hard drive options? ssd,f3 raid or vraptor raid

i-zombie

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ive been looking at getting a velociraptot hdd 600gb one to speed up my rig some

but after lots of research and lots of differing opinions could some folks here tell me there opinions/experiances with the following options

i have a fair few games and programs installed

do i go for
1 128gb ssd drive
2 x samsung f3 in raid o
1 x velociraptor 600gb
2 x vraptors 300gb in raid 0
or is there a better option

currently ive got 4 tb of storage in my pc with 2 x wd caviar green in raid 0 as boot drive

which option would give me the best real world performance increase
cheers
 
I would have thought the ssd , have that as your o/s drive and the greens as storage.
 
i am sorta leaning that way,but with my software and games installed currently im using 179gb of my os drive so i wouldnt really get the benefit off the ssd in games once the 128gb was filled-and i certainly cant afford one of the bigger ones
 
Couldn`t you just use the ssd for o/s and use your spare drives for your storage and games?
 
I would go for a good quality SSD for the O/S (something like an Intel), no mechnical HDD can match its seek times which is a big factor in O/S boot times.

Then for data storage, if you working with lots of small files then volicaraptor has a low seek time then the F3, but if you are working with lots of larger files then the F3 can match the volicaraptor transfer times at a much lower cost.
 
Any of the options you've mentioned should speed your system over the 5200RPM WD Caviar Greens - the F3s are 7200RPM, VelociRaptors are 10000RPM and SSDs have a seek time of <0.1ms.

From the options you've posted the 2x300Gb V'Raptors would give you the best results for a boot and apps/games drive.

However, my recommendation would actually be 3X64Gb SSDs in RAID0 for about the same price. Ebuyer currently have the very capable 64Gb Kingston SSDnow for £85 - a mate is running 2 of these in RAID0 and it wipes the floor in boot times and game loading with my 2x160Gb Samsung F1 drives.
 
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If you are having performance problems with the Samsung F1, think about switching to the F3, they have almost double the performance. Better seek and better transfer rates.
 
thanks for all the imput guys,lol little pob maybe i should just pm you in future,always reply with the exact type of info i hoped for cheers

it appears my decision has been made for me
i put in a what i thought was quite a low offer for one of these

OCZ Agility OCZSSD2-1AGT120G

on ebay,and to my surprise they accepted,best trim down my boot drive and clone it now i guess

thanks again everyone it really is appreciated


 
If you are having performance problems with the Samsung F1, think about switching to the F3, they have almost double the performance. Better seek and better transfer rates.
For what it's worth, the RAIDed F1s were holding up against a single Kingston SSDnow SSD in most game loading times. With boot, it was about 3-5seconds behind, though my mate does have more running at startup. Since he went to 2 in RAID his rig is noticeably quicker loading across the board. Unfortunately, for comparison purposes, there isn't an F3 equivalent of the HD161GJ (the 160GB F1 I'm using), however there is the not yet released F4 HD166GJ.

Whilst the "specified" seek time and latencies haven't changed between the two, the disk to buffer transfer rates sure have: 175MB/s on the older drive and 285MB/s on the F4.

In fact, going by the specs and capacities for the announced F4 drives, they would make ideal boot drives for those who cannot afford/do not want SSDs - currently 320GB, 250GB and 160GB drives, each with a 16MB buffer, and a 250GB drive with an 8MB buffer have been announced.

(Saying all that, my next rig will consist of 2x64GB C300 SSDs on a SATA 600 hardware RAID controller...)
thanks for all the imput guys,lol little pob maybe i should just pm you in future,always reply with the exact type of info i hoped for cheers
Though we may differ on the specifics, oneman knows his stuff. Munkey knows a fair bit about hard drives and RAID too (though his ban is increasingly looking permanent).

More than happy to answer PMs, but for the more opinionated stuff like this, I can only ever state my experiences.
it appears my decision has been made for me
i put in a what i thought was quite a low offer for one of these

OCZ Agility OCZSSD2-1AGT120G

on ebay,and to my surprise they accepted,best trim down my boot drive and clone it now i guess

thanks again everyone it really is appreciated
Better specs than the SSDnow I mentioned... Post back with your thoughts.
 
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I switched from F1 to F3 on a RAID1 and huge difference in boot times. I've read about the F4 but looks like a single platter drive so capacity could be limited.

Currently running RAID5 with PERC5i controller my main server with 5 x 2TB Hitachi drives and performance is amazing. Around 700MB/sec read, 300MB/sec write and around 4 or 5ms seek. I am sure with would be faster with F3 but I got a really good deal on the Hitachi drives.
 
well ive got it in and all seems pretty fast,i just wondered if theres any maintainance i need to do-i read something about trim?

also ive set up a raid drive to put my games on when i install them,ive got a program files and a program files x86 folder,do i need to put owt else there

is there anything else i need to be aware of using a ssd?
 
There is nothing special as such. Using an identical pair of drives will help but SSD do not need be 'aligned' to the same extent as rotational drives for best performance in RAID.

TRIM command is an automatic feature of Windows 7 and W2K8 server. As long as the drive supports it as well. Basically for a SSD to write data it must first clear the existing data before write can happen. So as you use a drive and then delete stuff, the stuff that is marked for delete is normally just flagged for delete but not actually deleted. So when a write request occurs and an attempt is made to write to this 'flagged' area of the drive, a wipe occurs and then a write. TRIM command helps because when there are idle periods were the drive is not being access, TRIM wipes the areas that are flagged for delete. This means when a write occurs no need to wait for a wipe first.

There have been reports that some people have had difficulties installing the O/S on a SSD and work around is to install to rotational drive and then 'clone' to SSD. I believe these issues have mostly been cleared up. Instructions with your SSD will explain if there is still a problem.

Finally remember that with RAID0, you lose one drive and you lose everything including user settings. SSD in thoery do have a low failure rate as there are no moving parts but they do fail. So I would really recommending scheduling an automatic backup to another drive or network of the RAID0 partitions.
 
SSD's do not fail as you describe, they fail gradually and have spare blocks.

Infact, some ssd's are internal RAID0 to get extra speed, there is little risk in using SSD's in raid.

Also, the disk is no different to the OS, installation is no problem with any OS.


and I can assure you, 1 SSD will out perform a raid array of raptors... I went from 6x raptors to 1 SSD and its faster in everyway.
 
There are a couple of issues with SSD and Win 7 highlighted here,

SSD and Windows 7


The install issue with SSD was with a Intel SSD (can't remember which model) at the end of last year. I was building a system for a mate, we wasted a good part of the weekend on this problem, workaround was suggested by Intel technical support when we e-mailed them. I hope most of these types of problems are now ironed out.

I am aware that SSD have a limited number of writes per block and that they employ wear leveling techniques to spread the failure and that there are spare blocks allocated to fail onto. And no moving parts so should be more reliable but they can fail. In addition of course there is always the risk of malware or accidental user deletion.
 
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