is a long boot based on my hardware:

 

Mobo: Gigabyte x58a-udr3

Ram: 12GB Gskill DDR3 Tri-Channel @ 7-7-7-20 1500mhz

CPU: i7 930 @ 3.3Ghz

Grphx: 1xXFX 5770 1GB & 1x5450 1GB

Displays: 1x37" 1080p LCD / 1x22" LCD / 1x19" LCD

OS: 1x120GB WD Sata2 HDD 8MB Cache

other HDD: 1x400gb Sata2 8MB Cache / 1x500GB Sata2 16MB Cache / 1x250GB Sata2 8MB Cache

 

 

 

the other question I have is, if I was to get 2x30GB SSD and stripe those for my OS only(60GB in the stripe) what would be the potential bottle necks (programs loading from a much slower drive) on my system using a single 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache WD sata2 HDD for programs and back up of the os?

 

Thanks in advance guys!

 

-RiE-

[dling]

Hey Guys, I have a Gigabyte x58a ud3r Mobo, and here's what I'm thinking:

 

Right now with my one 120GB Western Digital my boot takes about 1 minute 30 seconds from post to desktop.

 

I feel like this is way too long.

 

I'm wondering what kind of performance gain I'd get from striping this 120 with another identical drive in a stripe 0 for my OS and programs.

I would connect these two sata2 drives to the Sata3(will this yield better speed than using sata2 ports?) ports on the mobo, and use a stripe0.

 

I don't wanna redo all my installing but I'm really feeling like 1:30 is a long boot based on my hardware:

 

Mobo: Gigabyte x58a-udr3

Ram: 12GB Gskill DDR3 Tri-Channel @ 7-7-7-20 1500mhz

CPU: i7 930 @ 3.3Ghz

Grphx: 1xXFX 5770 1GB & 1x5450 1GB

Displays: 1x37" 1080p LCD / 1x22" LCD / 1x19" LCD

OS: 1x120GB WD Sata2 HDD 8MB Cache

other HDD: 1x400gb Sata2 8MB Cache / 1x500GB Sata2 16MB Cache / 1x250GB Sata2 8MB Cache

 

 

 

the other question I have is, if I was to get 2x30GB SSD and stripe those for my OS only(60GB in the stripe) what would be the potential bottle necks (programs loading from a much slower drive) on my system using a single 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache WD sata2 HDD for programs and back up of the os?

 

Thanks in advance guys!

 

-RiE-

 

I dont you would notice much difference in the boot times going with raid 0 with the drive you are using . You would get a greater boost by going ssd. One thing to know is the the ssd will not give you the the posted size of the drive.

You will not have 30gig or 60gig in raid 0, it would be more like 25 and 50. My 128 only gives me 120 of usable storage.

[The Smith]

One thing to know is the the ssd will not give you the the posted size of the drive.

You will not have 30gig or 60gig in raid 0, it would be more like 25 and 50. My 128 only gives me 120 of usable storage.

Hard drives as well. It is due to the fact that manufacturers announce their sizes in gigabytes, whereas Windows reports it in gibibytes.

[osmt2]

I dont you would notice much difference in the boot times going with raid 0 with the drive you are using . You would get a greater boost by going ssd. One thing to know is the the ssd will not give you the the posted size of the drive.

You will not have 30gig or 60gig in raid 0, it would be more like 25 and 50. My 128 only gives me 120 of usable storage.

 

QFT

 

What makes "normal" hard drives slow for booting is the access time, not the sequential read/write speed. SSD's have much lower access times (<0.1ms) as compared to normal hard drives (12-15ms), so they are much faster for random reads and writes, and this speeds up boot times. Going in Raid 0 will only make transferring large files faster - boot times will still be held up by the slow access speed of the hard drives.

 

BTW, my Intel X-25M G2 80gb shows up as 74.4gb useable in Windows. Plenty large enough for an OS/applications drive - I would recommend looking at them if you start looking at SSD's.

 

P.S. - It may be a better idea to buy a single 60-80gb SSD than going RAID 30gb SSD's - you lose TRIM support if you have SSD's set up in a RAID array. This will cause performance degradation in the long run once the drives start filling up.

[dling]

QFT

 

What makes "normal" hard drives slow for booting is the access time, not the sequential read/write speed. SSD's have much lower access times (<0.1ms) as compared to normal hard drives (12-15ms), so they are much faster for random reads and writes, and this speeds up boot times. Going in Raid 0 will only make transferring large files faster - boot times will still be held up by the slow access speed of the hard drives.

 

BTW, my Intel X-25M G2 80gb shows up as 74.4gb useable in Windows. Plenty large enough for an OS/applications drive - I would recommend looking at them if you start looking at SSD's.

 

P.S. - It may be a better idea to buy a single 60-80gb SSD than going RAID 30gb SSD's - you lose TRIM support if you have SSD's set up in a RAID array. This will cause performance degradation in the long run once the drives start filling up.

 

I would agree with the single drive also. BTW very well written.

[BiGg RiE]

Thanks Guys, I made a boo boo, on my install and was forced to reinstall windows, so I just raided the 2x120's.

 

yea, there's been very little difference in the boot time. Oh well, I've been thinking about the SSD for a little while, but I'm not sure about it yet. Also, if I was to only use the SSD for the os and not programs, based on your description of the seek time bottleneck I'd still be hindered by the slower drives even though the OS is using the SSD, correct?

 

Also, would I get better performance, boot-wise and in general, by installing the os and programs on the 500GB WD with the 16MB cache VS. the raid 0 120 WD with 8MB of cache?

 

-RiE-

[Drdeath]

Thanks Guys, I made a boo boo, on my install and was forced to reinstall windows, so I just raided the 2x120's.

 

yea, there's been very little difference in the boot time. Oh well, I've been thinking about the SSD for a little while, but I'm not sure about it yet. Also, if I was to only use the SSD for the os and not programs, based on your description of the seek time bottleneck I'd still be hindered by the slower drives even though the OS is using the SSD, correct?

 

Also, would I get better performance, boot-wise and in general, by installing the os and programs on the 500GB WD with the 16MB cache VS. the raid 0 120 WD with 8MB of cache?

 

-RiE-

 

 

 

Get Microsoft bootvis.......

 

Anotherthing making load times so long is what you have running in the background. Go to www.blackviper.com . It will tell you what to disable in windows that is NOT needed. this may help your boot speeds.

 

Also disable full screen in bios and enable quick boot...

 

BTW running raid usually takes bios a bit longer to go to windows.