Best 640-1500GB HD for RAID0 ?

[WinWiz]

Expert RAID/HD advise needed...
My current Intel Matrix raid 0 with 3 x Maxtor 320GB is to small and slow, so i want new HDs. I would like to start with 2 drives and then upgrade to 3 drives when i need the space and prices have droped.
My first idea was the 1.5TB 7200.11 because I used and early version in pc i build for a friend, after a firmware update the drive has been running without any problems, plus its big and cheap. But I fear the seagates slow seek time wont give max raid 0 performance when i work with small data blocks..?
Speed is most important but noise and price is also important. The WD barracuda blacks impress me, and I know the 2 plate 640GB version scales very well in raid setup. I think the 3 plater 1TB black is a little faster as a single drive but the only raid0 benchmark I have seen shows the 1TB version scales badly in raid, is this true?
I would prefer to start with a 2x1TB or 2x1.5TB raid0 setup, so that 3 drives would give me 3-4.5TB, but with the 640GB version I could go for a 4x640GB setup if its faster??
Because I want to upgrade with more drives later I don't want a HD that's gonna disappear from the market in a few months, so the new 500GB/plate 7200.12 also caught my interest, but their seek time also looks high.
Sadly the WD RE3 & RE4 drives are to expensive for my budget.
The reason I care so much about seek time is that RAID0 is gonna give me very high sustained transfer rates, but it doesn't help seek time.
I want my PC to be fast at booting , unrar´ing, video/audio edit, virus scan, and loading games!
My friend has an old raptor 150GB its really fast when the work load is high, and it has medium transfer speeds but very low seek time!
Please help me select the drive for my needs. thx
Sorry about my bad English.

 

[HendrixFan]

What kind of price range are you looking for here? You want speed and space, what about reliability? How much storage space do you need?

Depending on what your price range is, getting a SSD drive (or two in RAID) for you OS and programs for speed, then a large drive or two for storage is pretty ideal.

 

[WinWiz]

SSD is way to expensive for me. I would like to end with a total capacity of 2-4TB with 2-4 drives..
Performance/space/price ratio, relebility, upgrade-ability and low noise are my main priorities..
Prices where i live are:
Hitachi DeskStar 7K1000.B 1TB for 75?
Barracuda 7200.12 1TB for 87?
WD Caviar black 1TB for 99?
Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB for 120?

Will 4xHitachi outperform 3xWD blacks when using P35 matrix raid 0 ??

 

[HendrixFan]

How much do the 640GB WD Black drives run where you live? They use two platters instead of three for the 1TB drives, so they run a little cooler and nearly as fast. Here you can buy 3 of the 640GB drives for roughly (within $20) the price of two 1TB drives. The overall storage size will be comparable, but the speed of 3 drives versus 2 will be substantial. Whenever you have a small bit of cash set aside, it will be cheap to add another 640GB drive to the array (though a bit of a pain to move data around with the upgrade).

Depending on your budget and how you will use all that space, you may also want to buy a 1.5TB drive to backup all your important data that you will have on RAID.

 

[Elixer]

Originally posted by: WinWiz
SSD is way to expensive for me. I would like to end with a total capacity of 2-4TB with 2-4 drives..
Performance/space/price ratio, relebility, upgrade-ability and low noise are my main priorities..
Prices where i live are:
Hitachi DeskStar 7K1000.B 1TB for 75?
Barracuda 7200.12 1TB for 87?
WD Caviar black 1TB for 99?
Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB for 120?

Will 4xHitachi outperform 3xWD blacks when using P35 matrix raid 0 ??

7200.12 ugh. http://techreport.com/articles.x/16472
Hitachi never used.
WD black, nice, but shouldn't be used for RAID, at least that is what WD says.
7200.11 meh

No matter what drive(s) you finally pick, you do need a backup plan. 2-4TB of data lost because your array failed is NOT fun.

 

[sgrinavi]

Originally posted by: Elixer

WD black, nice, but shouldn't be used for RAID, at least that is what WD says.

Where do they say that? I've been using them in RAIDs and am very happy.

Speed and size are, somewhat, opposing goals. You might consider a small, short stroked, RAID 0 for your OS/Programs. A pair of the wd6400AAKS short stroked to about 250 GB for your OS & Apps will give you nice performance for about 1/2 the price of a Velociraptor. You can park your data on 4 more of the 640's in Raid 5

 

[Elixer]

Originally posted by: sgrinavi

Originally posted by: Elixer

WD black, nice, but shouldn't be used for RAID, at least that is what WD says.

Where do they say that? I've been using them in RAIDs and am very happy.

Speed and size are, somewhat, opposing goals. You might consider a small, short stroked, RAID 0 for your OS/Programs. A pair of the wd6400AAKS short stroked to about 250 GB for your OS & Apps will give you nice performance for about 1/2 the price of a Velociraptor. You can park your data on 4 more of the 640's in Raid 5

It is in their FAQ.

That is why they make RE drives.

It all has to do with TLER.

 

[postmortemIA]

yeah that is more or less advertisement, WD drives have good life span form my 10 yrs use.

 

[WinWiz]

the 640GB version is a little more expensive pr. GB than the 1TB version where I live, and i really would prefer to use 1TB or larger drives unless there's a performance penalty..

Real men do not backup; we cry!

My budget is tiny as I am currently unemployed cause of the low conjunction..

Checking pricing and availability I'm guessing best bang for buck is:

Hitachi DeskStar 7K1000.B for 74?
or
Samsung SpinPoint F1 Desktop Class HD103UJ for 77.33?

I like the Hitachi cause its rated for light 24/7 use, and features a nice low random access time and very high min. transfer speeds. Only 16MB cache but benchmarks show almost zero advantage to 32MB drives so I don't
really care about that.
Samsung recommends the Raid Edition drives for raid right? I know this is prob. 99% marketing bullshit but I do fear that samsung support might not be very help full if I encounter some kind of weird problem with my raid setup..
I know the new 500GB pr. plate technology is going to rock the Harddrive world but looking at file copy benches of the 7200.12 I don't think they are ready for prime time yet..
The 1.5TB 7200.11 is also very cheap and fast but I fear its 4 plates will make it noisy and less reliable. Is single plate drives the fastest option for RAID0 ?

7K1000.B vs Desktop F1 can anyone tell me witch is best regarding motor noise and vibration ??