SAS vs VelociRaptor HDDs

[UseItNow]

With the X58 coming out soon, have you noticed the opportunity to use SAS HDDs?
For example, the Asus P6T Deluxe has a Marvell 88SE6320 controller supporting 2xSAS ports, now this leads me onto my question.

Which of the following 2 drives would perform better?
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?W...+3.3+ms%2c+NCQ
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?W...+4.2+ms%2c+NCQ

Would I be right in presuming the SAS drive would be the victor in most if not all scenarios?

If that is the case, price wise you can see the SAS 36Gb HDD is only around £90 whereas the 300Gb Velociraptor around £230. I would personally then opt for the SAS HDD, be it 36Gb or the slightly more expensive 73Gb for £120 and add another drive for storage such as any of the following:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?W...ache%2c+8.9+ms
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?W...%2c+32MB+Cache
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?W...+8.9+ms%2c+NCQ

In terms of noise from those drives there's ways to dampen it down isn't there?

Is there a flaw in my logic of thinking if I went for a X58 with SAS for my next upgrade?

What are your thoughts on this also fellow members?

[Biscuit]

Cost per performance wise most people would say avoid 15k hard drives alltogether. You can get similar if not better performance with high capacity SATA II 7200 RPM and even better with 2 of them using a raid mirror configuration plus it will be pretty quiet as is.

If you really do want to go with an SAS or raptor configuration i would be interested to know of your results but to quieten it down there are a few solutions but the one im looking at for my HTPC is this. My friend (nightshadow) uses one with his raptor drive and says it works wonders!

Quiet PC are doing a series of shows on Hexus TV about quieting down your computer and checking their website out i found quite a few other solutions. Check them out!

[Jay]

SAS are more for enterprise setups, I use them in RAID 5 on our DC and Terminal Services servers.

[Biscuit]

will they offer great advantages over high capacity sata II drives in a normal desktop enviroment?

[aidanjt]

If you ever wonder as to whether or not you need SAS, the answer will be an emphatic NO. SATAII handles any desktop/workstation related tasks. If you know as a matter of fact that you need SAS, then you may have some valid reason to use SAS other than "omfglolwtfFAST!!1!". The only machines that really need SAS are those which have to deal with very high levels of concurrency (read: doing lots of different things at the 'same' time), great for extremely high demand servers, pointless for desktop/workstations. Even a lot of average servers are better off with SATAII.

[Jay]

SAS is fast though, really quick but I wouldn't use them in a desktop at the moment.

[Fraz]

Totally pointless getting SAS unless you like running loads of things that continuously ream the hard-disk.

[ash_rm]

Totally pointless getting SAS unless you like running loads of things that continuously ream the hard-disk.

like Vista?

[mr0mega]

But, if they are faster than SATA2 drives then will there be a speed boost to things that are hd bound e.g. loading a large image file. Or are they architectured differently?

[james_d]

They usually are different - as the usage patterns are completely different, the firmware for drives destined for use in a server is optimised differently to ones destined for the desktop, with the result that a server drive in a desktop/workstation won't be quite as blazingly fast as the (on paper) stats would lead you to think.

[UseItNow]

Cost per performance wise most people would say avoid 15k hard drives alltogether. You can get similar if not better performance with high capacity SATA II 7200 RPM and even better with 2 of them using a raid mirror configuration plus it will be pretty quiet as is.

If you really do want to go with an SAS or raptor configuration i would be interested to know of your results but to quieten it down there are a few solutions but the one im looking at for my HTPC is this. My friend (nightshadow) uses one with his raptor drive and says it works wonders!

Quiet PC are doing a series of shows on Hexus TV about quieting down your computer and checking their website out i found quite a few other solutions. Check them out!

Cheers mate on the links, wouldn't want to RAID unfortunately as I've had problems with it, well due to my younger sibling gaming, fiddling around, crashing the RAID setup somehow.

If you ever wonder as to whether or not you need SAS, the answer will be an emphatic NO. SATAII handles any desktop/workstation related tasks. If you know as a matter of fact that you need SAS, then you may have some valid reason to use SAS other than "omfglolwtfFAST!!1!". The only machines that really need SAS are those which have to deal with very high levels of concurrency (read: doing lots of different things at the 'same' time), great for extremely high demand servers, pointless for desktop/workstations. Even a lot of average servers are better off with SATAII.

Cheers mate, you've made me consider as to whether I would obtain higher read/write rates compared to a SATA2 drive, if not I'll stick to my 74Gb Raptor for now as the boot drive.

They usually are different - as the usage patterns are completely different, the firmware for drives destined for use in a server is optimised differently to ones destined for the desktop, with the result that a server drive in a desktop/workstation won't be quite as blazingly fast as the (on paper) stats would lead you to think.

Cheers again, shame about that was hoping to get better speeds.

Alright folks, a few more questions on this thread, if I were to get a larger sized HDD for storage but also wanted it to be as fast as possible without spending RAPTOR money, would it be best to go for a single platter 320GB HDD like the Samsung F1, WD Caviar Blue/Black as I assume 1 platter = lesser surface area = faster speed as opposed to something like the 640Gb Samsung F1 or WD Caviar Blue/Black. Am I right in presuming that the Caviar Black is faster than the Blue? What's the difference between the two in fact?

Thanks to everyone for your replies.

[Biscuit]

would it be best to go for a single platter 320GB HDD like the Samsung F1, WD Caviar Blue/Black as I assume 1 platter = lesser surface area = faster speed as opposed to something like the 640Gb Samsung F1

Infact, because the surface area of larger disks is more densly populated with information it's usually faster

[Fraz]

Just pick something with the highest capacity per platter you can. Something with two 320 Gb platters is going to be just as fast as something with a single 320Gb platter.

Or if you want something really good, get one of these:

http://www.lambda-tek.com/components...prodID=B149193

Obviously you'll need to sell that spare kidney first though...

[Webby]

2 platters will be faster than 1 (of the same density) as it can read twice as much information at each point on the rotation of the discs of course you never get 2x the performance but more platers = good for performance but potentially bad noise wise as the are more spinning things!

So my recommendations are the 640GB WD blue or the Samsung F1 both are quiet and fast (in fact they are probably faster than your 74GB Raptor if you partioned off the first 74GB of the larger drive).