is SATA worth it?

Quote:

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Originally posted by Colossus


Dunno what to tell you :)

I posted in General Hardware about someone who RAID 0 a set of Raptors on a ICH5R motherboard... I think it was 73MB/s

Not that amazing... I need to search for the thread...

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This article has some very impressive RAID0 benchmarks with the drive. Its the only raid article I cound find on the drive. I actually just orderd a drive from newegg for $139. I'm going to use it for the OS and put the 80GB drive in there for data. My 80GB SE drive has long had performance problems with the system partition. Performance dropped after my second XP install to 1/5th what it was in terms of uncached performance! I've never been able to resolve the problem (except for 10 minutes after a low level format). Changing the position of the partitions has never helped. Anyway I finally gave in and just ordered the raptor. It looks like it will solve my problem :)

BTW I almost got the drive locally today. CompUSA has some screwed up prices. Online it is about $150, $209 online if you pick it up at a local store and $249 if you just walk into the store! I would have paid the $150 if it was an instore price. Since I have to order online I went to Newegg.

Eric

I am going to take a look at that article.. But let us know how the drive works out in Sandra :)

EDIT:
I like the low noise comment on the Raptor... That was just funny!!! The drive is not that quiet!

Here is another review :)
http://www.abxzone.com/reviews.php?op=showcontent&id=9

https://www.sharkyforums.com/

Quote:

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Originally posted by Colossus
Here is another review :)
http://www.abxzone.com/reviews.php?op=showcontent&id=9

http://www.asusboards.com/images/rev...or/rap128k.jpg

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The amazing thing is a single drive gets faster scores than two 7200 RPM drives in RAID :) I believe it was 1000 or so above the ATA 2xRaid0 mark. Plus you have much better access times. The drive looks really solid as well.

Eric

Now now... That is just not true :)

I have 2 IBM 120GXP 80GB on one of my setups here.. And it blows away a single Raptor... :)

EDIT:
But the access time on a Raptor is sweet! But that is only due to the 10k rpm spindle.. So I wished they made some PATA at 10k rpm :D :D

Quote:

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Originally posted by Colossus
Now now... That is just not true :)

I have 2 IBM 120GXP 80GB on one of my setups here.. And it blows away a single Raptor... :)

EDIT:
But the access time on a Raptor is sweet! But that is only due to the 10k rpm spindle.. So I wished they made some PATA at 10k rpm :D :D

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I'm actually referring to the first sandra benchmark here. For my purposes the access time matters the most. The 80GB drive is there for storage. I think it is an older version of Sandra. The newer one gives a single raptor about 48,000. What kind of score are you getting?

Eric

Quote:

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Originally posted by OS-Wiz
Points to ponder. . . I can put in a WD Raptor and nearly half my average seek time and double my data transfer rate for much cheaper than going SCSI. :)

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There are several problems with SCSI on a home computer. If not for these problems I might have went that way eventually.

- Even though I would swing for a 36GB 10,000 RPM SCSI drive I need a controller

- Even an Ultra160 controller is at least $185 (adaptec). Its about $239 for a U320 card.

- I have talked my self into SCSI in the past (back when it was at 40MB/s)... but today to get the benefits of U160 and especially U320 with multiple (possibly even single) drives a regular PCI slot will not do. Things might change if they make PCI Express varient someday :) Yes I do plan on doing the Raptor in RAID 0 in the next 3 months. Seeing cache hits over 200MB/s and sustained (outer) near 100MB/s I'm glad my SATA controller is on the Motherboard. It is CHEAPER to get a new MB with onboard SATA than it is to just get a SCSI controller.

- Really the cheaper drives, in single setup, may actually not be as fast as IDE drives. At least that was the case with the 7200 RPM SCSI drive that came in my Dell server. With the 10,000 RPM drives they are probably all faster. Most of the ones I see now are Cheetah's or faster Atlas drives, so really I can not tell :)

All that for SCSI when the raptor only cost me $139.

Eric

I don't know if this fits into the argument or not. I read a review and they did a cpu utilization test during heavy drive access, and the SATA was ahead of scsi and both were way ahead of IDE. Does this even really matter?

I think it was on tom's hardware.

fb

You don't need the most expensive SCSI controller if you are using regular pci and have only 1 or 2 drives... A controller that is good enough will range from 50 - 150 bucks. SCSI drives are getting a lot cheaper too it seems. The way I see it, if you are going to pay the permium for sata drives (especially the raptor) why not pay a little more and get the real-deal?

Food for thought:

When considering the Raptor HD but the space if a worry, you always have cheap alternatives to solve that. Just get a 2nd WD SE HD to serve as primarily storage (such as MP3 as Colossus pointed out).
If RAID is a requirement when going raid for some then the HD can be plased in the secondary or even consider a firewire or USB 2.0 HD.

Raptor for $139. Very good buy.

Quote:

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Originally posted by coolqf
Food for thought:

When considering the Raptor HD but the space if a worry, you always have cheap alternatives to solve that. Just get a 2nd WD SE HD to serve as primarily storage (such as MP3 as Colossus pointed out).
If RAID is a requirement when going raid for some then the HD can be plased in the secondary or even consider a firewire or USB 2.0 HD.

Raptor for $139. Very good buy.

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that's what I do, 37GB scsi for speed, 120GB and 80GB ide for storage.

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Originally posted by pudad
You don't need the most expensive SCSI controller if you are using regular pci and have only 1 or 2 drives... A controller that is good enough will range from 50 - 150 bucks. SCSI drives are getting a lot cheaper too it seems. The way I see it, if you are going to pay the permium for sata drives (especially the raptor) why not pay a little more and get the real-deal?

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Those were the cheapest I could find. Unless I went with something like a 2940 that was 40MB/s :) I even checked ebay. Either way it came out to $300+ with the drive... and a controller that is not fully supported on my system versus a $139 raptor that was already supported by my system.

Eric

yeah mine was 42 buck @ newegg (but it didn't come with anything so make that another 30 or so w/ a cable and other stuff the manufacturer would package. It is a good drive if you are operating on a desktop system (no 64bit or pci-x slots), and it is Ultra160. It does the job if you are only connecting 1 or 2 drives on a regular pci slot. I mainly got into this because I don't think it is much more expensive than a raptor, SCSI is a more mature standard, best storage system for a server, and I just wanted to learn how to set it up (just from what I learned [not to mention the greater overall performance] I consider it to be worth the extra 100-200 bucks). But if I mainly used my system for gamming, I wouldn't even buy a raptor, a fast pata drive would be where I'd turn.

Quote:

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Originally posted by ewitte


I'm actually referring to the first sandra benchmark here. For my purposes the access time matters the most. The 80GB drive is there for storage. I think it is an older version of Sandra. The newer one gives a single raptor about 48,000. What kind of score are you getting?

Eric

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Most of the reviews I have seen showed a single Raptor drive being around 42MB/s - 44MB/s average from Sandra 2003...

But my RAID 0 array of IBM 120GXP 80GB drives (2 drives) scores 52MB/sec average from Sandra 2003.. I had just ran it to make sure :)

I can show you a 4 drive array for Sanrda :D :D

Quote:

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Originally posted by Colossus


Most of the reviews I have seen showed a single Raptor drive being around 42MB/s - 44MB/s average from Sandra 2003...

But my RAID 0 array of IBM 120GXP 80GB drives (2 drives) scores 52MB/sec average from Sandra 2003.. I had just ran it to make sure :)

I can show you a 4 drive array for Sanrda :D :D

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wow, that is abnormally good for a ide raid0. acording to the bench you are scoring at the level of a 15k rpm drive on with ultra 320. shows ide raid0 w/ 8megs of cache @ around 40ish along with where the raptor is and u160 15k drives. not bad