Opinions On 2 Raptors In Raid 0

[oldfett]

I have been thinking about going with 2 36gb Raptors with 16mb cache in raid 0 over the Holidays. I now have a 320gb Seagate with perpendicular recording. Would I see any drastic change in load times and what not? And my biggest worry is about the noise. Right now I have a very quiet computer and don't really want this to change, so would going with 2 of these change that? Any opinions on the matter are welcome.

 

Thanks!

[LobbDogg]

I don't think it would really be worthwhile personally, and instead, maybe get another 320 gig drive and RAID 0 that combination?

 

This would probably be cheaper and still give you a performance boost, as you only need to buy 1 drive as apposed to 2. I run 2 raptors in RAID 0 and to be honest, if you RAID 0 a couple other fairly quick drives, it will be somewhat comparable in speed, of course the raptors will be quicker, but not enough to justify buying 2 expensive drives IMO.

[fire_storm]

You will see an increase in speed but it would not be a huge one like night and day. When I got my 74 gig raptor I didn't notice that it was any louder then any other hardrive I had.

[Kash]

You will see an increase in speed but it would not be a huge one like night and day. When I got my 74 gig raptor I didn't notice that it was any louder then any other hardrive I had.

 

You must have had some noisy drives as the Raptors can get pretty loud under load (loading Windows and games). However, if you have a decent case, you can really minimize the noise and vibration from a set of Raptors.

 

I would normally tell people that a pair of Raptors would be faster than a single 7200RPM drive, but you don't have the usual drive. You have a perpendicular one with 16MB cache, which are clearly faster than their 8MB brethren. However, despite that, you will still notice an increase in speed, especially when it comes to load times. When they're idling, you really won't notice any difference.

 

As far as that comment for adding another 320GB drive to create a RAID 0 array, in my opinion, that's just plain stupid. Putting 640GB of space in a striped array isn't exactly a bright move seeing as how you'll be using the vast majority of that space for storage. Anything happens to the array, and BAM, you just lost half a terabyte of music, document, pictures, and any other important files. Granted, the chance of a RAID array failing aren't exactly high, but then again, why would you risk it? Also, partitioning the drive won't make any difference.

 

If you feel as though you need to bring down load times or if you just have some cash to blow, I would suggest grabbing the Raptors and use the Seagate drive for backup and storage.