Fast PC's - HDD Access lets them down !!

[Pazza]

It appears no matter how fast the PC is, the HDD access slows them up when using applications - especially web development apps which use the HDD constantly.

So, my quest is to find a super-fast HDD access solution. Here's my current setup:-

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe S939 NF4 SLI ATX
AMD (Venice) Athlon 64Bit 3200+
XFX Geforce 6600GT PCI-E 128mb DDR3 TV+Dual DVI *Extreme
2 sets (2GB total) - Corsair (VS1GBKIT400) 1024MB (2 x 512MB Matched Pair)
2x Maxtor 6L300S0 DiamondMax 10 300GB 7200RPM SATA/150 16MB Cache

Should I RAID the HDD Drives? Should I get new HDD Drives?

[Madafwo]

Get new drives, Too many times I've heard of Maxtors failing, if you can get some of the new Seagates they are meant to be quite quick and if speed really is important then try RAID, just dont forget to back all the important stuff up.

[Pazza]

Any idea how much quicker raid will be against non-raid devices?

[Madafwo]

To be honest, no as I have had no experience personally but enough people are willing to try it so it might provide you with an increase. I'm sure some people with first hand experience will chirp up soon though.

[Funkstar]

Aren't Raptors supposed to be the fastest SATA drives out there?

I'm more interested in price vs capacity vs noise rather than performance so i don't keep up to date with that.

I believe RAID-0 will give you speed benefits in some situations, but not others. It also depends on the controller as well.

[mike_w]

With RAID-0, you get higher performance (read and write) with a higher risk of data loss. RAID-1 can give you higher reading performance, but you lose half of your disc space.

I could go on, but this is ground already covered well on the Internet - Wikipedia will no doubt have more than enough depth.

[charleski]

Yes, if you want speed, get WD Raptors, nothing else comes near them for SATA drives.

There is some debate as to whether RAID-0 really helps for normal desktop usage, as it's really designed for the usage patterns found on servers. But if you can deal with the issues (lower reliability unless you go to RAID-5, difficulties with installation and backup restore), then it's worth trying the software RAID found on most MBs. If you're serious about RAID, you need to get a decent hardware RAID card, which eases the SW compatibility issues a bit and gives faster performance. XP SP2 and Vista have no problems with most SW RAID solutions, but other OSs (eg Ubuntu) do, and you may have difficulties getting Ghost to recognise the discs for restore if things go wrong.

[arthurleung]

Get another 2GB of ram and create a 2GB ramdisk. Install your software on the ramdisk.

Problem solved.

Try defragging your harddrive. Web development software shouldn't lag too badly due to harddrive.

From what I see it is your CPU which is dragging you not the HDD.

[Pazza]

My motherboard has the following spec:-

4 x SATA 3Gb/s
- 2 x UltraDMA 133/100/66/33
- NVRAID : RAID0, RAID1, RAID 0+1 and JBOD span cross SATA and PATA
Silicon Image 3114R RAID controller:
- 4 x Serial ATA with RAID0, 1,10, and RAID5

So, I could go Raid-5 and a couple of:-
150 Gb Western Digital WD1500ADFD Raptor Enterprise, SATA150, 10000 rpm, 16MB Cache, 4.6 ms, NCQ

[arthurleung]

My motherboard has the following spec:-

4 x SATA 3Gb/s
- 2 x UltraDMA 133/100/66/33
- NVRAID : RAID0, RAID1, RAID 0+1 and JBOD span cross SATA and PATA
Silicon Image 3114R RAID controller:
- 4 x Serial ATA with RAID0, 1,10, and RAID5

So, I could go Raid-5 and a couple of:-
150 Gb Western Digital WD1500ADFD Raptor Enterprise, SATA150, 10000 rpm, 16MB Cache, 4.6 ms, NCQ

Forget the SIL3114 RAID5. I've tried that and it is even worse than using a USB flashdisk.

You could go with RAID 0+1 on NVRAID though.

[simsim]

If your motherboard supports it, like the new Intel ICH8R southbridge, then you can get Intel Matrix Storage, which is a clever type of RAID set up that gives you the benefits of RAID 0 (speed) and RAID 1 (security) with just two disks.

I found some benchmarks recently where RAID 0 Seagate 7210.10 were beating Raptors in almost all aspects - can't find it now of course!

[arthurleung]

If your motherboard supports it, like the new Intel ICH8R southbridge, then you can get Intel Matrix Storage, which is a clever type of RAID set up that gives you the benefits of RAID 0 (speed) and RAID 1 (security) with just two disks.

I found some benchmarks recently where RAID 0 Seagate 7210.10 were beating Raptors in almost all aspects - can't find it now of course!

If its just sustained transfer rate of course RAID0 beats raptor. But access time is no where as fast.

You're comparing 2 Jumbo-jet with a Jet-fighter

[mi9tchy]

check out http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6200

[Hottentot]

As suggested more memory will make by far the biggest difference then probably a dual core CPU if you have multiple applications running. New hard drives will make the least difference.

[oralpain]

If you've got the cash, try an I-RAM or two (in raid 0).

As for harddrives, raptors are indeed the best SATA driver for random access, but other drives can match them for sustained transfers, and they can do it for less.