I would like to know if it's worth buying 2 new SATA drives, or just one more ATA drive ?
Is there a lot of difference once the array is set up between 2 x ATA's and 2 x SATA's ?
Simple... 2 RAID-0 SATA drives with a good RAID controller will provide better performance than 2 ATA drives.
Promise controllers are hit and miss when it comes to HIGH performance and they respond to differently to various HDD manufactures... however... Promise is typically safer when overclocking at very high FSB because Promise controllers tend to run higher latency on the bus. That can be changed using a PCI register editor, something discovered many years ago when I was reviewing motherboard builds.
I use the VIA RAID controller instead of the Promise system on my motherboard simply because it provides a higher performance curve than the Promise system and I do not run excessive FSB in my overclocks.
Marketing has convinced the general public that ATA drives are rated between 100-130MB/s. That is false. The BURST speed is rated at 100-130 MB/s but their throughput is measured in megaBITS, not BYTES per second. That means you will max out at between 35-50 MEGABYTES depending on the IDE controller. SATA drives are rated at a BURST of 150MB/s, meaning they will max out at around 50-70 MEGABYTES depending on the SATA controller. RAID-0 combines the true speed of all the drives in the RAID configuration, therefore on RAID-0, 2 ATA drives rated for UDMA6 will run between 60-80MB/s and 2 SATA drives will run between 100 and 130 MB/s depending on the RAID controller being used. The Burst will increase with the number of drives in the RAID-0 array.
It is best to MATCH the drives (manufacture and rating) and if you are looking for maximum performance, never mix ATA and SATA drives in a RAID-0 configuration.
A single drive can be on a RAID controller as a 0+1 however, you will not see the performance RAID provides unless you have 2 (1+1) or more drives in a RAID configuration. The more HDD of equal speed and performance you add to a RAID-0 setup, the faster the performance. 4 SATA drives in RAID-0 will smoke 2 drives in RAID-0. Each time you add a HDD you increase performance of the RAID array. The RATED access speed of the drives, their RPM and their CPU utilization will have a direct bearing on the speed of the REAL WORLD speed of the RAID array.
I have found onboard NIVIDA RAID controllers to be very good.
SCSI drives are the only HDD's that are TRUE MB/s rated. RAID is a economic way of making a slow SCSI system. The fastest RAID systems out there use 5 SCSI drives on a SCSI RAID controller, very expensive (1200-3000 dollars and more) and MINDBOGGLING FAST. With that type of system, Windows boot times can be as low as 10 seconds.
EDIT: PS
What you must ALWAYS remember about RAID-0 is it not data safe. ALWAYS have another HDD (ATA or SATA) in the system for DATA BACKUP and STORAGE because you can loose an entire install on RAID-0 in less than 2 seconds should you loose a drive or overclocking blows the RAID array apart. There is recovery software available for RAID-0 damage but it is payware and does not always work.
I use RAID-0 in both SATA and SCSI for all my systems but I also learned years ago to make sure I had a backup of all my critical data available for restore. In all my years of RAID use I have only lost my array twice, once was my fault in overclocking and another when I had a defective HDD. In both instances I was able to restore because I had a 250GB HDD, separate from the RAID array in each system which stores my data and is used as a repository for automatic daily scheduled backups.
Dont be afraid of RAID-0 but be aware you should change your data storage and backup habits should you decide to run RAID-0 as your boot system.
Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 10:47 am
ramos
