Western Digital 74GB Raptors setup RAID 0 Vs. some form of SSD?

kdogg · 15 Nov 2010

I have two of the older 74GB SATA Raptors, setup Raid 0 for my OS/Gaming drive. All I use them for is Windows 7 x64 and my installed computer games. All my storage (porn!) is done on multiple 1.5TB and 2.0TB WD SATA drives.

I'm a Western Digital fan btw. I've had tons of drives over the year and I've NEVER had a single WD fail on me. I've had Seagates, Maxtors, IBM's etc all crap out on me. Hell, I still have a 320meg, yes MEG WD sitting in basement in a box that is 100% working. I always end up retiring my WD drives, passing them on to friends or tossing them in a box.

Anyhoo, I've had these Raptors a few years now and they have served me well. My only complaint is that they are noise as all hell, they sound like a damn coffee grinder when they access or defrag. Just the way they came.

These Raptors have been with me for the past two computer upgrades, well actually three if you count my current computer I built last week. This new motherboard supports SATA III though and I'm thinking it might be time to upgrade but I want to see if it's worth the cash before I do it.

I'm thinking SSD.

I was thinking about doing RAID 0 on a couple SSD drives but even if I go with the Crucial 64GB or another flavor of drive roughly the same size, I'm still looking at around $275.00~300.00 dollars for the upgrade. I thought about maybe getting a single (1) 60~80GB SSD drive now and running a single, non-RAID until they come down a little more in price then picking up a second one and RAID'ing but would a single still have THAT much more of a performance gain over what I have now to even be worth it?

I don't want it to just be a little faster like something I would have to do a bench mark to even notice. I want my OS and games to load quicker. If not, I might as well wait til they drop a little more in price before I do it.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Personal experience? Thank you!

OH and one last thing... Yes I've done some research. I know that on paper and in benchmarks even the single SSD wins out but I'm looking more for real world personal feedback here before I drop the cash.

pparks1 · 15 Nov 2010

1 single SSD drive is going to be a big improvement over your 2 Raptor drives in a RAID0 stripe. It's not the fact that it supports 200+MB/sec that is the advantage...it's the 0.1ms random access time to each and every single file on the hard drive that is going to be the big kick in the pants. And your raptors come nowhere near that level of performance.

I work with a guy who had 2 of the 74GB raptors in a RAID0...and he moved to an Intel X25-M G2 80GB for his OS/app/couple of games drive and was extremely pleased with the result. Like me, he felt the SSD was the single biggest performance upgrade he has ever done to any PC he has ever owned.

McSeven · 15 Nov 2010

SSD all the way.

DirtyElf · 16 Nov 2010

SSD is quiet as well... plus its going to be faster, then when you RAID them... oh man

linnemeyerhere · 16 Nov 2010

Dump the raid and go SSD for sure. Unless you can afford SSD's in raid then go for that but likely something else in the system will then be the bottleneck ....but it's all good.

swarfega · 16 Nov 2010

Ive just gone ssd today and Im very happy with it. And yes I have used 2 150gb raptors in raid0 in the past.

linnemeyerhere · 16 Nov 2010

I'm sure the raptors in raid was quick......how much improvement are you seeing with the new SSD?

swarfega · 16 Nov 2010

Ill post an hdtune test when everythings settled down. My original raptor hdtune test should still be on this thread somewhere.

pparks1 · 16 Nov 2010

DirtyElf said:

SSD is quiet as well... plus its going to be faster, then when you RAID them... oh man

Sure, your throughput numbers all go way up...but if you aren't using the drive as pure storage...is it really that beneficial?

The key to a fast OS and fast app loading is the extremely low random access times. Getting from file to file is the #1 thing as your OS is constantly reading and writing small random I/O. So, there really isn't that much gain if you can read it at 170MB/sec, or 250MB/sec, or 310MB/sec. It's whether or not you can get there in 0.1ms. Now, if you are copying huge files from C:\folder1 to C:\folder2...it would be really handy...but how much are you really going to store on an SSD at that price per GB???