New HDDs: RAID 0 vs Single HDD

angelkiller · Post by **angelkiller** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 3:12 pm

Hi all, I'm in the market for a new hard drive. I have at most about $150 to spend, and I would certainly want to spend less. I'm also looking for two things in my hard drive: Performance and Quietness. At minimum, I need to have the same performance at a lower noise level. So I unfortunately cannot settle for a slower setup. Judging by my price range, I see two options that I should consider. I could RAID 0 two 250GB drives or I could buy a single 500GB drive. I've compiled a list of suitable drives according to my (rather strict) criteria. I then found HD Tune results for each drive to give an estimate of its performance.

From these results, I think I can narrow my choices down to either the WD6400AAKS or a pair of HD250HJ's in RAID 0. The 640GB WD drive is the only single drive that comes close to matching my current setup. The Samsung HD250HJ only has a single platter and offers higher performance than the other two drives.

Questions

WD6400AAKS vs RAID 0 HD250HJ. Which is quieter?
Are there any other options I have overlooked?
Is there a difference between 8MB and 16MB of cache? Should this matter at all?
Any news of a 250GB WD Green Power?

Thanks for reading, and any opinions/thoughts/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

And I will be out of town until Sunday, so I may not get back to this thread until then. Sorry.

Luminair · Post by **Luminair** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:06 pm

RAID0 is not good. Buy a WD6400AAKS or WD7500AAKS. The end

Blue_Sky · Post by **Blue_Sky** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:44 pm

From the tables you have there, you are going to get better performance from the WD 640 GB drive. I'm neither not a big fan of RAID 0, nor older hard drives - I've seen way too many lightly used, older model HDDs fail lately.
The WD wins in a lot of categories - better performance, less power draw, more space, better reliability (vs. RAID 0), better expandability and airflow (ie. takes up less space).

angelkiller · Post by **angelkiller** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:56 pm

Hmmm.

Both of you have expressed concern with RAID 0. I do understand the risks one takes when using RAID 0. I have had several misfortunes with RAID 0, but never to a HDD failure. I want to note that these HDD's will go in my gaming rig, and I actively backup all my data everyday in the event of a crash. So RAID 0 poses no serious issues to me.

I would think that 2 HD250HJ's in RAID 0 would be faster than the single WD. There was a 50% speed increase from my current RAID array vs a single drive. I could easily be wrong.

Blue_Sky, what do you mean by "older hard drives". I thought both drives were relatively new drives. (3-4 months old)

Thanks for the replies!

josephclemente · Post by **josephclemente** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:38 pm

I went from two WD7500AAKS hard drives in RAID 0 (drives plugged into the Intel-controlled ports of my motherboard) to one WD6400AAKS in my main computer. I moved the larger drives to my HTPC/file server since the extra storage space is better off there. They are still running in RAID 0 in that box.

After running RAID 0 long enough to get used to it and switching to a single drive, my system still "feels" the same performance-wise.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 9:11 am

angelkiller wrote:Hi all, I'm in the market for a new hard drive. I have at most about $150 to spend, and I would certainly want to spend less. I'm also looking for two things in my hard drive: Performance and Quietness.

Performance isn't a single thing.

The HD250HJ RAID0 pair should excel at streaming large continuous files--nearly twice as fast as a single WD6400AAKS.

The WD6400AAKS is likely to be much faster than RAID0 pair in most everything else (boot times, game loading, etc.)

So pick which type of performance you want. I would expect the quality of the WD to be a little better than the cheap Samsungs.

JLee · Post by **JLee** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 10:13 am

What's wrong with raid0?

do drives fail faster if running in raid0 mode?
i mean if any drive just DIES on me, i'd lose data on that drive anyway... right?

i just double my chances of a hdd failure then

Denorios · Post by **Denorios** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 10:58 am

If ypu have two or more standalone drives, and one of them dies, you only lose the data on that drive. If a RAID 0 drive dies, you lose all the data on the entire array, because most of the files will have split into two or more pieces. You can't recover the data from the other drives in the array, because none of them have copies of the missing parts, nor parity bits to enable their reconstruction.

Since the probability of one of the drives failing is roughly proportional to the number of drives in the array, that means that RAID-0 is actually less reliable than a single drive.

And the performance advantage of RAID-0 is restricted to highly specific circumstances. It has been proven countless times that RAID 0 does not benefit standard desktop operations - only operations using very large files.

Luminair · Post by **Luminair** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 7:40 pm

JLee wrote:What's wrong with raid0?

do drives fail faster if running in raid0 mode?
i mean if any drive just DIES on me, i'd lose data on that drive anyway... right?

i just double my chances of a hdd failure then

The failure rate of the set is about twice as much as the failure rate of one drive.

Aside from that, the performance advantage simply isn't there. Unless you spend your day reading and writing single multi-gigabyte files to disk, RAID 0 is not for you.

A decade of benchmarks has proven this, so the RAID 0 myth (and the dual channel memory myth) only persists in the minds of the ignorant or unaware

Here is your RAID 0 performance boost: http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/17/ ... benchmarks

mertsag · Post by **mertsag** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:47 am

I don't completely agree against raid0...
I did several tries.
1 vs. 2 raid0 "standard" 7200 hdd (seagate 7200.

on a cheap marvell raid controller
1 vs. 2 raid0 raptors on a ich9r
1 vs. 2 raid0 15k u320 scsi drives on a hp6400 hardware raid controller

Obviously, none of these are silent, neither something near "quiet", even with special silence-oriented cases and heavy dampening. Here I'm just talking about performance.
I tried all this in everyday use. No benchmark, I just rate global system responsiveness with a stopwatch in normal desktop use.
Scsi is obviously the fastest, even without raid, but there is in every application an improvement in raid.
Raptors are a lot slower than scsi, and improvement in raid is less important. Event with standard 7200 rpm drives on a cheapo marvell controller, there is a light improvement in raid.
Globally, in raid0:
-boot up time is almost the same (maybe 1-2 sec faster)
-heavy applications (cs2) loading is slightly faster
-software installation is slightly faster
-games loading is marginally faster
-games framerate is worse unless hardware raid controller
-but large files load/write/copy is really faster!

I agree that the improvement doesn't worth the 2x price.
I agree that a low access time drive is better than 2 slower in raid0.
But I don't agree when people say "no improvement in raid0"!!!

We have talked about performance, and here we come to the silence issue.
I think that when we need a really silent drive (and that means a slow, 2.5", 4200 or 5400 rpm drive), you simply have not other choice than raid0 to improve performance........

Last opinion: no hard drive is fast enough . Hard drive are always the weakest point in a pc. And I think they will always be. When the first 7200 prm drives came to the market (many, many years ago), with their amazing access times (compared to slower ones) I thought "well, finally we'll have almost instantaneous hard drives"... I was wrong, there was some % improvement, but no revolution. Same when 10k drives arrived, then 15k... Manufacturers can build 20k, 25k or 30k if they wish (they don't, they are not crazy, they know that's not the solution), they can make 1tb platters, their drives will always be soooooooo slow compared to the other components of a pc.
Thank to my job, I could try the fastest (and loudest) solutions on the market today, but they are still soooooo slow. The only real improvment I could notice is when using a ssd. That's really fast. That's really silent. That's the future. But my god, how expensive it is !!!
I bet than in 10 years, most of todays hdd manufacturers will have stopped their production. Samsung, Fujitsu, Toshiba and Hitachi will stop hdd drives because it won't be profitable enough. Between wd, maxtor and seagate, the "hdd only" manufacturers, only the strongest financially will eventually survive, and build large storage drives for filing and records...

angelkiller · Post by **angelkiller** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 9:48 am

WOW!

Thanks everybody for your very insightful information.

Ok, so here's what I got out of your comments. First, RAID 0 is not leaps and bounds faster than a single drive. So the HD Tune benchmarks are misleading because they can't account for everyday usage. However RAID 0 does give some performance gain (in everyday apps/games), but nothing significant.

So judging by the comments and poll results, the WD6400AAKS is definitely the way to go. Now, does anyone know any info about a single platter version? 640GB is wayyyy more than I need, I chose this drive because it appeared faster. Will a single 320GB platter drive offer similar performance to the WD6400? If so, a 320GB drive with the same performance would be perfect for me.

Thanks again!

Edit: I just learned that the WD3200AAKS is now a single platter drive. However this is only true if the drive's full model number is WD3200AAKS-00B3A0. The last extension is usually not available at online retailers. I might have to check retail prices.

Edit 2: Further research has shown that the WD3200AAKS can be either the new 1 platter drive or the old 2 platter one. Eventually the 2 platter drive will be phased out. As for its performance, the single platter version has an average transfer rate of 86Mbps, which is essentially the same as the WD6400AAKS. So I've finally decided that my new drive will be a single platter WD320AAKS.

VanWaGuy · Post by **VanWaGuy** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 10:53 am

Luminair,

A decade of benchmarks has proven this, so the RAID 0 myth (and the dual channel memory myth) only persists in the minds of the ignorant or unaware

Your insults at the end of the quote seem a little excessive given that it is quite simple to demonstrate a performance difference on my folding machines whether they are running in single or dual channel memory mode.

line · Post by **line** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 11:30 am

angelkiller wrote:Now, does anyone know any info about a single platter version? 640GB is wayyyy more than I need, I chose this drive because it appeared faster. Will a single 320GB platter drive offer similar performance to the WD6400? If so, a 320GB drive with the same performance would be perfect for me.

No, not at the moment. The single-platter 320 drive is currently plagued by an access time issue. It's about 4ms slower than the 640 drive in average access time, and apparently takes quite a performance hit because of this.

Please see these links:

320 thread
640 thread
320 rereview at AnandTech (vs Samsung T166 HD501J -- not the F1 one)

josephclemente · Post by **josephclemente** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 11:35 am

angelkiller wrote:As for its performance, the single platter version has an average transfer rate of 86Mbps, which is essentially the same as the WD6400AAKS. So I've finally decided that my new drive will be a single platter WD320AAKS.

I chose the double platter WD6400AAKS over the single platter WD3200AAKS because of the WD3200AAKS access time issue.

angelkiller · Post by **angelkiller** » Sun Mar 16, 2008 12:49 pm

josephclemente wrote:I chose the double platter WD6400AAKS over the single platter WD3200AAKS because of the WD3200AAKS access time issue.

Yeah, I've been reading about that issue.

How does a longer access time affect performance?

Can anyone comment on the noise difference between the WD3200 and the WD6400?

I'm still considering the 320GB version. First, because it will meet my minimum requirements of being at least as fast as my current setup, with less noise. Second, compared to what I have, the access time problem is no biggie. I'll still enjoy the drive. Third, cost. The 640GB version is $55 more expensive, and I don't need the extra space.

angelkiller · Post by **angelkiller** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 10:56 am

Also, the WD6400 has been deactivated at Newegg!

I've sent Newegg an email asking why this happened and if I could be guarenteed a B3 WD3200AAKS. I'll post the responses soon.

angelkiller wrote:Can anyone comment on the noise difference between the WD3200 and the WD6400?

Anyone

Blue_Sky · Post by **Blue_Sky** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:39 am

If you are comparing 320GB platter drives from the same manufacturer, wouldn't a one platter drive be quieter than a two platter drive?

Unless you need to buy now, I would wait until there is new 640 GB stock simply to guarantee that you get a two platter drive. If you do need to buy now, good luck to you.

Celoth · Post by **Celoth** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 4:34 pm

I just bought two Samsung HD753LJ disks, and I am considering running them in Raid 1 on the onboard intel raid controller. However, I have a couple of questions:

Would gaming performance be roughly the same as single HD or worse?
In the unlikely event I run out of space, how easy is it to drop the raid 1 and have the disks function as two separate disks?

angelkiller · Post by **angelkiller** » Thu Mar 20, 2008 5:12 pm

Celoth wrote:
Would gaming performance be roughly the same as single HD or worse?

In the unlikely event I run out of space, how easy is it to drop the raid 1 and have the disks function as two separate disks?

1.) Yes. Performance should be about the same. I don't think you'll see the difference.
2.) Run out of 750GB?

If you do, just delete the array in the BIOS. This just deletes the ARRAY, not the DATA. Then you'll have two drives that are identical. Wipe/format one drive and you're off. This is the theory. I haven't tested this, but its how it should work. Worst case, just make an image of the drive, (possible with freeware), wipe the drives, and restore the image.

Blue_Sky wrote:If you are comparing 320GB platter drives from the same manufacturer, wouldn't a one platter drive be quieter than a two platter drive?

Unless you need to buy now, I would wait until there is new 640 GB stock simply to guarantee that you get a two platter drive. If you do need to buy now, good luck to you.

I don't need to buy now, but 320GB is plenty of space and 640 would be a waste, so I'm going to buy now. Newegg responded and basically said that stock moves fast and they likely have the latest revision, but it can't be guaranteed. So, I'm going to take my chances and RMA it if I get the B2.

My concern was how much difference between the drives there were. Or is it virtually insignificant?

So thanks everyone for their help in making this decision!

Any last comments are still welcome! I'm not ordering until Monday.

mertsag · Post by **mertsag** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 12:43 am

Celoth wrote:
Would gaming performance be roughly the same as single HD or worse?

In the unlikely event I run out of space, how easy is it to drop the raid 1 and have the disks function as two separate disks?

1) Gaming could even be a little improved. Probably no difference in framerate, but a little improvement in loading time. Intel raid uses very low cpu ressource (vs. other software raid solutions), as do raid 1, so there shouldn't be a noticeable performance drop in any case...

2) just unplug a drive, put it in another computer and it will work as a single drive...

Celoth · Post by **Celoth** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 5:21 pm

Thanks for the replies.

Raid 1 it is then. Well, as soon as I get the new mobo...

angelkiller · Post by **angelkiller** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 5:31 pm

Recap:
Ok, I decided to get the WD3200AAKS. As you know, the old 2 platter and the new 1 platter models were both sold under the same model name. So I was trying to get lucky and get the single platter model.

UPDATE:
Whoohooo!! I got the B3!!

So I threw out my Raid 0 array and suspended this baby.

It's almost as my Raid 0 array.

As for the noise.

It's quieter than my two Seagates. Less idle noise. You know, the noise a HDD makes just from being on. Definitely less of that. However, this drive is still the noisiest thing in my system.

The only other noise makers are 2 800rpm S-Flex's and a NeoHE 500W. I used Hitachi's feature tool to set the AAM to 128. I saw no performance difference in HD Tune. I also couldn't tell a difference noise wise. I could never hear this drive seek. (BTW, how do you purposely make a drive seek?) I've concluded that some of the whoosing "being on" noise may come from echo in the lower chamber of my P180. Possible? Should I look into noise dampening?

Overall, I'm quite happy with this drive. Larger, almost equal performance, less noise than what I had. Now.. I gotta make is quieter....

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 7:15 pm

In most use RAID 0 and a single drive are not noticeably different in terms of speed.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000335.html goes into it from many angles

see viewtopic.php?p=388987 for more thoughts on RAID.

oops, congrats on winning the 320gb lottery and being happy with the results...

m^2 · Post by **m^2** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 7:41 am

dhanson865 wrote:
In most use RAID 0 and a single drive are not noticeably different in terms of speed.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000335.html goes into it from many angles

Just couldn't get past

RAID 0 literally doubles your chance of drive failure

Here in Poland he wouldn't finish secondary school saying such things.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 6:07 am

What percentage would you attribute to the higher risk in RAID 0?

m^2 · Post by **m^2** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 10:24 am

dhanson865 wrote:What percentage would you attribute to the higher risk in RAID 0?

If X is a chance that 1 drive will fail and you have n drives, 100%-[(100%-X)^n]. When X and n are low (and here they are), it's very close to nX he claimed. IMO "approximately doubles" would be the best statement, if he said just "doubles", I wouldn't like it, but wouldn't complain either. But "literally doubles" is literally false.

Blood · Post by **Blood** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:40 pm

m^2 wrote: If X is a chance that 1 drive will fail and you have n drives, 100%-[(100%-X)^n]. When X and n are low (and here they are), it's very close to nX he claimed.

This is also assuming that the chance of drive A failing is independent of drive B failing. When 2 or more hard drives are in the same system, this would be an inaccuraate assumption.

(I just couldn't help it, those comments were too entertaining)

angelkiller

Congrats and very nice suspension. I don't think anyone mentioned this. But if you want to get a speed boost (if you buy a new hard drive), you can consider putting your pagefiles or program files on a different physical drive. You would likely see better results than raid 0 in average daily use and in games.

m^2 · Post by **m^2** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 12:28 am

Blood wrote:
m^2 wrote: If X is a chance that 1 drive will fail and you have n drives, 100%-[(100%-X)^n]. When X and n are low (and here they are), it's very close to nX he claimed.
This is also assuming that the chance of drive A failing is independent of drive B failing. When 2 or more hard drives are in the same system, this would be an inaccuraate assumption. (I just couldn't help it, those comments were too entertaining)

It would be inaccurate in redundant RAID, when rebuilds increase load on drives. But I think that in RAID 0 it's ok.

New HDDs: RAID 0 vs Single HDD

Which would be quieter?

New HDDs: RAID 0 vs Single HDD

Re: New HDDs: RAID 0 vs Single HDD