[NOS2Go4Me]

NefCanuck,Jul 14 2006, 10:13 PM Wrote:

NOS2Go4Me,Jul 13 2006, 09:46 PM Wrote:Just got one of these: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB - their new perpendicular storage series. It's not the baby, but it's not the 750GB monster model, either. :D 16MB cache sure makes it "feel" smooth, compared to a single SATA 80GB 7200RPM 8MB drive, anyways.

It's fast, as quick on bootup and Windows nosing around as my 160GB SATA RAID-0... although I'm sure the RAID is faster for concurrent writes... hence why it's the new render target drive.

I'll be getting another next month so I can re-arrange the drives as a mirror. And some fans. Because I need more intake with 3 heat-farming SATA drives in the box. A single side 80mm doesn't cut it. 4 drives will surely render it "significantly warmer" again.
[right][snapback]197483[/snapback][/right]

I'm curious though, what are you doing that requires you run a RAID setup? RAID set ups for average home users are mostly overkill at best and can engender a false sense of security at worst. Best backup is either DVD backups or if you *really* want a no muss, no fuss backup a tape drive. Everything is else is too complicated/gimmicky IMO.

NefCAnuck
[right][snapback]197630[/snapback][/right]

When I run racks of RAIDed IBM servers at work, I tend to get partial to RAIDs in all flavours. :)

RAID-1s for system volumes and "gotta have it" data is a must. I've had 3 system mirrors s*** in 2 years, all under warranty. The mirrors saved me from having to rebuilid a box from backups. Especially when they're domain controllers. Oy.

RAID-0s are my own personal variety of e-peen. If I can render video a little faster than a standard drive (and sometimes significantly faster) because the sustained write speed on a dual Maxtor SATA-1 RAID-0 is faster than a single SATA1/2 drive... sweet. I've done "cross-renders" to test this theory and it has shaved up to 10-20 minutes per job just because the video editing program waits less time for the drives to write. When you're rendering a lot of stuff over and over (like, say, seasons of insert show here), it's a big time-saver. Also, pretty much everything runs "faster" by some percentage once Windows has loaded. That's always nice. :)

Make no mistake, I do monthly backups of all my important pictures and documents to DVD-R, but the security blanket that is RAID-1 is hard to ignore. And the NForce 4 NVRAID adapter is suprisingly efficient for a quasi-hardware RAID card. It's actually a standalone ROM for the RAID settings, independent of your BIOS... so it's technically hardware RAID, but you can't work with it as well once running in Windows... which in turn makes it "quasi-hardware" to me as well.

Confusing? If so, I apologize. Drop me a PM if you have more questions :)

Puppet... what size HDs do you need?