between a RAID and a hard drive

[HarvesteR]

hello again...

i need an opinion here about hard drives...

what would be better? 2 seagate barracudas 500GB 7200RPM in RAID 0, or a WD Raptor 150GB 10000RPM?

i know RAID 0 will increase wy speed significanty, but i've heard it can compromise data security, for it increases the chance of a hard drive giving out...

on the other hand, the Raptor is a way less complicated install, but it is a lot smaller and a lot more expensive (i found that it cost around double as much as a single barracuda)

i don't use my pc only for gaming... i also do all my college projects on it, which can size up to several GB in size quite often, and they need to be safely stored... but i also need the speed to run FSX and other games, as well as run the OS (i can't stand a long boot time )

i also have the option of getting both drives, one for speed and the other for storage... but if the RAID option is better, it'll be cheaper and i1ll get both speed and storage size

what do you guys think?

[NickN]

Unless you have a dedicated professional RAID card (motherboard RAID is NOT a professional solution) I would not use RAID for FSX and instead use the single Raptor as the FSX install drive with the OS on another SATA drive

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2 ... 97380641#2

3.
NEVER USE RAID-0 FOR FSX UNLESS IT IS A DEDICATED CARD (or motherboard RAID) THAT CAN SET A 256K STRIPE OR LARGER PRIOR TO WINDOWS/FSX INSTALL

Motherboard and cheap PCI card RAID kills FSX performance because of the lack of ability that format of RAID typically runs. Unless you are using a -real- RAID card, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816116042 with dedicated DDR2 memory on the card you are better off on a SINGLE SATAII drive than running motherboard software or a cheap PCI card RAID 0.
In all of my RAID tests, any STRIPE at or below 128K produced scenery load stutters. FSX needs a 256K (or higher) STRIPE RAID
Older systems will magnify this issue because of the high resources FSX pulls. You must understand that RAID has its ups and its downs. The up side you are aware of which is it allows a greater throughput for data to flow, IF and only if set up correctly for the data chunks being accessed.

The down side is that every drive you install in a system that is accessed at the same time -pulls- from the resource pool so if you are not compensating by optimizing the data flow, you are losing with RAID, not gaining. Slower systems should not try to run 2-4-5 drives in motherboard RAID for FSX, only a dedicated RAID card for such setups.

Motherboard software RAID sucks the life out of a CPU because every drive being polled must get CPU time and every file being called requires cycles. Low STRIPE with FSX will force 3-5x the CPU cycles because the files are broken into far too many parts. The larger STRIPE breaks the files into a reasonable amount and the dedicated HARDWARE RAID card (on a PCIe 4x bus, not a PCI slot) removes the CPU load so therefore you are recovering CPU with a RAID card, the opposite of what motherboard  or cheap RAID cards force on the system.

FS9 had an average file size of about 64-128k. FSX average file size is 5-10 times that so if the STRIPE does not grow to compensate, the RAID array will cause stutters from CPU load, and, from the ridiculous access that must take place to call up a single file.

[HarvesteR]

hmm i didn't know FSX doesn't like RAID

that's quite an important bit of information there, thanks for the heads up mate

yeah, so RAID is out, what i'm thinking now is keep the 150GB raptor for FS and the OS, and add a big barracuda drive for storage and other stuff

and if i ever need more fast drive space, i'll just buy myself another raptor later on

i kinda saw something like this coming... i knew there must have been a reason why you don't see many people using RAID for FS rigs...  but anyways, i had to ask

thanks mate  8-)

Cheers

HarvesteR

[NickN]

Go with the VelociRaptor instead

300GB @ 20% faster performance than the original Raptor drives

[HarvesteR]

i thought about it but i have yet to see the price tag on that one

also i need to find a store that does international shipping

Cheers

HarvesteR

[raptorx]

Get the Velociraptor for your FSX drive and a regular, 150Gb Raptor for your OS drive.  Next best thing to professional RAID.

-Jim