yeah, thats a pretty good price. If you raid them together, you will notice a faster startup time, and slightly less "lag" when opening a program. If you game, the loading screens will be noticably shorter. If you really want to make these babys scream, google "hdd short-stroking". Use the raptors for the OS, and the 500gb for data.
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I guess I'll pick them up. I think I'll put my OS and games on the raptors and my other stuff on the 500gb. I've heard about raid. Which one should I use? I think raid 0 is the fastest? After reading some forum posts it seems that short stroking is only beneficial to old drives and that modern ones don't see a big enough performance boost to warrant the space lost (maybe I'm wrong?).
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I emailed him asking for the warranty length but no reply yet so I'll just have to wait.
Originally Posted by MrLinky yeah, thats a pretty good price. If you raid them together, you will notice a faster startup time, and slightly less "lag" when opening a program. If you game, the loading screens will be noticably shorter. If you really want to make these babys scream, google "hdd short-stroking". Use the raptors for the OS, and the 500gb for data. |
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Originally Posted by ComGuards Before you buy, maybe see if you can get the serial numbers for a warranty check to see if you're still covered by WD, "just in case". I forget what the warranty length is on the Raptors. |
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The fastest raids are 0 and 10, but you need more hdds for raid 10.
The biggest reason why mechanical hdds are slow is because of the time it takes to for the read and write heads to move to where they are needed. Short-stroking works by confining the read and write heads to the outside of of the platter, which spins "faster", thus read/write/seeks times get better. And this technique works better with higher-density and faster-spinning drives, so actually modern drives see the biggest performance boost.
And its fairly easy, you just need to raid 0 them together, make a partition (the smaller the partition gets, the faster it becomes) on the outside of the disk, and install!
Short-stroking does come with a massive disk space loss, which is why you'll need and external hdd or a thrid internal hdd for your other data. Normally in short-stroking, you'd make the partition on the hdds, and the rest would be unusable unformatted space, but you can make that unformatted into a second partition and store stuff on it. But the more the heads have to travel back to that second partition, the bigger and bigger hits you'll take to the performace numbers. No programs or OSs, just rarely accessed data, like backup ISOs or something.
Whew, that was a long post
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Originally Posted by Dar_T I've heard about raid. Which one should I use? I think raid 0 is the fastest? After reading some forum posts it seems that short stroking is only beneficial to old drives and that modern ones don't see a big enough performance boost to warrant the space lost (maybe I'm wrong?). |
The biggest reason why mechanical hdds are slow is because of the time it takes to for the read and write heads to move to where they are needed. Short-stroking works by confining the read and write heads to the outside of of the platter, which spins "faster", thus read/write/seeks times get better. And this technique works better with higher-density and faster-spinning drives, so actually modern drives see the biggest performance boost.
And its fairly easy, you just need to raid 0 them together, make a partition (the smaller the partition gets, the faster it becomes) on the outside of the disk, and install!
Short-stroking does come with a massive disk space loss, which is why you'll need and external hdd or a thrid internal hdd for your other data. Normally in short-stroking, you'd make the partition on the hdds, and the rest would be unusable unformatted space, but you can make that unformatted into a second partition and store stuff on it. But the more the heads have to travel back to that second partition, the bigger and bigger hits you'll take to the performace numbers. No programs or OSs, just rarely accessed data, like backup ISOs or something.
Whew, that was a long post
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I see. So would say making the 150Gb into just 60Gb (one for OS and the other for games) be good? You don't happen to have access or know of a guide that is very easy to follow to set up raid 0 and how to set up partitions (for shortstroking).
Originally Posted by MrLinky The fastest raids are 0 and 10, but you need more hdds for raid 10. The biggest reason why mechanical hdds are slow is because of the time it takes to for the read and write heads to move to where they are needed. Short-stroking works by confining the read and write heads to the outside of of the platter, which spins "faster", thus read/write/seeks times get better. And this technique works better with higher-density and faster-spinning drives, so actually modern drives see the biggest performance boost. And its fairly easy, you just need to raid 0 them together, make a partition (the smaller the partition gets, the faster it becomes) on the outside of the disk, and install! Short-stroking does come with a massive disk space loss, which is why you'll need and external hdd or a thrid internal hdd for your other data. Normally in short-stroking, you'd make the partition on the hdds, and the rest would be unusable unformatted space, but you can make that unformatted into a second partition and store stuff on it. But the more the heads have to travel back to that second partition, the bigger and bigger hits you'll take to the performace numbers. No programs or OSs, just rarely accessed data, like backup ISOs or something. Whew, that was a long post
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So im a little confused, you are going to be buying both drives right? If so, i highly recommend raid 0'ing them together... short-stroked or not. And when 2 or more hdds are raid'd, the OS sees them as one normal hard drive... you can't access them independently.
You could use them seperatly, like 2 independent 150gb (or 60gb if short-stroked) disks, one with the OS and other for games/files, but two independent short-stroked hdds will equal two raid'd non-short-stroked hdds in performance (not exactly, but for the sake of simplicity)... and thats why i'd recommend raiding.
I had your exact mobo for my last build, and raiding the disks together takes 15 seconds in the bios
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Unfortunatly, its been awhile, so i forget the exact names of the menus
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, but either the "integrated prehprials" or "advanced chipset features" menu,you'll turn on raid support, and activate the sata ports that your raptors will be plugged into (i recommend the first two ports available, ie 1 and 2, or 0 and 1).
I have yet to see a short-stroking guide, but the easiest way is to raid your blank drives together in the bios, then boot from the vista or 7 install disk/thumbdrive, and make a 120gb partition (a 60gb will be put on each drive) with the installer. You can leave the rest as "unallocated space" or make another partition, like we talked about earlier.
And you can make the partition whatever size you want, im just using the 60gb as an example.
Originally Posted by Dar_T So would say making the 150Gb into just 60Gb (one for OS and the other for games) be good? |
You could use them seperatly, like 2 independent 150gb (or 60gb if short-stroked) disks, one with the OS and other for games/files, but two independent short-stroked hdds will equal two raid'd non-short-stroked hdds in performance (not exactly, but for the sake of simplicity)... and thats why i'd recommend raiding.
I had your exact mobo for my last build, and raiding the disks together takes 15 seconds in the bios
I have yet to see a short-stroking guide, but the easiest way is to raid your blank drives together in the bios, then boot from the vista or 7 install disk/thumbdrive, and make a 120gb partition (a 60gb will be put on each drive) with the installer. You can leave the rest as "unallocated space" or make another partition, like we talked about earlier.
And you can make the partition whatever size you want, im just using the 60gb as an example.
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Yup I'm going to buy both of them. I will be putting them in raid 0 and then since you said short stroking them would be a good idea I thought I would do that to both the drives but seeing as how you mentioned that both the drives would be seen as one I assume its just basically short stroking one drive.
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Originally Posted by MrLinky So im a little confused, you are going to be buying both drives right? If so, i highly recommend raid 0'ing them together... short-stroked or not. And when 2 or more hdds are raid'd, the OS sees them as one normal hard drive... you can't access them independently. You could use them seperatly, like 2 independent 150gb (or 60gb if short-stroked) disks, one with the OS and other for games/files, but two independent short-stroked hdds will equal two raid'd non-short-stroked hdds in performance (not exactly, but for the sake of simplicity)... and thats why i'd recommend raiding. I had your exact mobo for my last build, and raiding the disks together takes 15 seconds in the bios
I have yet to see a short-stroking guide, but the easiest way is to raid your blank drives together in the bios, then boot from the vista or 7 install disk/thumbdrive, and make a 120gb partition (a 60gb will be put on each drive) with the installer. You can leave the rest as "unallocated space" or make another partition, like we talked about earlier. And you can make the partition whatever size you want, im just using the 60gb as an example. |
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