Hard drive advice

[guzler]

Hi guys,

I have bought a new pc with hard drive in raid 0 set up. Spec says:

2x 500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer (1TB Total)

Does this mean my operating system will be spread accross the two drives ?

I want to run FSX on a drive of its own, so do I need to buy a third drive to do this ? If so, can anyone recommend one ?

If there is only one disk drive with two disks on it, what is the general reliability of these as it appears twice as likely to fail ????

Any advice appraciated.

Thanks

Neil

[harleyman]

Yes it means just that..

I don't think FSX will have any benefit from running a Raid 0 Stripe what so ever.

The failure rate with a Raid set up using onboard controllers to me is not worth the risk..

If it were me I would loose the Raid, depending on what HDDS are installed..if they are cheapoes , with a small Mb Cache maybe keep it ..

I suggest the Western digital Blacks with a 32 Mb Cache for best performance

[guzler]

Poo !

I have just contacted the supplier and I can't adjust the spec as they are already on with it. So, is it possible to change the configuration so that my OS only runs off one disk allowing the other to be used for FSX ? The guy I spoke to seems to think it is, but told me it's better to speak to their technical chaps once I recieve it. My main concern is reliability, as I can get another drive for FSX.

Cheer

[harleyman]

yes...After you recieve the rig, it is fairly easy to enter the bios and kill the raid, effectivaly freeing up both HDDS


You will have to format,repartition and reinstall the OS though.And format and partition the second raided drive too before you install games on it.

but thats all easy, just having the software do the work is all.they can easily walk you through that in 10 minutes..

[guzler]

Thanks Harley.

I should of done more research before I ordered, but hindsight is a glorious thing !

Is there likely to be a noticable performance hit by going down this route as the hard drives are only 16Bm cache. If I buy a third hard drive for FSX as you mentioned above, will that be better or will the system still be hindered by the OS on a 32Mb cache disc ?

[txnetcop]

Actually your 16mb hard drives will benefit from RAID 0 stripe so I would leave them as they are and buy a third hard drive for FSX and like Harleyman said get at least a 32mb Black Edition
Ted

Just remember in a RAID 0 is one drive goes bad so does the other one in most cases. So when they croak buy another 32mb cache black edition for C but those that you have should last a while. The fact is Harleyman is correct when he says that onboard RAID is pitiful at best.

[harleyman]

Hey Ted...Was hoping you would shed some light on this..


Aren't we talking a few Milli-Seconds gain though on the raid set up?

Can we even percieve that or notice it actually?

[txnetcop]

actually on some games raid benefits immensely just not in FSX alone. You really will notice a difference in load time and fast disk access while playing CRYSIS or FAR CRY or any CALL to Duty game. However a seperate RAID card benefits you more especially in reliability
Ted

[guzler]

Thanks guys.

If I buy an extra hard drive then, can I definitley operate that drive as a single whilst the others are in RAID configuration ? I thought you couldn't do that. If you can, that's great, I will keep just the operating system on the RAID.

[harleyman]

Yup...You sure can do that...

Raid installs the OS onto both drives, giving you faster seek and read times, hence faster speed.


Ust the third drive for your Sims will do fine

[guzler]

Excellent, that sounds like a wopping great plan. Is it safe to assume that there will be somewhere to plug the drive into the system on the following :

ASUS P6T SE Mainboard

Thanks

[hey_moe]

I used Raid0 for a few years. I really didn't see that much of a improvement using FSX.But it can move files faster and some games will benefit from it. The bad thing is if one of the drives fails you loose everything. I use the WD Raptor drives that are kinda fast and it works fine. The best way to see the difference is to format Windows and do a install on a standard drive then reinstall it again using Raid. You will see for yourself that it can run the OS faster and install programs faster....Mike

[guzler]

As long as I can add an additional drive, I am happy to leave it set up as RAID0. I will get into the habit of backing my documents up every week on my external hard drive just incase.

Chhers

[harleyman]

That P6T should have plenty of sata ports open...YUP


Just look and see

[guzler]

Ah ha, looking at a review, it has 4 sata ports. I'm on a big learning curve here.

Many thanks for all your help today Harley, it's really appreciated.