4 raptors in a raid?

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Mr Bob
Tas, sorry about the quotes. I guess I am just a bit lazy, but if it really makes a difference I can use the [ q ] tag here.

Someone mentioned earlier about a 15% or so improvement. But I will be running the x2 3800+. I don't do heavy video editing, but I will do a lot of multitasking. Such as have dreamweaver, photoshop, ultraedit, cuteftp, captivate, frontpage, outlook express, zone alarm pro, norton av, msn/aim, ms word, and around 50-150 firefox tabs. Captivate is about the only one I wouldn't be running in conjunction with DW, PS, UE, and CuteFTP. These are just some of the common apps, I usually have a lot of crap open.

NP about the quotes. It's good for one level conversational quoting, but after that, it just gets messy.

15% improvement over using onboard controller. That is because the onboard RAID controller uses the CPU as the RAID processor, and it can use up to 15% CPU resources in doing so. Obviously, you don't run into this when using a dedicated card.

Given your usage (with the exception of Photoshop, if you are working on a large file), you are mainly going to be dependent upon random seek times and access times. I'll see if I can find some stuff for you about that. Gimme a sec.
Tas.

 

[kitkat22]

If that is what you do than you are seriously lacking in the computer department, my friend. You are obviously frustrated with the answers you are recieving and ultimately moving at a slow pace.

The case is fine for what you intend to do and from what I gather you have a direction for your PSU. Your final question deals with the hard drives, am I correct?
You are looking for a setup where you have the primary drive mirrored and a secondary/storage drive mirrored. The answer to your solution is simple if you want to conserve a little bit of money. Scratch the raptors, mate. There are better uses for your money. Why not invest in newer SATA drives with at least 160GB? Ultimately you save money and the speed difference for you would not merit the difference. From the things you say you do the biggest things that will affect your speed is your processor and how much RAM you stick in your PC. I sure hope you plan on maxing out on the RAM. When you consider all things the HD is ultimately the slowest thing in your computer. If I were to make a comparison you are comparing a Honda Civic to a Toyota Corolla. Is there a difference, yeah sure, but why bother when there are better and faster things to work with.

Just a side note you would do better to upgrade your CPU to the 4400+. Instead of 512kb of cache per core you are looking at 1MB of cache per core, there is a difference.

If you don't like the solution then don't take it. But you are ultimately running around in circles and leading back to the solution you orginally proposed. It seems to me that your 160/hr is being spent in a rather menial direction while there are better ways to improve your speed at a similar cost and at a better use for your time. Good luck!

 

[Mr Bob]

"you are mainly going to be dependent upon random seek times and access times. I'll see if I can find some stuff for you about that. Gimme a sec. "
- Thanks! You have been very helpful. Whoops, there goes the quotes again

"If that is what you do than you are seriously lacking in the computer department"
- Why else would I come to a computer forum asking for advice?

"You are obviously frustrated with the answers you are recieving and ultimately moving at a slow pace."
- I'm just frustrated with the stupid replies that don't relate to my question.

"The case is fine for what you intend to do and from what I gather you have a direction for your PSU."
- That's correct, although I was still wondering why I would pick the suggested one over the Fortran that looked cooler

"Your final question deals with the hard drives, am I correct? "
- Not really, we are going off subject while I was trying to explain what I wanted, and it turns out there might be a better soltuion (using a raid controller).

"You are looking for a setup where you have the primary drive mirrored and a secondary/storage drive mirrored."
- Nope. My first post says "[...] I want to put the raptors in an array so that the space will be 74gb X 2, and they will be mirrored."

"The answer to your solution is simple if you want to conserve a little bit of money."
- I said I didn't care about the price of the raptors, I know the performance, and many people who have not used raptors (usually who can't afford them) will say they are a waste. I wouldn't spend $XXX if they were a waste, I noticed a HUGE improvement.

"Why not invest in newer SATA drives with at least 160GB?"
- Because the raptors are super duper faster.

"Ultimately you save money and the speed difference for you would not merit the difference."
- Yes it would. Like I said earlier, I noticed a huge difference.

"From the things you say you do the biggest things that will affect your speed is your processor and how much RAM you stick in your PC."
- As well as the hard drive, which seems to effect the seek times (opening up programs and things like that).

"I sure hope you plan on maxing out on the RAM."
- I'm going to grab 2gb of corsair valueselect 2.5 cas.

"If I were to make a comparison you are comparing a Honda Civic to a Toyota Corolla. Is there a difference, yeah sure, but why bother when there are better and faster things to work with. "
- I don't understand how you are relating this....

"Just a side note you would do better to upgrade your CPU to the 4400+. Instead of 512kb of cache per core you are looking at 1MB of cache per core, there is a difference. "
- I was about to say that benchmarks prove otherwise, but after I just double checked, it appears the 4400 kills in business benchmarks. At a price for $175 more than the 3800. I'll have to think about it, but if I am going to spend $300 on an sata raid controller, I don't think I will be able to afford it. I was hoping to spend around $2k without a monitor :/

 

[natto fire]

LOL, $67 for a case and a '420w' PSU? A decent 420w PSU should cost ant least $60-80, not including a case of course. Have fun killing those Raptors, I guess...

But seriously, if this about E-penis relating to magnetic storage, then you might want to check out these bad boys.

They probably put raptors to shame. I wouldn't know because I own neither, I am going to wait until solid state hard drives become a viable solution to my good ol' 7200 RPM SATA drives.

 

[Mr Bob]

" LOL, $67 for a case and a '420w' PSU"
- You're right, isn't this just so funny. Re-read my first post, then you will see what part of what you just said, is funny.

" A decent 420w PSU should cost ant least $60-80, not including a case of course. Have fun killing those Raptors, I guess..."
- The one I linked to was 420w> and was $80> not including the case. But that's isn't what appears to be in question about the PSU, it seems like that just ins't a good psu, despite being "420w and cost at least $60-$80." How would I be killing those raptorts?

"But seriously, if this about E-penis relating to magnetic storage, then you might want to check out these bad boys. "
- That makes a lot of sense, spend $1700 on hard drives, instead of $460 on raptors.

"They probably put raptors to shame. I wouldn't know because I own neither, I am going to wait until solid state hard drives become a viable solution to my good ol' 7200 RPM SATA drives."
- I would hope that something could beat a raptor if it is three times as expensive! Btw, take a look at this review before you go but them and waste money > http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200401/20040126WD740GD_3.html

It appears the raptors are faster by far in 2 tests (more than 107 over the Atlas, lmao), and in the 2that the Atlas beats the raptor, one is <50, and the other is 15. Talk about an awesome deal! lmao.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Okay, this is one of the best RAID explanation pages I've seen.

Another thing to consider, is that your write performance on a RAID 1 array (mirroring) is going to equal that of a single disk, because you are writing twice. Your read performance, however, will be better than reading a single disk.
Tas.

 

[Mr Bob]

That is the best RAID explanation to the newb that I have ever understood. It is an expert review, written for the newb. Great find Tas!

Do you have any idea where I can get a cheap (used) sata raid controller card? I have an extra unused PCI Express x1 slot.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

In all honesty, no. The only PCI-e RAID cards I've seen were kick ass, and $600. You can't spare any PCI slots for one? If so, I've gotten a $10 one off of Ebay, and had good results with it. But it was meant to be a temporary thing while I got mine.
Tas.

 

[Mr Bob]

I can spare a PCI slot I think. The MB has 4 PCI,1 pci e x1 and another x4, and then another x16(used for my vid card).

A $10 SATA raid card doesn't sound like a good card lol.

 

[ribbon13]

Did you find that RAID explanation page in one of my posts? I plastered it over and over when my PPD was still >60

If you want a PCI-express HBA w/hardware XOR for RAID5/6, you'll need a x4 slot. It's a bit expensive at $400. Though if you get an SLI mobo, you can use the second GPU PCIe slot for that HBA.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Mr Bob
I can spare a PCI slot I think. The MB has 4 PCI,1 pci e x1 and another x4, and then another x16(used for my vid card).

A $10 SATA raid card doesn't sound like a good card lol.

Well, you did say inexpensive. And I was very impressed by it's performance. What kind of budget are you looking at for a PCI RAID controller?
Tas.

 

[Mr Bob]

"If you want a PCI-express HBA w/hardware XOR for RAID5/6, you'll need a x4 slot. It's a bit expensive at $400. Though if you get an SLI mobo, you can use the second GPU PCIe slot for that HBA"
- I think I will pass on that..

"Well, you did say inexpensive. And I was very impressed by it's performance. What kind of budget are you looking at for a PCI RAID controller? "
- Inexpensive, not POS I'm not sure what my budget is going to reach, it seems like I need to spend another $175 on the x2 4400 (its the best performance/price for the apps I use). I think I just need to find a $400-$500 card for like $100 used. Will I ever find something like that? I am not sure what I need in terms of functions for the card. I saw some have things like battery support. I wouldn't want to put POS rims on a bmw, nor would I want to put a POS sata raid controller with my raptors.

 

[ribbon13]

Originally posted by: Mr Bob
"Why not invest in newer SATA drives with at least 160GB?"
- Because the raptors are super duper faster.

"Ultimately you save money and the speed difference for you would not merit the difference."
- Yes it would. Like I said earlier, I noticed a huge difference.

Here, is where things get tricky my friend. In the RAID world, there is something called scaling. Getting cheaper 7200rpm drives but more of them, you can quite possibly end up with a higher sustained transfer rate in addition to the mass amount of additional space. However, this is irrelevant in your case, because you'll likely have to get a PCI HBA and put in in a 32bit/33Mhz PCI slot because your motherboard will be desktop class, which will limit your array to a maximum of 127MB/s.

Originally posted by: tasburrfoot78362
You can't mirror with RAID 5. You can make it fault tolerant, so that if a drive goes down, it is still operational, but it will not mirror. It uses a rotating parity bit to achieve this. And no, you don't need 5 drives, you need a minimum of 3.

Though this is irrelevant to the OP, could you please tell me what RAID Levels 1+5 (15) and 5+1 (51) are?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: ribbon13

Originally posted by: Mr Bob
"Why not invest in newer SATA drives with at least 160GB?"
- Because the raptors are super duper faster.

"Ultimately you save money and the speed difference for you would not merit the difference."
- Yes it would. Like I said earlier, I noticed a huge difference.

Here, is where things get tricky my friend. In the RAID world, there is something called scaling. Getting cheaper 7200rpm drives but more of them, you can quite possibly end up with a higher sustained transfer rate in addition to the mass amount of additional space. However, this is irrelevant in your case, because you'll likely have to get a PCI HBA and put in in a 32bit/33Mhz PCI slot because your motherboard will be desktop class, which will limit your array to a maximum of 127MB/s.

Originally posted by: tasburrfoot78362
You can't mirror with RAID 5. You can make it fault tolerant, so that if a drive goes down, it is still operational, but it will not mirror. It uses a rotating parity bit to achieve this. And no, you don't need 5 drives, you need a minimum of 3.

Though this is irrelevant to the OP, could you please tell me what RAID Levels 1+5 (15) and 5+1 (51) are?

There are other RAID arrays, like 51, 15, 50n, 10n...
RAID 51: Basically RAID 51 is like 50, but instead of the parity being stripped, it's mirrored. I'm guessing it is something to the effect of a mirrored, RAID 5 array, requiring a minimum of 6 disks.
RAID 15: Same for 51, but reversed.
RAID 10n and 50n: RAID 10 and RAID 50, but spread across multiple controllers. So if you had two 8 port BC4852 RAID controllers, you could do a 16 disk RAID 50 array.
Tas.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Mr Bob
I think I just need to find a $400-$500 card for like $100 used. Will I ever find something like that?

I wouldn't say that you can't, but it's not likely. And in going with the fact that you are obviously going for data protection here, why would you buy something used? I would find out what your budget is, and get something brand new, in case something goes wrong with the controller, you can RMA it, etc.
Tas.

 

[Mr Bob]

Someone mentioned due to the type of hardware, these cars are very unlikely to crap out. So going with a used one was a wise decision. I am pretty sure I wouldn't be able to afford a $300 card, but I need to know what is the best performance/value with these? I couldn't see paying anything over $400, as with the added $175 for the x2 4400+, that is going to put a bite on my budget.

Let me take a few mins to writeup what I was looking at.

 

[ribbon13]

Maybe this will suit you

 

[Mr Bob]

That doesn't appear to support he NQC or NTC (whatever the raptors have that increase timings).

Btw, this is what I was looking at putting together. The video card, PSU, and fan controller are still in question:

Case: Thermaltake Kandolf Aluminum Case $218 http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant...ant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=100167
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo: ADA4400CDBOX $526 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103546
MotherBoard: K8N NEO4 Platinum $126 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130484
RAM: 2.5 CAS Corsair Valueselect 1GB x 2 = 2GB: VS1GBKIT400 $174 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145440
Hard drives: 74GB raptors x 3: WD740GD $465 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144160
250gb: WD2500JD $115 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144154
DVD Drives x 2: ND-3540A $85.98 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827152047
Fan controller: Thermaltake A2259 Hardcano 13 - A2259 $64.99 http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=370395
PSU: OCZ ModStream OCZ45012U ATX 450W OCZ45012U $96.98 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817104154
Video Card: BFG GeForce 6600 GT OC PCI Express 128MB DDR Video Card w/TV-Out & Dual DVI BFGR6600GTX $184.99 http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=326007
Floppy: $10
----
$2,066.94

 

[ribbon13]

Raptors do NOT support NCQ as per SATA specs. Raptors are a native UDMA drive with a built in SATA bridge. The tagged command queueing mentioned in thier product literature is NOT the same as native command queueing.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Meh, screw it.
Tas.

Originally posted by: ribbon13
Raptors do NOT support NCQ as per SATA specs. Raptors are a native UDMA drive with a built in SATA bridge. The tagged command queueing mentioned in thier product literature is NOT the same as native command queueing.

They are native UDMA? Are you sure? I thought they were SCSI, hence the 10k rpm...
Tas.

 

[Mr Bob]

"Raptors do NOT support NCQ as per SATA specs. Raptors are a native UDMA drive with a built in SATA bridge. The tagged command queueing mentioned in thier product literature is NOT the same as native command queueing."
- Raptors have TCQ.

"Links look better when you do something to the effect of: "
- I haven't used the link code here, but when I go into the advanced reply, the linkage code is horrible compared to most forums.

"And the ThermalTake Hardcano 13 isn't a fan controller."
- It does, take a look at the link I had at ZipZoomFly.

"How many fans are you looking at controlling?"
- I'm going to have 6 fans with the case, but the device only support 4 fans, so 2 will just be lonely.

 

[ribbon13]

Exactly, TCQ (tagged) is NOT the same as NCQ (native). So NCQ will be an irrelevant feature to look for in a HBA given the drives you will be using.

link code;minus spaces.

[ L = link text ] URL [ / L ]

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Mr Bob
"Raptors do NOT support NCQ as per SATA specs. Raptors are a native UDMA drive with a built in SATA bridge. The tagged command queueing mentioned in thier product literature is NOT the same as native command queueing."
- Raptors have TCQ.

"Links look better when you do something to the effect of: "
- I haven't used the link code here, but when I go into the advanced reply, the linkage code is horrible compared to most forums.

"And the ThermalTake Hardcano 13 isn't a fan controller."
- It does, take a look at the link I had at ZipZoomFly.

"How many fans are you looking at controlling?"
- I'm going to have 6 fans with the case, but the device only support 4 fans, so 2 will just be lonely.

Damn, my post looked like ass. Check it out now. And I posted that FYI, just so you could have an example of the linkage here. Okay, and you were right about it controlling fans. I didn't see that.
Tas.

 

[Mr Bob]

"Exactly, TCQ (tagged) is NOT the same as NCQ (native). So NCQ will be an irrelevant feature to look for in a HBA given the drives you will be using."
- That't what I mean, TCQ. I know there is a difference, but I thought since the raptor has TCQ, I would need an sata raid controller that support TCQ to make use of the added TCQ.

"Damn, my post looked like ass."
- Mine with the product links looks worse Btw, you can't click on the link in your post. Arrggg, I wish this forum would just use the normal code that vb/phpbb use. I used to get oncused when I made links here, I thought L stood for link, but it actually means link text. Backwards links = lazy people who dont spend 5 minutes to write each link = ugly links.

I'm going to bed, I will check replies in the morning.

 

[ribbon13]

No, TCQ is not something any 1st generation SATA HBA will support. And 2nd gen SATA HBA are out of your budget. It's something from the SCSI-2 standard actually, which is funny, because that's the one market (SCSI/enterprise) that WD has no market share.

info
"With its deep research and development pockets, Seagate was the only manufacturer to avoid a less expensive and faster-to-market PATA-to-SATA bridge for its first SATA products. For financial and temporal reasons, other manufacturers such as Western Digital introduced their first products with bridged operation. The Raptor WD740GD is one of these designs. While the practical ramifications are negligible (it is bottom line performance that counts, after all!), the Raptor's bridge prevents it from using the SATA II NCQ standard. Thus, to implement tagged command queuing into its budding enterprise-oriented line in a timely fashion, Western Digital opted to include ATA-4-style TCQ in the Raptor. Fortunately for WD, the firm has received enthusiastic response from many controller manufacturers. Most firms designing NCQ-enabled SATA host adapters are also incorporating Raptor-style queuing. One such manufacturer is Promise Technology."