SAS RAIDs and high-performance gaming?

[Krusty]

Looking at 15k HDDs, I see these SCSI drives that are normally intended for server stacks/racks, but otherwise have high performance, reliability, and the intention of putting them in a RAID.

Say you took 4 or so of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148558&cm_re=seagate_cheetah_sas-_-22-148-558-_-Product

and you put them on one of these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103097&Tpk=5405%20SGL


Or something like that.

Assuming you use a RAID 5 or something, would this make a very fast yet reliable and reusable (read: not an SSD) hard drive setup for a personal computer that would be used for super-fast gaming as well as video editing, recording, etc?

Basically, am I off my rocker here? Or is this a plausible idea? I have no idea if they click like mad deranged cicadas or if anybody has tried this yet.

[mipoikel]

I would rather take one good SSD drive. Those server drives are extremely noisy and good quality SSD is faster anyway.

[Bino]

IMHO, we are *almost* to the point where an SSD is a better overall choice than a spinning-disk HDD.  But I would not bet the farm on SSDs *quite* yet, since no-one has any long term experience with them.  Also, the firmware still seems to me to be just a bit too flaky.  The forgoing is merely my opinion - you should certainly do more reading!

BTW, at work I do not put anything at all on RAID-5.  I only use RAID-10 arrays, so that everything is *both* striped and mirrored, without the overhead of dealing with parity bits for the data.  Of course, that requires 4 or more physical drives, which can get expensive.

And I would never even bother using the Intel so-called "Maxrix RAID", since it tasks one set of physical read/write heads with two "arrays".  Not enough redundancy for me, and too little speed, too.

When I built my latest AH game box, I looked long and hard at that very same Adaptec 5405 card.  In the end, I opted for two WD RE3 1.0 Tb SATA drives in plain old JBOD: one for Win7, one for programs and files.

As always, YMMV.  

[Infidelz]

Take a look at this. Its very fast

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227578

Its brother-in-law here is even faster.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227659

Not worth the markup (IMO) for a 50% increase in drive performance.

Both require an X4 slot. I have read you don't need win7, but have it anyway. Am waiting for some cash to buy new Mboard/I7 and RAM.

This is the future of gaming, at least for the next few months until the new Ipad comes out.  

Infidelz

[2bighorn]

And I would never even bother using the Intel so-called "Maxrix RAID", since it tasks one set of physical read/write heads with two "arrays".  Not enough redundancy for me, and too little speed, too.

You can use Intel Matrix as 0 or 1 only. Doesn't have to be in the "1+0 Matrix". It still beats usual software RAIDs hands down. 1 is perfect for laptops (redundancy).

As to the OP, RAID 5 is not really a solution for a PC redundancy+performance problem. As already said, you're better off with RAID 10.
RAID 5 has its advantages in systems with large number of HDDs (double digits). More recently, RAID 6 is being preferred over 5 (extra parity block).

[TilDeath]

Two VelociRaptors in Raid (6gb/s) would be a cheaper alternative and be as fast of faster with a Windows OS.  But if you are looking to just take it all off the processor then SCSI is the only way but I don't think you will really see that much of a difference with a normal motherboard.  You would see some improvement with a server board but then your at a whole different level for MB, CPU and Mem.

I will be building two systems this week with the REVODrive 2 but in the 240GB flavor.  These are PCI-e SSD drives and at the moment about the fastest SSD's available without spending a few thousand dollars.

TD

[Krusty]

Tildeath: would you say a RAID controller card really isn't needed with most motherboard BIOS RAIDS these days? I was going based off of some comments I read about removing the load from the CPU, making it a true RAID with better performance (rather than just more storage), and looking at the best options there.

Also, please give us a bit of a review about the 240GB drive! Let us know how it goes. I was actually admiring that one earlier today before I saw this post.

[Chalenge]

RAID0 or with four drives or less the onboard will probably be just as good. For RAID5 or RAID6 and four or more drives get the card.

[Krusty]

Doesn't RAID 0 only benefit read times? Writes are all the same on every drive, thus no speed gain for writing as compared to striped setups.

Unless I've read these things wrong? I am new to RAIDs, and outside of casual interest have never looked into setting one up before.

[BaldEagl]

I'll attest to the fact that server drives are noisy.  I've got 2 250GB AS series Seagate consumer drives and 2 500 Gb NS series Seagate server drives in my machine and, while the consumer drives are whisper quiet you can noticably hear the network drives while they're running.  None of them are in RAID and I only use the network drives for network back-up so they aren't an issue for me but I wouldn't want them spinning all the time.

[katanaso]

RAID 0 has excellent write speeds as well as read speeds.

I wouldn't use RAID 0 if you're not backing up the data in some fashion, as any drive failure in the array will cause the entire array to crash.  So, for each drive added, it adds another single point of failure.

In my data center, we only use RAID 0 for LUNs or partitions that handle temporary SQL or Oracle backups -- basically, data we can afford to lose.  OSes are RAID 1, Databases are RAID 10, Logs are RAID 1, various file systems are RAID 5 or 50.

Personally, on my primary home PC, I just use the onboard Intel for a couple of RAID 1's.  I've had drives fail in both arrays at various times, and the mirroring saved me a restore.


mir

[Infidelz]

Google chrome OS eliminates the need for hard drives. You can upload your entire life to the internet. Nothing bad will happen.

Infidelz.

[katanaso]

Google chrome OS eliminates the need for hard drives. You can upload your entire life to the internet. Nothing bad will happen.

Infidelz.

lol

Sounds like something Joe Isuzu would say if he worked for Google. 


mir

[Fulmar]

I haven't had experience with RAID cards, but I've used RAID0 on my Asus board for 4 straight years, same drives but I don't chance them.  Back up back up on multiple formats.

[Chalenge]

Krusty I dont know what your planning on doing with it but if it is just AH its a bit overkill but then again Im also anti-SSD so take it for what its worth. If you like playing with hardware then you will have fun with it. To me its something I did once before I decided it was a waste just like SSDs.