Peter Brayshaw

Ok I am trying to maximize my HD performance. I currently run two 7200 rpm drives in raid0 with windows and all my programs on ithe raid array and one 7200rpm drive for storage of personal files(docs, movies music,etc).

I just received two new WD 10,000 rpm 16mb cache raptors. I was curious what is the fastest way to utilize these. I was planning on putting them in raid0 and again keeping my OS and programs on it and keeping an additional drive for storage. But I also thought of scrapping that idea and using one raptor for my os, another for software and then one of the old 7200 rmp drives for storage.

Also right now my cluster size is 128k. The computer is pretty fast but boot time seems a bit long. Some have recommended a smaller cluster size for a bit better boot times and efficiency in raid0. Any insight on this would also be useful.

Basically my hard drives are the choke point for my computer, and I would like that fastest set up I can get with these two new drives to help lessen that.

Thanks in advance

-Pete B.

linderman

hello



I personally havent seen much noticible real world spped improvement when using two drives in a Raid 0 configuration

you can see it when using four drives


I would use the raptors as stand alone drives with small cluster size

in benchmark software like HD Tach the raid speed numbers look very impressive but its very hard to notice when running applications and burning dvds and such

even the 15,000 rpm scsi drives dont improve boot time by a big amount >>> maybe 30 seconds improvement ?

Peter Brayshaw

On my old Pentium 4 my boot time was about 35-40 second flat. That was into the desktop with everything ready to go. Currently its a bit closer to a minute. Takes the comp about 30 seconds to get through the bios screen and raid config screen before windows starts up.

Anyhow this is confusing. Every place I check says something different. I'm not worried about the risk of raid 0. I have faith in WD drives, and I don't keep much of value on my main drive besides saved games and such. A crash would be very frustrating, but nothing major would be lost.

If I were to do raid0, what would be a good cluster size? Any thoughts?

I could use two drives, one for my OS and one for all my software. But I usually reformat about once a year for good measure. Once I reformat the OS drive I would break all the links my software has to the OS and needed recourses ... seems like it could be trouble... or am I totally misguided on that one?

-Pete

linderman

Tumbleweed36

I can't add any substance to the advice that linderman gave you because he has given you excellent points to consider. I do want to talk about and support the raid/vs/non-raid setup he has talked about.

For both my personal computer and my personal spare computer, I use two Sata drives plus an extra IDE drive in each for special usages. The IDE is more for general storage than actual usage and I back those up with making copies of DVD disks or on other removeable storage devices. Let's face it, if you are even a tech, you ARE going to have data loss unless you have adequate backup strategies.

I use both Sata drives in a non-Raid setup with one being my speed demon for regular usage and the other one simply a clone of the main drive in order to be safe aways and never to lose data.

From my personal experience, you actually won't see any great read or write time differences in most cases with a raid or single drive configuration Don't misunderstand, there are slight gains with raid, but just not large enough to justify doing a Raid 0 configuration with the possible loss of data. The differences are minimal.

IMHO, this analagy (raid vs. non-raid) is kind of like saying my car with a non-raid configuration gets 25 miles per gallon and with a raid configuration gets 25.1 miles per gallon. With a gas mileage comparison like that, you hardly know the difference at the pump.

I wanted to tell you also that you are one lucky person to have two raptors to play with......Envy!

Peter Brayshaw

Thanks for all the helpful info thus far... You guys are helping me get a good understanding of this. I tend to ask lots of simple questions about projects like this. I find people with experience and knowledge are some of the best recourses.
Tumbleweed36. I understand your envy. Something I have noticed is that now matter how sweet my rig is.. the next guy always gets that one bit of hardware I just couldn't afford. I tend to build my rigs on the cheap... spending the money on key components, and upgrading over several years... constantly working towards a master design.

Anyhow
I seem to have confused cluster size and stripe size... I did not realize they were different. Linderman, in that link you gave me it mentions that.
As I understand it now stripe size is what you set when you set up the array. I currently use 128k but might go to 64, since I don't have many files over 300MB, and currently I don't do much music/video editing. I'm guesing stripe size determines how the array splits each file up between drives?

As for the cluster size I am not sure what this means, or how to change it. That link mentions that it can be changed through windows but that is it. Again any info would be greatly appreciated.


My basic goal is to squeeze as much speed out of my machine as possible. Mostly for kicks and for pride in building a tightly tuned and quick responding machine. Kinda like a hot rod but more nerdy! :)

Again thank you for all the help so far....

-Pete

linderman

My basic goal is to squeeze as much speed out of my machine as possible. Mostly for kicks and for pride in building a tightly tuned and quick responding machine. Kinda like a hot rod but more nerdy! :)


all of us here are in the same club




you are correct about the stripe size part of the equation


as for cluster size; clusters are like storage boxes

the larger the clusters the more wasted space on a hard drive


for example is a data file is being written to the drive that is 300 kb and you have 64kb clusters then your data will consume 300/64 = 4.68 clusters >>>>> with your clusters being 64kb in size you will have almost one half a cluster or 32kb of space is wasted , because the rest of that cluster will never be written to

now that same 300kb file when stored on a drive with 4kb clusters = 75 clusters no wasted space / the most important part being, when a whole cluster is not used there is never alot of space wasted


hope I didnt make that too confusing


usually cluster size is determined during the partition / format phase, many software programs (boot it NG / partition magic etc etc etc) allow you to designate the cluster size of your partition prior to format execution . less wasted drive space also equates to faster defrag time and access time as well


but the whole senario is really splitting hairs for the most part >>>>> although I would avoid large clusters >>>>> thats why fat16 is all but extinct now with its 32kb cluster sizes


fat32 is also on deaths door

http://kb.iu.edu/data/ahim.html