# Best bang for my buck raid setup



## Anath (Oct 24, 2009)

So right now I have a 500gb and with all my games its getting to the point where I need to upgrade. I decided that I would go with a raid setup since I have never done RAID and wanted the experience. So what do you guys think would be a good bang for my buck in regards to raid setup. I want a hard drive that has great speed performance with a decent capacity. I was thinking about doing 2 Western Digital 640gb Black's. I am willing to spend a little more if the performance would be worth it. thanks!


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## LittleLizard (Oct 24, 2009)

the best disks for raid are caviar black, blue's and barracuda .12. go wichever you can find cheaper or meets your capacity necesities


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## Anath (Oct 24, 2009)

performance wise do you have an idea on which are better? Also what about the samsung F1? I heard they were pretty good.


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## LittleLizard (Oct 24, 2009)

imo the f1 are good, just they are getting older. performance wise i think the caviar blacks are the best (read somewhere that while the 7200.12 have good read/write speed it had a poor access time). also consider the samsung F3 which i think is the descendent of the F1 but go with the caviar black just to be sure.


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## Anath (Oct 24, 2009)

thanks man I think I am going to go for the 750gb Black cuz the 640-750 is only a 5 dollar difference


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## Soylent Joe (Oct 24, 2009)

WD Caviar Black (500GB, 1TB, the 640GB model esp.) With my 2x 640GB Black setup I'm getting speeds comparable to a single Velociraptor, but almost 1200GB of space. Excellent bang for the buck with these drives.



Anath said:


> thanks man I think I am going to go for the 750gb Black cuz the 640-750 is only a 5 dollar difference



I've heard from a few people that the 640GB model is a little faster than it's larger-sized brothers. But hey, if you's willing to sacrifice a little speed for more space in your array, then go for it


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## LittleLizard (Oct 24, 2009)

Soylent Joe said:


> I've heard from a few people that the 640GB model is a little faster than it's larger-sized brothers. But hey, if you's willing to sacrifice a little speed for more space in your array, then go for it



thats probably true as the 640gb has 2 320gb platters while the 750gb has 3 250gb platters and the 1tb has 4 250gb. The less platter the better


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## Soylent Joe (Oct 24, 2009)

LittleLizard said:


> thats probably true as the 640gb has 2 320gb platters while the 750gb has 3 250gb platters and the 1tb has 4 250gb. The less platter the better



yep 

Really, now that the 500GB version is only $60, I'd say that that's the true performance/price leader.


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## Anath (Oct 24, 2009)

Hmmm decisions decisions. What kind of speed difference are we talking? Like seconds or minutes?


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## Soylent Joe (Oct 24, 2009)

Anath said:


> Hmmm decisions decisions. What kind of speed difference are we talking? Like seconds or minutes?



I don't really know the difference, but here's how mine perform:







Surely not minutes, nor even 5 seconds. The 2x 500GB would be really close to if not faster than the 640GB's. In a 2x 750GB array, the access time would definitely be higher, say 20ms, and the avg. read rate a little lower. The 2x 1TB array would be even slower, that's more of something for storage, I wouldn't really recommend that for a main array.


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## t_ski (Oct 24, 2009)

If you can afford it, go with two more 500GB drives in raid 0 for speed or raid 5 for speed and security.  Of course, it all depends on what you can afford to spend.  I have three OCZ Summits and they run quite nicely in Raid 0:


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## Anath (Oct 24, 2009)

that's pretty sweet thanks.


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## LittleLizard (Oct 24, 2009)

t_ski said:


> If you can afford it, go with two more 500GB drives in raid 0 for speed or raid 5 for speed and security.  Of course, it all depends on what you can afford to spend.  I have three OCZ Summits and they run quite nicely in Raid 0:
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/091019/3xssd.png



doesnt that saturates intel's own DMI interface that connect the southbridge with the nb?


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## Anath (Oct 24, 2009)

Also in raid say i went with the 2 640 drives, in windows will it just show up as one drive with 1280gb


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## Soylent Joe (Oct 24, 2009)

Anath said:


> Also in raid say i went with the 2 640 drives, in windows will it just show up as one drive with 1280gb



It'll show up as this:


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## Anath (Oct 24, 2009)

sweet thanks dude.


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## t_ski (Oct 24, 2009)

LittleLizard said:


> doesnt that saturates intel's own DMI interface that connect the southbridge with the nb?



Three won't but four SSD's will.  There is still a marginal improvement from adding a fourth.


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## JrRacinFan (Oct 24, 2009)

I also say look into the WD 640GB Blue.


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## Soylent Joe (Oct 24, 2009)

JrRacinFan said:


> I also say look into the WD 640GB Blue.



You mean black right? The 640GB Blue is $70 with only 16MB cache while the Black is $75 with 32MB cache with the whole dual-processor thing.


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## JrRacinFan (Oct 24, 2009)

Soylent Joe said:


> You mean black right? The 640GB Blue is $70 with only 16MB cache while the Black is $75 with 32MB cache with the whole dual-processor thing.



Nope I meant the Blue. Cheaper and just as fast.

EDIT:
Ask DanishDevil, he has a "dark blue" raid setup.


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## Soylent Joe (Oct 24, 2009)

JrRacinFan said:


> Nope I meant the Blue. Cheaper and just as fast.



Only $5 cheaper... and having "Black" edition hard drives just sounds cool


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## LittleLizard (Oct 24, 2009)

Soylent Joe said:


> Only $5 cheaper... and having "Black" edition hard drives just sounds cool



agree, lo but if u mention the serial its better the blue (blue =AA*K*S, black =AA*L*S)


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## JrRacinFan (Oct 24, 2009)

Soylent Joe said:


> Only $5 cheaper... and having "Black" edition hard drives just sounds cool



I agree but $5 is $5.  For me that $5 is a week of going back and forth from home to work.


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## Asylum (Oct 24, 2009)

Heres the Blue 2x320GB WD AAKS in Raid 0
About the same as the 640's
If your looking for more space than i have then the 640's would be about your best bet.


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## extrasalty (Nov 2, 2009)

RAID 0 is like pissing against the wind while running.


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## twicksisted (Nov 2, 2009)

extrasalty said:


> RAID 0 is like pissing against the wind while running.



lol... wtf are you talking about?... its usually a double increase in speed (for 2 drivesetup) if done correctly (look at the image in the post above you... 200MB/sec from a sata 2 HDD setup) standard on one of those would be around 80-100Mb/sec

exactely how is that pissing against the wind?


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## twicksisted (Nov 2, 2009)

t_ski said:


> If you can afford it, go with two more 500GB drives in raid 0 for speed or raid 5 for speed and security.  Of course, it all depends on what you can afford to spend.  I have three OCZ Summits and they run quite nicely in Raid 0:
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/091019/3xssd.png



dude that is seriously sick!!! 
man id love to have that setup with 3 SSD's in Raid 0.... also your avg read is 0.2ms... must be a very responsive rig right there!


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## niko084 (Nov 2, 2009)

Blues are just as fast as blacks for all general purpose..

I use blacks because the 5yr warranty and sometimes I have up to 3-4 devices accessing them at once, which is where the extra cache and processor really take off.

If you want on the cheap and it's only you, the Blue 640's are the way to go, otherwise the 7200.12 500s, depending on what you prefer, I think the 7200.12s are a bit faster.

I am about to re-setup with windows 7, with 2x 640s in raid 0 and a 1tb as a backup.


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## Anath (Nov 2, 2009)

niko084 said:


> Blues are just as fast as blacks for all general purpose..
> 
> I use blacks because the 5yr warranty and sometimes I have up to 3-4 devices accessing them at once, which is where the extra cache and processor really take off.
> 
> ...



that's what i was thinking about doing. Now I just need the money haha.


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## niko084 (Nov 2, 2009)

Anath said:


> that's what i was thinking about doing. Now I just need the money haha.



Well that's what I would recommend 

Nice screaming speeds for use and you have a backup ready to go just in case.
Beats trying to run raid5, which I also did with the 640's.


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## Deleted member 3 (Nov 2, 2009)

twicksisted said:


> lol... wtf are you talking about?... its usually a double increase in speed (for 2 drivesetup) if done correctly (look at the image in the post above you... 200MB/sec from a sata 2 HDD setup) standard on one of those would be around 80-100Mb/sec
> 
> exactely how is that pissing against the wind?



Your data will come back in your face and be smeared all over you. Bye bye pretty files.


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## Zebeon (Nov 2, 2009)

any difference in running 3 or 4 drives in Raid 0?
I run 2X200G seagate drives in Raid 0 now, but in a future build I am thinking about running 3-4...
Would you see any significant speed increase?
Thanks


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## Deleted member 3 (Nov 2, 2009)

Yes, the more drives in RAID 0 the greater the risk of losing data. When you benchmark you'd probably see an increase but you'd never notice during actual use. Either way more disks > diminishing returns. Don't use RAID 0 for storage, just for data you can afford to lose.


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## trickson (Nov 2, 2009)

extrasalty said:


> RAID 0 is like pissing against the wind while running.





DanTheBanjoman said:


> Your data will come back in your face and be smeared all over you. Bye bye pretty files.



LOL ! 
Well for me RAID 0 is great as long as you know your data can get lost back up your system and all will be fine . 
I have had very little issues with this .
The only real down side to RAID is you need a floppy drive for the driver software . The speed increase is totally worth it .


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## Deleted member 3 (Nov 2, 2009)

trickson said:


> The only real down side to RAID is you need a floppy drive for the driver software . The speed increase is totally worth it .
> http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/9356/hddtest2.jpg



That's of course a silly statement. Needing a floppy drive has nothing to do with RAID. Plenty of RAID controllers are supported in XP (and even in an OS as old as NT4), just not those cheap onboard things. You can still add those drivers to your install CD though.


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## angelkiller (Nov 2, 2009)

LittleLizard said:


> thats probably true as the 640gb has 2 320gb platters while the 750gb has 3 250gb platters and the 1tb has 4 250gb. The less platter the better


I don't know the status of the 750GB drive. But I do know that the 1TB drive only has 3 platters. If it had 4 250GB platters, it would be pretty slow. So definately 3 platters, and WD may have already switched to using 2 500GB platters on the 1TB Black. The 500GB Black uses 1 platter, but there are several versions floating around. (Some of which have 2 platters)



DanTheBanjoman said:


> Yes, the more drives in RAID 0 the greater the risk of losing data. When you benchmark you'd probably see an increase but you'd never notice during actual use. Either way more disks > diminishing returns. Don't use RAID 0 for storage, just for data you can afford to lose.


QFT.


@OP
I would get 2 640GB Blacks in Raid 0. But how much space do you need? IMO a 60GB SSD and a 320GB/500GB HDD is a better option.


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## trickson (Nov 2, 2009)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> That's of course a silly statement. Needing a floppy drive has nothing to do with RAID. Plenty of RAID controllers are supported in XP (and even in an OS as old as NT4), just not those cheap onboard things. You can still add those drivers to your install CD though.



It maybe silly for you but for me it is not . I need to install the drivers for raid from the floppy drive . I still have to this day find ANY os that has them built right in not to mention the fact that when installing XP it asks you to install the drivers calling for DRIVE "A" . 
Any way I digress . RAID 0 is for speed . And with 2 Barracuda 500gb HDD's this puppy is fast .


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## Deleted member 3 (Nov 2, 2009)

trickson said:


> It maybe silly for you but for me it is not . I need to install the drivers for raid from the floppy drive . I still have to this day find ANY os that has them built right in not to mention the fact that when installing XP it asks you to install the drivers calling for DRIVE "A" .
> Any way I digress . RAID 0 is for speed . And with 2 Barracuda 500gb HDD's this puppy is fast .



So because your modern controller is not supported out of the box by an 8 year old OS you blame RAID as a whole? Vista accepts drivers from other storage media (and supports more out of the box), and windows 7 supports even more. And like I said, you can integrate the driver in your CD (be it XP, Vista, 7) so you won't need a diskette.


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## trickson (Nov 2, 2009)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> So because your modern controller is not supported out of the box by an 8 year old OS you blame RAID as a whole? Vista accepts drivers from other storage media (and supports more out of the box), and windows 7 supports even more. And like I said, you can integrate the driver in your CD (be it XP, Vista, 7) so you won't need a diskette.



OK HOW? as I have never been able to set up a raid configuration with out the floppy disk .


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## Deleted member 3 (Nov 2, 2009)

trickson said:


> OK HOW? as I have never been able to set up a raid configuration with out the floppy disk .



The official MS way sucks, use nLite. (vLite for Vista)


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## trickson (Nov 2, 2009)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> The official MS way sucks, use nLite. (vLite for Vista)



vLite for vista? Hmm .. I will look into that thank you .


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## DRDNA (Nov 2, 2009)

trickson said:


> install the drivers calling for DRIVE "A" .
> :



I bet you don't need to hit F6 when you have an Intel controller whether it be on-board or add on.....that ole F6 thing is becoming a thing of the past like us ole dinosaurs!


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## t_ski (Nov 2, 2009)

twicksisted said:


> dude that is seriously sick!!!
> man id love to have that setup with 3 SSD's in Raid 0.... also your avg read is 0.2ms... must be a very responsive rig right there!



Yes, the response and load times arefar greater than even the four HDD setup I had.  And yes, I notice it all the time.  I hate going back to working on a PC with a single drive.  And unfortunately, that's what I do at work


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## niko084 (Nov 2, 2009)

t_ski said:


> Yes, the response and load times arefar greater than even the four HDD setup I had.  And yes, I notice it all the time.  I hate going back to working on a PC with a single drive.  And unfortunately, that's what I do at work



That is the downside... Once you are spoiled by a fast stripe, or 10/15k drives, it's hard to go back.... Just so snappy.

On the raid driver thing, as said above, integrate the drivers for your board if setting up is something you do too often, usb floppy drives work fine and Vista/7 will use usb drives for the drivers and a lot of times are not even needed, doesn't mean all the time.

It's a small price to pay for the speed or up time in which ever case it be that you are using it.

Stripes are dangerous... There is no doubt about that... I know people that have run them for years without issue, I know others that have seriously bit the bullet on the other end, sometimes with things like years worth of accounting for a business....

If it is important, keep an extra copy.


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## cyriene (Nov 2, 2009)

I have a couple raptors in fake intel raid 0 and the benchmarks show improved speed. But for regular use, there doesn't seem to be much improvement.  If you have your OS backed up all the time via WHS (or whatever else you use), then it isn't so bad to reimage when a drive goes bad.  

I think if you really want a speed increase with raid you'll need to pay the big bucks on a real raid controller, and some SSDs.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 3, 2009)

Soylent Joe said:


> I don't really know the difference, but here's how mine perform:
> 
> http://i488.photobucket.com/albums/rr246/Meatwad_CP/640aalsraid.jpg
> 
> Surely not minutes, nor even 5 seconds. The 2x 500GB would be really close to if not faster than the 640GB's. In a 2x 750GB array, the access time would definitely be higher, say 20ms, and the avg. read rate a little lower. The 2x 1TB array would be even slower, that's more of something for storage, I wouldn't really recommend that for a main array.



Seems kind of weak speed wise...

Two Seagate *5900RPM* LP drives in RAID0...


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## twicksisted (Nov 3, 2009)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> Your data will come back in your face and be smeared all over you. Bye bye pretty files.



lol... I have yet to have that happen to myself... and my home pc which i use for gaming, surfing the net & porn isnt exactly mission critical should i get a hardrive failure


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## twicksisted (Nov 3, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> Seems kind of weak speed wise...
> 
> Two Seagate *5900RPM* LP drives in RAID0...
> http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/newtekie1/5900RAID0.png



wow thats fast dude (also seeing its 5900rpm drives)... nice access times aswell!


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## Deleted member 3 (Nov 3, 2009)

twicksisted said:


> porn isnt exactly mission critical should i get a hardrive failure



You couldn't be more wrong.


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## twicksisted (Nov 3, 2009)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> You couldn't be more wrong.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 3, 2009)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> You couldn't be more wrong.


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## extrasalty (Nov 3, 2009)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> Your data will come back in your face and be smeared all over you. Bye bye pretty files.


I couldn't have had more poetic answer.
People shouldn't forget that any kind of error may throw the RAID array out. Not just rotational drive crash. The second danger is to drop a hard drive while rebuilding the array- then you will understand the need of RAID6 and the importance of regular backup.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 3, 2009)

extrasalty said:


> I couldn't have had more poetic answer.
> People shouldn't forget that any kind of error may throw the RAID array out. Not just rotational drive crash. The second danger is to drop a hard drive while rebuilding the array- then you will understand the need of RAID6 and the importance of regular backup.



Most decent RAID controllers will handle multiple drive drops out, as long as the drive hasn't actually failed.

A RAID6 is nice because it can handle two drive failures and still have a usable array.  RAID5 obviously only allows one drive failure.  However, if another drive drops out, but doesn't fail, most RAID controllers will simply make the array not accessable until the drive comes back.

A home user will rarely have even a single drive fail, forget multiple drives.  So a RAID5 setup is more than enough.  Now in a mission critical setup, with 10+ drives, RAID6 is definitely a must, but not really in the home enviornment.

I would never put any critical data on a RAID0 array, even as a home user.

As for me, my RAID5 array is entirely backed up to a RAID0 array of the same size in a completely different machine twice a day.  RAID1/5/6/Whatever is not a replacement for backing up.


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## twicksisted (Nov 3, 2009)

extrasalty said:


> I couldn't have had more poetic answer.
> People shouldn't forget that any kind of error may throw the RAID array out. Not just rotational drive crash. The second danger is to drop a hard drive while rebuilding the array- then you will understand the need of RAID6 and the importance of regular backup.



yeah for a work machine or something that is used for storing important information then by all means security and stability is key.... but on a rig used for gaming, benchmarks and overclocking its not important really... who cares if it dies and you have to re-install windows.. most enthuisiasts reinstall windows a couple of times a year just to keep it from getting bogged full of crap and to squeeze a few more points or fps out of benches and games

most of the people on the forums are running overclocked benchmark rigs... and judging by the amount of "my pc isnt working anymore" posts, those arent exactely stable most of the time and these are the people who want the extra speed that Raid 0 gives... granted its not everyone, but neither is LN2 and 5ghz cpu clocks.

Raid 0 gives you speed... yes... stability... no of course not, but for me thats not the point


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## DRDNA (Nov 3, 2009)

I have been running Raid 0 for at least 8 years now and some of the arrays are up to 4 disk array..I have been overclocking very heavy on all the builds I have never ever lost an array! I am talking BSOD city due to overclocks ...crashes galore..... man I remember my run with an FX57/raptor IDE raid 0/DFI mobo/Some crazy DDR1/X850XT PE/Vapochill LS...everything was overclocked ...pushed it daily for that possible new higher overclock on whatever I could clock and I saw more BSOD's and bios screens than anything and I never ever even once lost an array...Now I am just saying this to all but if I was to build for some one I would recommend redundancy as everyone else did.


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## Deleted member 3 (Nov 3, 2009)

DRDNA said:


> I have been running Raid 0 for at least 8 years now and some of the arrays are up to 4 disk array..I have been overclocking very heavy on all the builds I have never ever lost an array! I am talking BSOD city due to overclocks ...crashes galore..... man I remember my run with an FX57/raptor IDE raid 0/DFI mobo/Some crazy DDR1/X850XT PE/Vapochill LS...everything was overclocked ...pushed it daily for that possible new higher overclock on whatever I could clock and I saw more BSOD's and bios screens than anything and I never ever even once lost an array...Now I am just saying this to all but if I was to build for some one I would recommend redundancy as everyone else did.



Yes, Steve Irwin spoke just like you. Anally raping crocodiles for over 8 years and not getting killed. Unfortunately this wasn't any guarantee that he would survive encounters with wild animals until his 100th birthday.

Being lucky is just that, lucky.


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## niko084 (Nov 4, 2009)

DRDNA said:


> *I would recommend redundancy as everyone else did.*



I think that about sums it up.


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## extrasalty (Nov 4, 2009)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> Yes, Steve Irwin spoke just like you. Anally raping crocodiles for over 8 years and not getting killed. Unfortunately this wasn't any guarantee that he would survive encounters with wild animals until his 100th birthday.
> 
> Being lucky is just that, lucky.


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## niko084 (Nov 8, 2009)

Well here is my fresh Win7 Pro x64 install on my ICH9R WD Black 640gb drives in a 128k stripe.

Slow one is at stock 2.83, ram at 667 and speedstep enabled.
Fast one is at 3.4, ram at 800, and speedstep disabled.

I'm sure it could be tweaked out quite a bit more, but it's pretty snappy.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 8, 2009)

niko084 said:


> Well here is my fresh Win7 Pro x64 install on my ICH9R WD Black 640gb drives in a 128k stripe.
> 
> Slow one is at stock 2.83, ram at 667 and speedstep enabled.
> Fast one is at 3.4, ram at 800, and speedstep disabled.
> ...



It is seeing posts like this that make me have no regrets for getting the 5900RPM drives.  Two of them in RAID0 outperforming two WD Blacks in RAID0 makes me happy...


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## niko084 (Nov 8, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> It is seeing posts like this that make me have no regrets for getting the 5900RPM drives.  Two of them in RAID0 outperforming two WD Blacks in RAID0 makes me happy...



No tweaks and I'm running 128 stripe.

I am yet to play with it too much, I have seen 2 500gb blacks put down a average of a little over 200MB/s according to HDTune.

Give me a few hours yet here to clean some stuff up and get all my crap re-installed.
Should also note these are the main system drives, which throws stuff off something fierce as well.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 8, 2009)

niko084 said:


> No tweaks and I'm running 128 stripe.
> 
> I am yet to play with it too much, I have seen 2 500gb blacks put down a average of a little over 200MB/s according to HDTune.
> 
> ...



No tweaks here either, not sure on stripe size though. I need to reformat that machine actually and put Win7 on it.  They aren't system drives though.


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## niko084 (Nov 8, 2009)

newtekie1 said:


> No tweaks here either, not sure on stripe size though. I need to reformat that machine actually and put Win7 on it.  They aren't system drives though.



Ya the non system drive makes a huge difference, especially on access time reporting.
Those are really fast for 5900s. 

From pretty much everything I have seen too, Nvidia Raid benches better than Intel raid but Intel raid performs better when actually put to use.

Hard drives, raid, measuring performance... It's all..

Depending on the test block size I use I can get numbers all the way down to 2mb/s.


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