edwhit

A friend is asking me if there is a reason as a gamer to get a RAID HD over a a SATA drive. I was under the impression that RAID was more useful for data back up purposes.

I understand the general difference between RAID 0 and Raid 1. But is there an advantage to a gamer on somewhat of a budget? Is it worth the money if the pc is used primarily for gaming?

Thanks for any help.

theburner

I tried my system both ways...
IC7-Max3 Board
2x 120GB SATA 7200 RPM 8MB Cache in Raid 0. I used 128kb stripes, which is too large. If I was to do it again, I would just down to 64kb.
Ran the same Drives in legacy mode, with 1 as master the other as slave.

Can't remember my exact scores, but there was a negligable difference between the two scores. I left them in Raid 0 to increase the size of my "C:" Drive.

If I was to do it over again, I would run them both in RAID 1 so that if a drive fails I just change my bios and keep playing. Raid 0 right now isn't that much faster. It does have faster burst speeds, but practicle isn't much faster at all.

BTW, there is no such thing as "RAID Drives". It is a RAID Chip or RAID Card..

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bendsley

These aren't the same things. SATA is an interface while RAID is a way to combine drives for multiple purposes. SATA is certainly going to be better than IDE because of its initial transfer rate and ability to go faster, and also because the cable is much thinner than an IDE cable allowing for greater air flow in the computer.

RAID 0 is faster in some applications because it combines the two drives to look like a single drive and spreads the load between the two drives.

RAID 1 is strictly mirroring. One drive has an identical backup.

For a gaming only machine, I rather prefer speed as opposed to backups. I would suggest SATA drives in a RAID 0 array if thats possible in your budget. Other than that, I would actually suggest SCSI. 2x15,000rpm Ultra320 drives in a RAID 0 array will yield you extremely fast load times.

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edwhit

I see now. That makes sense.

Thanks guys!

theburner

Beware of heat build up with SCSI Drives, especially the U320's. If you have a case fan blowing right on the drives, and they aren't stacked one on top of the other you will be ok. You may want to look at one of the HDD cooling solutions if you do go the 15K U320's.. Especially if you are running a Prescott Processor.

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Take Off Eh!

bendsley

I will add to this to tell you to MAKE DAMN SURE you have adequate cooling if you use this option as SCSI drives spin very fast, they dissapate a large amount of heat. Convection airflow is the best option for these drives. You have to remember how hot your car engine gets spinning maybe 6000rpm max, and these spinning at 15,000rpm's (and yes, I know there is more that contributes to car engine heat than just rpm's).

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"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."

billege

Yeah, and 2x15,000rpm Ultra320 drives in a RAID 0 array will cost you a fucking fortune too.

The cheapest SCSI drives I found in a quick/dirty search are FUJITSU 36.7GB 15,000RPM SCSI HARD DRIVE, Model MAS3367NP, OEM DRIVE ONLY for a paltry $209/each!!

Now, I've never built a RAID SCSI array, or even looked into it, but this card below, is for setting up a RAID SCSI array (if I'm reading right). Sorry about my lack of experiance w/these arrays, I just admin the system. I'll call E=MC2 if our storage system needs work, I don't build 'em myself.

LSI 64-bit PCI to Ultra320 Dual-Channel SCSI RAID Storage Adapter Card, Model "MegaRAID SCSI 320-2" -RETAIL
Specifications -
Ports: 2x Ultra320 SCSI for the absolute rock bottom price of ONLY $599.99.

Now, again, I don't know if you'd need that card to run the drives in RAID or not. Either way, RAID in a home PC is so much overkill, for so much extra expense, it's actually not funny.

I mean, do you need to pay $400+ for 72GB of space? I don't think so.

Also, if you read Maximum PC, or want to look through Anaandtech , or Storagereview.com , you'll find that the RAID "is so much faster" thinking is turning out to be so much bunk. That does suck, because we all thought we were so cool for knowing about RAID and how fast it was. Bummer it's not really...

Anyway, either of those sites is a massive wealth of information about your question. Look through them, and I hope you find what you're looking for.

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bendsley

the reason scsi drives are expensive is because they are actually hand touched when being made as well as tested before leaving the OEM.

__________________
"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."

catback

The PCI bus on a typical gaming pc doesn't even support Ultra320 cuse the standard PCI bus tops out at 132MB/s, PCI express can handle it but I've not yet seen a PCI-X SCSI controller (maybe because I haven't looked) nor do I know many gamers with PCI-X in their computer.