your HD tune results?

[this_is_gav]

I forcibly shut down all non-essential tasks with EndItAll (don't think it's available any more, but I'll upload it if anyone wants it), so only had DVDLab Pro running, working on another disk as I was doing it - given that you'll likely have more processes doing their various tasks, I'm sure that's not too bad a result. All the numbers seem within a decent margin compared to mine, other than the CPU usage, which is around 10% too high. Could be driver related, or you have something else running at the same time?

[DataMatrix]

Well, I thought I'd tell you guys.

I just got my wages so I bought 4 x 320 Gb Seagate ST3320620AS Barracuda 7200.10, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ which means I will have 6 come Friday (including the ones I already have) and they will be running on Highpoint RocketRaid 2320 PCI-E 8Ch Raid5 SATAII Controller. I also got P5K Deluxe etc, so should be good when I overclock the hell out of it

I'll let you guys know how I get on, including some benchies.

[Supershanks]

I will have 6 come Friday (including the ones I already have) and they will be running on Highpoint RocketRaid 2320 PCI-E 8Ch Raid5 SATAII Controller.

that makes it a server doesn't it
look forward to seeing your results

[DataMatrix]

that makes it a server doesn't it
look forward to seeing your results

I don't know, but it'll be awesome at gaming

[this_is_gav]

If I didn't know you'd reply just to save face, as you inevitably will, then no, it won't really be better. It'll shave fractions off your loading times, and that will be it - no advantage anywhere else in the games at all.

If it's RAID5 it'll be a nice setup around the rest of the PC though.

[Supershanks]

If it's RAID5 it'll be a nice setup around the rest of the PC though.

Exactly.

[derchris]

Here is mine.
Not so bad

[DataMatrix]

If I didn't know you'd reply just to save face, as you inevitably will, then no, it won't really be better. It'll shave fractions off your loading times, and that will be it - no advantage anywhere else in the games at all.

If it's RAID5 it'll be a nice setup around the rest of the PC though.

I'll consider RAID 5 then...

[this_is_gav]

Redundancy + speed + flexibility with regards to failures. Best bet in my opinion unless you really need the space a striped 6x320gb array will give you... and I'll question your sanity or profession if you do

[Supershanks]

or 2 arrays:-
1) smallish partition raid0 for os using the outer faster parts of the drives
2) using remaining space in raid 5

see Enter The Matrix: Slice out and get the best part from your hard drives
this gives imo the best of both worlds, there's nothing stopping you having your documents & settings folder on raid5 for more security.

At the minute my 2nd array has xp64, vista32rc2 & vista64rc2, the vista installs will be time expired shortly , have been used for testing etc., so i'll switch myself to raid5.

Obviously the size of your outer array will be proportional to the size of your drives you'll get the idea from the above link.

Interestingly enough i found this comparison i did feb/mar on my commando when i 1st addded my 2nd pair. all raid 0 64k stripe fast raid is 67gb outer stripe slow is the rest.


luck

[DataMatrix]

Redundancy + speed + flexibility with regards to failures. Best bet in my opinion unless you really need the space a striped 6x320gb array will give you... and I'll question your sanity or profession if you do

Hmm, what space does RAID 5 allow? Only 1 HDD capacity?

[alsenior]

Raid 5 gives you n -1 capacity of your drives .

6 320gb drives would give ~ 1.6Tb of relatively fast and redundant storage.

side note: 6 drives isthe reliablity max for raid 5. after that you should e looking towards raid 6

[DataMatrix]

Hmm, I think RAID 5 looks rather good.

[alsenior]

raid 5 is only a good idea if you have a proper hardware. as software based controllers can have pretty piss implementations

[shaithis]

Could even be worth setting it up as a 5 drive array + 1 hot drive. You only get the capacity of 4 drives but when 1 dies it will automatically rebuild the data from the dead drive onto the hot spare.

Means you can RMA the dead drive at your leisure, without having to worry about performance or redundancy while the dead drive is awaiting replacement.

[DataMatrix]

raid 5 is only a good idea if you have a proper hardware. as software based controllers can have pretty piss implementations

If you read my previous posts you will see I will have the hardware.