Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Grits on March 14, 2005, 11:20:34 PM

Title: HD upgrade
Post by: Grits on March 14, 2005, 11:20:34 PM

I'm looking to upgrade my current 40gig 7200RPM ATA100 hard drive and I would like some suggestions. I'm not even using 50% of the 40gig I have now, so space is not an issue, but I am not happy with its performance (its only got 2m cache).

I'm looking at either two small (40-80gig each) SATA drives in RAID 0 or a single 74g Raptor with the option to later get another Raptor and do RAID 0. Both setups can he done for under $200. Any opinions?

Title: HD upgrade
Post by: Kev367th on March 14, 2005, 11:45:14 PM

If space isn't an issue go with the 74Gb Raptor.
Later on a RAID 0 with two Raptors will be faster than the other ones.
If you want speed now go with two SATA 150's in a RAID 0.

Very happy with my 2 x 120Gb (8mb cache) Maxtor SATA 150's in a RAID 0.

Title: HD upgrade
Post by: Grits on March 15, 2005, 10:19:17 AM

Thanks Kev, that pretty much matches what I was thinking too. Probably going to go with the one Raptor as I've seen some tests where RAID 0 made only 20% increases from a single HD.

Title: HD upgrade
Post by: Vipermann on March 15, 2005, 10:37:03 AM

Remember that if you go with a single raptor (or indeed any single disk) now and plan to go to RAID 0 later you will need to reformat your existing disk.

You can not go from a single disk to RAID 0 without losing the data on the original disk.

Title: HD upgrade
Post by: Grits on March 15, 2005, 11:02:43 AM

Yeah, thats no problem, I am going to keep my 40gig I have now as a backup drive with an image of the primary.

Title: HD upgrade
Post by: eagl on March 15, 2005, 01:41:19 PM

If it was me I'd get a 300 gig segate 7200.8 SATA drive or the equivalent maxtor drive.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-148-064&depa=1

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200410/200410087B300S0-2_1.html

YMMV.  I like the seagate drives.  They're quiet and reliable.  You can get the seagate drive in 200 gig for only $136 and you probably won't notice the "loss" of performance between it and a raptor.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-148-066&depa=1

Title: HD upgrade
Post by: Vipermann on March 15, 2005, 01:57:43 PM

Not to mention that Seagate also gives 5 year warranties on their drives now.

Title: HD upgrade
Post by: Grits on March 15, 2005, 02:49:23 PM

Quote

Originally posted by eagl
If it was me I'd get a 300 gig segate 7200.8 SATA drive or the equivalent maxtor drive.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-148-064&depa=1

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200410/200410087B300S0-2_1.html

YMMV.  I like the seagate drives.  They're quiet and reliable.  You can get the seagate drive in 200 gig for only $136 and you probably won't notice the "loss" of performance between it and a raptor.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-148-066&depa=1

I'm not committed to the Raptor, or any particular brand for that matter I just want the most "bang" for my buck. I'll look into the other SATA drives, but I dont need 200gig, 80gig would be more than enough unless the performance of the larger ones are better. What about two 40 or 80 gigs and run them in RAID 0? I've seen a few tests that show 20% performance boost at most, which I dont think is worth it.

Title: HD upgrade
Post by: Grits on March 15, 2005, 03:07:34 PM

What about the Hitachi's? They seem to be pretty good performers.