My new Raptor reality

Richard Dower

Yes dear friends, best laid plans come to pass.
Within the next week i shall have in my posession four (4) WD Raptors running in RAID 0, add to this i have the latest firmware revision for all four drives, FLC0.

As much as four 150GB Raptors sound nice a price tag of €1250 is hard to swallow. Even though i hear WD are releasing a new single platter 74GB drive based on the new 150 i am still most pleased.

Based on reviews of this new 74GB Raptor i may or may not sell these four and buy four more...does that make sense?

I'll post some HD Tach number when the beast is unleashed.

DemonOfTheFall

Nice! Very impressive setup. I've tried RAID 0 before though and would never use it again. You mustn't be putting anything important on those drives?!!?

This is something I saw a few months back, made me severely doubt RAID performance. I had always thought my system was a bit faster at loads when in RAID 0, but it was most likely the placebo effect.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1001325
http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?showtopic=21621&st=0&p=221874&#entry221874

unklerosco

SO ur pc will load a few seconds quicker, as will ur apps... whats the rush??

Wont make ur games run faster etc... Wizzard had a load of probs trying to recover data from his raid 0 setup, id never use it.. tried it once n dont see the point.. im right in thinking that if u have the 4 in raid 0 if 1 goes u loose everything?? if so thats a complete waste in my eyes...

Inquitus

The Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) for a Raptor is 1.2 million hours.

That's 136 Years, so while the benefits of RAID0 can be debated, the argument about loss of data holds NO water.

Inqui

Richard Dower

unklerosco wrote:

SO ur pc will load a few seconds quicker, as will ur apps... whats the rush??

Wont make ur games run faster etc... Wizzard had a load of probs trying to recover data from his raid 0 setup, id never use it.. tried it once n dont see the point.. im right in thinking that if u have the 4 in raid 0 if 1 goes u loose everything?? if so thats a complete waste in my eyes...

lol...so, if i loose anything i start a fresh install. I have never once lost my RAID array.

Speed man, it's a top of the line setup!

Azza

Raid 0 with 4 raptors. Thats suicidal if you ask me. I noticed nothing with 2 ratpors in raid 0. I reckon performance benefit will be really small. Not worth the risk of having anyone of those drives failing.

unklerosco

But why do u need 4?? Thats 296 gigs... What takes up that much space that u are willing to loose and reinstall??? 2 x 36gigs would make more sense id have thought..

Each to there own i suppose..

DemonOfTheFall

2x36 gigs has no point at all since the 74 gig will beat it in most things. 2x74 has no point either since the 150 gig beats that. I'm not sure what to think about the 4x150 though.... it is definitely intruiging! Its probably the most excessive setup i can imagine a home user having.

Creamy Goodness

you'd be crazy to spend 1200 euros on hard drives though.

astrofool

It doesn't seem to be capacity, but speed he wants, and the 150gb raptor has the most speed (hence why he said he may change them for 74gb ones if there's a new revision).

Sounds like he has another drive soley for backup, which means he can handle 1 of 3 drives disappearing off the face of the earth without losing data.

BopNiblets

unklerosco wrote:

Wont make ur games run faster etc...

Why not?
I just got a 74GB one for the purpose of OS and programs on one partition (15-20GBs), and games on another!

DemonOfTheFall

astrofool wrote:

It doesn't seem to be capacity, but speed he wants, and the 150gb raptor has the most speed (hence why he said he may change them for 74gb ones if there's a new revision).

Sounds like he has another drive soley for backup, which means he can handle 1 of 3 drives disappearing off the face of the earth without losing data.

Don't quite get you astrofool.... when any of the 4 drives in the RAID 0 fails, you lose all the data on all 4 drives.

unklerosco

They'll load faster but u wont see any more fps.

I had a 75gb raptor n sold it after a weeks use, u only see a few seconds difference in load times over a decent drive. The noise of it drove me mad, n i need those extra seconds to eat me biscuits ;-p

Richard Dower

Cremo wrote:

you'd be crazy to spend 1200 euros on hard drives though.

Exactly...i couldn't justify €1250 on four 150GB Raptors, i could justify buying four 74GB. I probably should have waited until the new 74GB models come out...but what the hell, if reviews are positive i can always sell my four new Raptors and buy the new models, it's only money.

DemonOfTheFall

In theory the new 74g raptors should match the 150g ones for performance shouldn't they ?

I'd consider a new 74g one if theyre as fast as the 150g ones. Always nice to get into the Quake 4 server first and get the Rail before everyone else

Richard Dower

Four 150GB Raptors in RAID 0?...no, the reason is the higher density per platter. 75GB as oppsed to 36.7GB.

16MB cache dosen't seem to make much difference according to reviews of various drives i've seen.

gline

4 drives raid0 is old news, i got 4 x 36gig raptors already

hehehe

good luck with the new drives, id say u willl get sweet speeds out of it.

is it worth upgrading the firmware on harddrives? or best to leave it with watever is on it?

gline

Richard Dower wrote:

add to this i have the latest firmware revision for all four drives, FLC0.

oh BTW

where can u download firmware for wd raptors?? not available through wd's website

Dempsey

Inquitus wrote:

The Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) for a Raptor is 1.2 million hours.

That's 136 Years, so while the benefits of RAID0 can be debated, the argument about loss of data holds NO water.

Inqui

One of my Raptors had to be replaced in a RAID 0 setup, No media on it so I dont have to worry about recovery. Its annoying having to reinstall everything but I'd still recommend raptors and western digital for their speed and reliabilty.

po0k

Inquitus wrote:

The Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) for a Raptor is 1.2 million hours.

That's 136 Years, so while the benefits of RAID0 can be debated, the argument about loss of data holds NO water.

Inqui

Mean Time.

Gravity.

These are two compelling arguments for data loss. HDDs die. Raid0 halves the MBTF of a 2-disk array.

poggy

seams like a lot of money for a small proformance boost. would u not have put the money into processor or graphics upgrading. thoes markets moves a lot faster that storage.

Endurance Man

1250euro for 300gigs of space , so that the pc runs a few seconds faster, sillyness.

Dman_15

Why dont you buy a Ram Drive, or 2 for raid

BadCharlie

Endurance Man wrote:

1250euro for 300gigs of space , so that the pc runs a few seconds faster, sillyness.

Is it not 600gigs of space as his getting 4.

Endurance Man

BadCharlie wrote:

Is it not 600gigs of space as his getting 4.

Oh, misread, thought he was going for the 74gig, its still madness though. If it doesnt affect gameplay it aint worth it. What are the actuall benefits besides programs opening a few split seconds faster?

The Real B-man

ffs what a waste of money should have got a few 500gbs hdds & 1 Raptor

DemonOfTheFall

I think for 1200 euro I would have gotten 4 gigs of RAM in a gigabye I-RAM thingy. Well I probably would have just saved my money and bought a bunch of 300 gig drives and RAID-5'd them I guess.
It's still a very impressive setup though.

You need to get a few gigabit NICs in that PC now for the ungodly data transfer speed it's gonna be able to push over a network.

gline

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

You need to get a few gigabit NICs in that PC now for the ungodly data transfer speed it's gonna be able to push over a network.

might be a stupid question, but can windows "stack" gigabit connections? ie if u have 2 connections it can manage that as one 2gig connection?

like i have a gigabit lan running at home, is it worth me putting 2 x gigabit nics into each machine to have a 2 gig network?? Or am i way off the mark?

Inquitus

Very much doubt they stack...would expect some sort of controller would be required.

DemonOfTheFall

Inquitus wrote:

Very much doubt they stack...would expect some sort of controller would be required.

Yeah I doubt it aswell, just meant for separate network transfers at the same time.

Speaking of network transfers, just found this very handy little app. Should come in trés handy at gamecon this weekend... "Advanced Lan Pump" http://www.softsolo.com/?action=10 . Seen a few like it before but this one looks nice and simple, unlike a few I've seen before. Anyone have any recommendations for simliar or better programs ?

po0k

gline wrote:

might be a stupid question, but can windows "stack" gigabit connections? ie if u have 2 connections it can manage that as one 2gig connection?

like i have a gigabit lan running at home, is it worth me putting 2 x gigabit nics into each machine to have a 2 gig network?? Or am i way off the mark?

EtherChannel/Channel Bonding/"Trunking".
Windows: Depends on the capabilities of the driver and end-device (switch), but yeah. Sometimes.
*nix: Yes.

po0k

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

Yeah I doubt it aswell, just meant for separate network transfers at the same time.

Speaking of network transfers, just found this very handy little app. Should come in trés handy at gamecon this weekend... "Advanced Lan Pump" http://www.softsolo.com/?action=10 . Seen a few like it before but this one looks nice and simple, unlike a few I've seen before. Anyone have any recommendations for simliar or better programs ?

http://filezilla.sourceforge.net - daemon and client. If you're still using Windows FileSharing (SMB/CIFS), I suggest you liberate yourself. It should never be enabled at lans as it is unreliable, inefficient, slow poison.

Richard Dower

poggy wrote:

seams like a lot of money for a small proformance boost. would u not have put the money into processor or graphics upgrading. thoes markets moves a lot faster that storage.

Well i have a 7800GTX and San Diego 4000+ @ 2.6Ghz. Can't justify an FX-57 or 60 right now. Too close to AM2.

Richard Dower

Endurance Man wrote:

1250euro for 300gigs of space , so that the pc runs a few seconds faster, sillyness.

600GB for four 150GB Raptors. Four 74GB drives....

DemonOfTheFall

SyxPak wrote:

http://filezilla.sourceforge.net - daemon and client. If you're still using Windows FileSharing (SMB/CIFS), I suggest you liberate yourself. It should never be enabled at lans as it is unreliable, inefficient, slow poison.

Yeah I've run an FTP on my pc for ages now for letting people leech off me. It's a bit more awkward though because the people can't just browse and find you, they have to know your IP and all that. I find it causes a ridiculous amount of CPU overhead at gigE speeds aswell...

Agreed that SMB is cack, but it's pretty much all you have to work with when very few other people will be running FTP's and they all want to just "right click -> share"

Richard Dower

New Raptors up and running, they are all dated November 25th 2005...day after my birthday. HD Tach is giving me better numbers.

SouperComputer

is this a soft or hard RAID setup RD?

If it was me, id grab a 15K U320 instead. Lower latency

Richard Dower

Running off the nForce4 Ultra controller using the latest 5.10.2600.553 SATA RAID drivers dated September 7th 2005.

Fallschirmjager

well i have 1 raptor (the 74gb one) in a raid 0 config

to be honest i use it for the os and games but eventually the plan is just for os and i will whack in a 250gb one for games et al.

i have to say i find it very fast with the os but thats cos i have xp, so the less time i have to look at the fecken startup screen the better...

it is loud..but is it worth it, i suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder...to me one of them is but thats all

good for you if you have the spons for this, i dont, unfortunately...

gline

Fallschirmjager wrote:

well i have 1 raptor (the 74gb one) in a raid 0 config

to be honest i use it for the os and games but eventually the plan is just for os and i will whack in a 250gb one for games et al.

i have to say i find it very fast with the os but thats cos i have xp, so the less time i have to look at the fecken startup screen the better...

it is loud..but is it worth it, i suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder...to me one of them is but thats all

good for you if you have the spons for this, i dont, unfortunately...

it isnt raid0 if you only have 1 drive.... it isnt even raid at all, it is just a single drive :rolleyes:

po0k

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

Yeah I've run an FTP on my pc for ages now for letting people leech off me. It's a bit more awkward though because the people can't just browse and find you, they have to know your IP and all that.

Get something like SuperScan4, enter in the IP range you wish to scan, look for port 21 and hit go.

*tadda*

I find it causes a ridiculous amount of CPU overhead at gigE speeds aswell...

Agreed that SMB is cack, but it's pretty much all you have to work with when very few other people will be running FTP's and they all want to just "right click -> share"

You'll have the same problem with SMB, except you can do very little to fix it.
You don't *have* to let people soak up your bandwidth and cpu, drop the priority of the ftpd and impose thread and speed limits on accounts. If people are at a lan, they're not being charged for bandwidth so if it takes 20secs instead of 10 to copy 1Gig, they're hardly being put out. Besides, just leaving your smb shares open to the world is going to leave you in a worse state as you'vevery little control, people can't really pause their transfers and it doesn't support any sort of intelligent queue structure. It's a trivial matter to resume FTP transfers at a later date. Going to play atournie match? Shutdown your ftp. The clients will auto-retry later when you bring it back up again.

Richard Dower

I have to say that my new drives with firmware FLC0 are much quieter then my older FLA0 drives...alot. It could be i didn't have the old drives mounted or secured properly. But these new one's are real silent.

gline

Richard Dower wrote:

I have to say that my new drives with firmware FLC0 are much quieter then my older FLA0 drives...alot. It could be i didn't have the old drives mounted or secured properly. But these new one's are real silent.

is there any way of upgrading the firmware on raptors?

Richard Dower

Sadly not gline, i explored this myself. Storagereview.com have a forum thread about this very question. WD don't allow for flashing tools and firmware upgrades...which is silly imo.

gline

Richard Dower wrote:

Sadly not gline, i explored this myself. Storagereview.com have a forum thread about this very question. WD don't allow for flashing tools and firmware upgrades...which is silly imo.

damn

rsynnott

May I be the first to congratulate you on your new e-penis.

Good lord, this is a bizarre forum.

Richard Dower

Why?....can you not just LIKE computers and technology without reading more into things than is nesscary?

These comments always happen.

rsynnott

Richard Dower wrote:

Why?....can you not just LIKE computers and technology without reading more into things than is nesscary?

These comments always happen.

That's not liking computers and technology. That's wasting a ludicrous amount of money, then coming on here to show off. The e-penis bit is by allusion to the sort of people who buy 100,000 euro cars to show off with.

SouperComputer

Its not somthing I could be arsed doing, but I wouldnt shoot someone down for trying it! Besides, we need people to try this sort of stuff as its a much cheaper way of evaluating the benefits.

gline

SouperComputer wrote:

Its not somthing I could be arsed doing, but I wouldnt shoot someone down for trying it! Besides, we need people to try this sort of stuff as its a much cheaper way of evaluating the benefits.

yeh we need willing "mugs" , ehem, i mean "testers", hehehee

Fallschirmjager

gline wrote:

it isnt raid0 if you only have 1 drive.... it isnt even raid at all, it is just a single drive :rolleyes:

dude...hence the laughing characters...it was my poor attempt at humour...