SSD or RAID0 2x1tb drives

I’m not sure I understand why a single fast disk is better that a RAID 0 setup. It appears that a WD VelicoRaptor VR150throughputs about 102 MB/s, (Read and Write). Compared to about 75 MB/s for the Caviar SE16 7200RPM 750GB (WD7500AAKS), which is about a 25% difference.
HDD Write, HDD Read
Whereas with a RAID 0 it’s about 153 MB/s Read/Write compared to 77 MB/s for a RAID 1, or about a 50% increase. Now I know that a RAID 1 is going to write a little slower and read a little faster than a comparable single disk, but it seems the difference between a fast disk and a RAID 0 is about 33% in favor of the RAID 0.
RAID Write, RAID Read
I’m running four 250GB HDDs at $60 each and I believe have significantly better transfer rates than a $230 VelicoRaptor plus more storage and the redundancy that a single disk does not provide at about the same cost. Is my logic flawed?
 
Even my setup, 3 x $75 = $225 for 230mb/s read. They are the Raid Edition drives and have a seperate contoller to lower failure rates and to keep the array stable. I have had it running for a month now with no problems. Before this I had Raid 5 across all 4 drives but it was only 136mb/s.
 
Intel_man said:
No matter what you say, SSD's are dead silent and the HDD's are actually quite loud sometimes.
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And they consume less power and generate less heat. I am not saying they are not a better technology, just that right now they are not worth it. Like I said before it will be about a year before they become something that I would buy. It's just like anything it needs to be out on the market first to find all the flaws in it. Once they have them solved I can't imagine them making anything better than solid state memory for your harddrive.
 
THERMAL-REACTOR said:
Even my setup, 3 x $75 = $225 for 230mb/s read. They are the Raid Edition drives and have a seperate contoller to lower failure rates and to keep the array stable. I have had it running for a month now with no problems. Before this I had Raid 5 across all 4 drives but it was only 136mb/s.
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Yeah but how often do you actually use your extra read/write speed? I am going to say never. If you have three drives you might as well just run RAID 5 and at least have a bit of redundancy.
 
tlarkin said:
OK, quick and dirty.

You are better off getting 1 high speed drive rather than two less expensive drives in RAID 0. RAID 0 does not boost performance anywhere in your machine except for data through put. So if you were rendering 3D complicated objects and our HD was being written and read from constantly then yes you would see performance increase. If you load gigs upon gigs of raw video on your RAID, then yes you get boosts.

Gaming, office work, most graphic design work, and web surfing plus media play back get zero benefit from RAID 0. You also run a higher risk of failure because if one drive fails the whole array is trashed.

Next if you want to use a super large drive you better chop it up into partitions. It will take a HD a lot less time to seek through say 300 gigs of data over 1TB of data, thus lowering your seek time. Keep your apps and OS on the fast drive, and then keep your data on a large data drive.

It is safer, cheaper and better performing than two drives in RAID 0.
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i understand and appreciate your input!

it just brings me to the question.. is it really worth getting a new hard drive from my maxtor 16mb 500gig drive?

i do game and watch films etc, i would like quick loading times and boot. i just feel like the hard drive is my only let down in the rig!
 
How often do you reboot though? I reboot my Vista box maybe once a month? Twice maybe?

Well the HD is worth how much storage and back ups you want. The more storage space the better IMO, but running RAID 0 will give you pretty much no performance increase in gaming or watching videos or playing music. You are best off buying a fast HD, like a Raptor for performance increase and then use a large slower drive to just store you data files.
 
tlarkin said:
How often do you reboot though? I reboot my Vista box maybe once a month? Twice maybe?

Well the HD is worth how much storage and back ups you want. The more storage space the better IMO, but running RAID 0 will give you pretty much no performance increase in gaming or watching videos or playing music. You are best off buying a fast HD, like a Raptor for performance increase and then use a large slower drive to just store you data files.
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yes that is what i was doing, i was using an older raptor 8mb cache and my new stat leads decided they didnt want to let go of the drive and pulled the fittings off the drive :(

is the newer raptors faster than the older?
 
tlarkin said:
Yeah but how often do you actually use your extra read/write speed? I am going to say never. If you have three drives you might as well just run RAID 5 and at least have a bit of redundancy.
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Well it's like this. Fast read times affect everything you do on the computer. From things like bootup, to opening folder with large amounts of Data in them, to making games load faster and so on. Why spend all this money on the best processor, best cards then be held back by your hardrives? The improved speed of my harddrives just really matches the rest of my rig. I try to eliminate all bottlenecks and harddrive throughput is one of the biggest.
 
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