your HD tune results?

[Clunk]

Shaithis, is it loud?

[shaithis]

The only thing at all noisy with it is one of the doors on the raid bay rattles when I turn the PC on, once i touch it, it stops

It was a very cheap 3 x 5.25" > 4 x 2.5" SATA hot-swap bay converter though which I purchased at least 2 years ago. I am sure there are better available now though (and that's if you even feel the need to use one), the rattle on mine just adds character

[Supershanks]

the rattle on mine just adds character

[this_is_gav]

I'm sorry you lost me on that argument seems to contradict itself??

I'm saying that only if you're a pro or you're losing time doing a task that would explicitly benefit from a striped array that they are worthwhile, and if you are a pro you'd likely spend a hell of a lot more than most of us are contemplating.

[Supershanks]

I have run xp for years on a single drive setup, last year moved to nvidia NF4 raidx0 x2 drives, January intel matrux raid0 x2 & March matrix raid 0 x4. I can tell you now that in day to day operations the os runs with a far better feel, smoothness & response with my current setup.

[shaithis]

For me, a RAID is more about resilience and lack of downtime, then it is about saving time. For me the extra performance boost is a very nice extra

More so then virtually every other piece of hardware, hard drives develop faults and die. In the last 2 years I have had 3 drives (out of 15) die, 2 of those were part of my RAID array and if I hadn't been RAIDed I would be back to kicking myself for not having an up-to-date backup.

While some people trust their backups, I do not.......I am a bit sloppy with doing them and have had restores fail before. Anything that gives me breathing space before a restore, is a god-send to me

[DataMatrix]

The 4 port one shaithis has looks tasty indeed

I don't use RAID for it's redundancy, guess you can call it AID

[Clunk]

I wonder if a maze 4 waterblock would fit on that Areca

[this_is_gav]

I have run xp for years on a single drive setup, last year moved to nvidia NF4 raidx0 x2 drives, January intel matrux raid0 x2 & March matrix raid 0 x4. I can tell you now that in day to day operations the os runs with a far better feel, smoothness & response with my current setup.

Yes it is crisper and sharper (similar to the general feeling you get using an old HyperThreading P4 IMO), but it doesn't actually do much unless you give them a specific use. I'll grant you it's free speed (4x80gb instead of 1x320gb), but only if you use a separate drive for data, or use 0+1 or 5.

If I'm honest - my original RAID array (2x40gb 7,200rpm WDs) was built having looked at reviews which never give a clear indication of where the benefits and pitfalls were - you see higher numbers, and so that's the path you go down (well I did!). It was a mistake born through naivety, but the drives are still in use today, and the 36gb Raptors which replaced them are at least in a role where they shine now.

I was in a bit of a hurry earlier, so regarding the 10% CPU usage, that's not correct - I was actually playing with DVDLab Pro on another disk at the time, so the CPU usage won't be accurate. It's normally around 6% or so (thinking back to an old HDTach benchmark), which I guess is about right for a half-decent software RAID controller. I don't think I could justify moving to a hardware one myself, but I have been tempted a few times. Simple RAID0 with multicore CPUs doesn't really warrant a dedicated RAID card.

[Supershanks]

For me, a RAID is more about resilience and lack of downtime, then it is about saving time. For me the extra performance boost is a very nice extra

Yep appreciate that.

Touch wood i've only ever had 1 hd failure over the years although i thought i'd come close the other week when the sata support on the data connection came off the drive with the data cable when i unplugged it. It just left the bare metal plug probes. Thought the drive was a gonner but suprisingly i managed to push the lead back on & it worked, (it's going in the wife's , it's not opened up so much)

[Clunk]

(it's going in the wife's , it's not opened up so much)

I'm saying nowt

[Supershanks]

her pc

[IBM]

Is this good or bad for two 74Gb raptors in RAID 0?

[Supershanks]

Is this good or bad for two 74Gb raptors in RAID 0?

See post #7

[IBM]

Yeah, I noticed that.

Why would that be then? That Intel raid setup so much faster than the VIA one I have?

[Supershanks]

Why would that be then? That Intel raid setup so much faster than the VIA one I have?

Well there can be differences between the raid implementation intel, via , nvidia etc., plus user generated factors like stripe size etc.,

I'm sure gav will be able to pinpoint the reason