# New HDD for Gaming



## DarkEgo (Dec 11, 2009)

My trusty 120GB Vertex has filled up, so now I am looking for a new hard drive. The most important task for this is going to be gaming. I would like 200GB+ of storage so I could wither get another Vertex and RAID0 or get two V-Raps and RAID0 them with a 30GB SSD for the OS. Another Vertex is going to be ~$350-400 out of pocket. If I sell my Vertex I could get the other SSD and the Vraps for ~$150 out of pocket. The last option I have would be to get ~5 1 TB drives and a Perc 5/i witch would cost me nothing out of pocket if I sell my vertex. What do you guys think the best option would be for gaming?


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## LagunaX (Dec 11, 2009)

This one:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/western_digital_caviar_black_2tb


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## DarkEgo (Dec 11, 2009)

LagunaX said:


> This one:
> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/western_digital_caviar_black_2tb



$300 is alot of money... I could get six 1TB drives for that. Or 4 1.5TB.


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## LagunaX (Dec 11, 2009)

Yeah I know.
But it's about the same price as a new 300gb velociraptor if you were going that way...


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## lemode (Dec 11, 2009)

I have a 64 gig SSD as my os drive and 2 500gb caviar blacks for apps and games. I use a 1tb external western digital for my flash/psd/ai, music, images, etc.

2 500gb caviar blacks will set you back $139 (worth every penny) and these things in raid 0 are mad fast/nice!

Just an idea.


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## Sasqui (Dec 11, 2009)

lemode said:


> 2 500gb caviar blacks will set you back $139 (worth every penny) and these things in raid 0 are mad fast/nice! Just an idea.



Black Friday brought the 640GB black editions down to $50 with free shipping at the egg.  I grabbed three of them, with the idea of one being boot drive/temp storage and the other two in Raid1 for coveted data.  

Was going to use a fourth 320Gb for programs - I've read that having OS on one drive and programs on another will speed application loading considerably.


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## Lionheart (Dec 11, 2009)

hmmm do u want speed or space, that iz the question!


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## DarkEgo (Dec 11, 2009)

Well I can get 1 TB and 1.5 TB drives pretty cheap... 
west dig 1tb / 32mb buffer / 7200rpm / green power $50
seagate 1TB / 32 buffer / 5900rpm / Barracuda LP $50
seagate 1tb / 32mb buffer / 7200rpm / 7200.11 $55
Seagate 1.5TB / 32mb buffer / 5900rpm / Barracuda LP $65
Seagate 1.5TB / 32 buffer / 7200rpm / 7200.11 $70
So with a Perc 5/i and raid5, then get a small SSD for my boot drive.


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## RejZoR (Dec 11, 2009)

Take 4x Spinpoint F3 1TB and pair them in RAID. Cheap, high performance and high capacity.


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## mlee49 (Dec 11, 2009)

I can't agree with this more:



Sasqui said:


> Black Friday brought the 640GB black editions down to $50 with free shipping at the egg.  I grabbed three of them, with the idea of one being boot drive/temp storage and the other two in Raid1 for coveted data.
> 
> Was going to use a fourth 320Gb for programs - I've read that having OS on one drive and programs on another will speed application loading considerably.



The 640 drives at $50 was the best performance/price ratio we'l see all year.



The 1TB + drives you mentioned, half were 5900rpm or 'green' so for gaming I say no. The best 1TB drives imo are the Samsung's.


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## Lionheart (Dec 12, 2009)

how about an SSD


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## DarkEgo (Dec 12, 2009)

CHAOS_KILLA said:


> how about an SSD



I have a SSD. But I filled it up and another $400 out of pocket for another 120GB vertex isn't appealing to me.


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## erocker (Dec 12, 2009)

Just for games, I'd go with a single 500gb or 1tb HDD. Get a 2nd and RAID them if you want to shave a couple seconds of load time off. I don't think it's worth it, one should suffice.


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## DarkEgo (Dec 12, 2009)

erocker said:


> Just for games, I'd go with a single 500gb or 1tb HDD. Get a 2nd and RAID them if you want to shave a couple seconds of load time off. I don't think it's worth it, one should suffice.



Then maybe I should just keep my Vertex and get one of the 1.5TB 7200.11's for 70 bucks.


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## phanbuey (Dec 12, 2009)

get one of the 1.5tb and short stroke it to use only 320GB or so for the fastest access - that will bring your access times down and you transfer rate will be massive.


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## OnBoard (Dec 12, 2009)

Get couple of these:






1 platter 500GB Samsung F3s. Use first 250GB of it and should be plenty fast. Dunno how high they go with raid.


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## DirectorC (Dec 12, 2009)

I think that guy selling those drives has it wrong about 7200RPM Greenpower drives.  I looked up the specs/reviews of that model and they said it was a 5900RPM drive.  Two in RAID0 would be pretty sweet, around as fast as a 10K drive...


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## DarkEgo (Dec 12, 2009)

I was looking more towards the 7200.11's and RAID0 doesn't improve seek times like increasing platter speed does. Just like increasing the platter speed doesn't necessarily improve MB/s.


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## DirectorC (Dec 12, 2009)

Nah RAID0 definitely doesn't help at all with access time, in fact my access time is pretty bad on my RAID0, but once you see the load time of game maps, the speed of file copying and extracting large compressed files, well you will be pretty well impressed.

My Dual WD2500AAKS


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## kenkickr (Dec 12, 2009)

DirectorC said:


> I think that guy selling those drives has it wrong about 7200RPM Greenpower drives.  I looked up the specs/reviews of that model and they said it was a 5900RPM drive.  Two in RAID0 would be pretty sweet, around as fast as a 10K drive...



I would not recommend setting up a Raid 0 with LP or Green drives.  I tried with two WD 500 Green 32mb cache drives and performance was horrible compared to just 1 drive. 



DarkEgo said:


> I was looking more towards the 7200.11's and RAID0 doesn't improve seek times like increasing platter speed does. Just like increasing the platter speed doesn't necessarily improve MB/s.



What size drives are you looking at?  My recommendation would be either the 500Gb Seagate 7200.12's(single platter) or the new 500Gb Samsung F3's(single platter) for a Raid 0.


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## DirectorC (Dec 12, 2009)

kenkickr said:


> I would not recommend setting up a Raid 0 with LP or Green drives.  I tried with two WD 500 Green 32mb cache drives and performance was horrible compared to just 1 drive.



Oh that sucks.  Will keep that in mind.


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## DarkEgo (Dec 12, 2009)

kenkickr said:


> What size drives are you looking at?  My recommendation would be either the 500Gb Seagate 7200.12's(single platter) or the new 500Gb Samsung F3's(single platter) for a Raid 0.



I was looking at two of the 1.5TB 7200.11's because I can get them for 70 bucks a pop.


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## phanbuey (Dec 12, 2009)

DarkEgo said:


> I was looking at two of the 1.5TB 7200.11's because I can get them for 70 bucks a pop.



Short stroking will give you massive IOPS boost - 40% over normal operation :/

Also increases the lifespan of the drive.


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## smashed_99cbr (Dec 12, 2009)

well honestly I run 4 1tb West Dig Greens in my HTPC
and get great numbers...

3200 mb/s + burst

380 mb/s avg (read)

180 mb/s min (read)

12.8 ms seek


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## smashed_99cbr (Dec 12, 2009)

here are some drives I tested recently:

http://futuremark.yougamers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=116646


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## DirectorC (Dec 12, 2009)

smashed_99cbr said:


> here are some drives I tested recently:
> 
> http://futuremark.yougamers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=116646
> 
> 'on a side note I have 4 of these setup on a raid 0 on my htpc'



Aren't you afraid that one will crash and you will lose all the data?  Why didn't you go RAID5?


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## smashed_99cbr (Dec 13, 2009)

DirectorC said:


> Aren't you afraid that one will crash and you will lose all the data?  Why didn't you go RAID5?



not really... its all backed up on my server every single night at 3am


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## BababooeyHTJ (Dec 14, 2009)

DirectorC said:


> Nah RAID0 definitely doesn't help at all with access time, in fact my access time is pretty bad on my RAID0, but once you see the load time of game maps, the speed of file copying and extracting large compressed files, well you will be pretty well impressed.
> 
> My Dual WD2500AAKS
> http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3906/raid0.png



I have four of those drives myself. I love them but at this point I think that a couple of 500GB F3 spinpoints is the way to go.


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## imperialreign (Dec 14, 2009)

200GB+ and aimed at gaming?

Velicoraptor 300GB.  You will notice a night and day difference in it's access times, compared to 7200 models . . . in the vast majority of reviews, it time and again leads the pack in access times, transfer rates, read + write times . . . the only HDDs that really challenge the VR in the performance aspect are SSDs

No doubts about it.

It only major drawback is the slight noise level due to it's speed . . . but compared to the aging Raptor drives, the VR is quiet - just slightly more audible than a 7200.

But, these things are insanely fast . . . after using one as a primary HDD, you'll never want to go back to a 7200 drive ever again . . .

TBH, though, I'd recommend having a second HDD for media storage, and other odds and ends.  The drive tends to not perform its best when cluttered up with stuff . . . or when not defragged on a regular basis.


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## CDdude55 (Dec 14, 2009)

imperialreign said:


> 200GB+ and aimed at gaming?
> 
> Velicoraptor 300GB.  You will notice a night and day difference in it's access times, compared to 7200 models . . . in the vast majority of reviews, it time and again leads the pack in access times, transfer rates, read + write times . . . the only HDDs that really challenge the VR in the performance aspect are SSDs
> 
> ...



Agreed.

Love my Velociraptor, very fast HDD for gaming.


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## imperialreign (Dec 14, 2009)

Oh, and that brings up another point I nearly forgot . . .


1 VR by itself outperforms its competition, even when being compared to two HDDs setup in RAID (0 or 1).


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## DarkEgo (Dec 14, 2009)

I ended up getting Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB's that I am going to short stroke. I am going to keep my SSD too. So I'll put the OS and games I play most on the SSD and the other things on the 1.5TB's.


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## BababooeyHTJ (Dec 18, 2009)

imperialreign said:


> 200GB+ and aimed at gaming?
> 
> Velicoraptor 300GB.  You will notice a night and day difference in it's access times, compared to 7200 models . . . in the vast majority of reviews, it time and again leads the pack in access times, transfer rates, read + write times . . . the only HDDs that really challenge the VR in the performance aspect are SSDs
> 
> ...



I just can't see spending that much money for a platter drive at this point. My four 250GB AAKS drives in raid blow away the VR in sequential reads and writes and probably come close in latency while having considerably more drive space and cost me less than a single VR.


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## imperialreign (Dec 18, 2009)

BababooeyHTJ said:


> I just can't see spending that much money for a platter drive at this point. My four 250GB AAKS drives in raid blow away the VR in sequential reads and writes and probably come close in latency while having considerably more drive space and cost me less than a single VR.



Possibly two, three or four AAKS in RAID could take down one VR by its lonesome . . . more than likely in sequential read/write . . . if you're lucky . . . but not one AAKS by itself - and even still, the actual performance increase of an AAKS RAID setup compared to one VR would be so marginal, it's just not worth the expense.

Then there's also that matter of how slow AAKS' are compared to a VR in seek times, random access, read + write times . . . you might want to double check _all_ the reviews out there.  There are very few RAID setups that can outperform a lone VR.

Keep in mind, too, that sequential R/W has always been the VR (and Raptor's) weakness.  But, when it comes to gaming, sequential R/W doesn't really come much into play.  That's why these drives has become so "1337" in the gaming/enthusiast realm . . . *NOTHING* but SSDs equal a VR's performance.


Personally, I've never been much of an advocate for RAID . . . especially when aiming for performance.  To me it just makes more sense to pick something designed for what you want it to do, then jimmy-rig a setup together that could end up being the bane of one's existance later on.

Not saying RAID is bad at all . . . I just view it more as a storage/archive solution, more-so than any type of performance solution.


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