*URGENT* Drive configuration

[H0R53]

Right now I'm redoing the cable management behind the side panel in my main rig, so I'm on my laptop.

 

I have my SSD dedicated to Windows only, meaning only Windows and Microsoft programs are on it, aside from save games, my music, and pictures.

 

I have 3x 500GB 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda drives in RAID0 (so 1.5TB) in the bottom of my case, designated for games and non-Microsoft programs, as well as torrents and other miscellaneous storage for 3D models, textures, et cetera. My YouTube videos are also stored on here.

 

There is a 5 inch drive bay, and below that a single 2.5 inch drive bay for presumably an SSD. Here I would normally put a single 250GB WD Caviar SE drive, and with an adapter tray I would put another 3.5 inch drive in the 5 inch bay, in RAID0 (so 500GB) They would be relatively close together so cable management would be relatively simple. These drives are used only for storing FRAPS data like screenshots and recorded footage.

 

My dilemma is that I don't want them in my case. I don't want two drives. They're big and clunky and just uncesscesary. If I had a 500GB SSD I would swap that in, but in testing FRAPS chokes on my boot SSD. Don't ask why, I don't know and I don't care.

 

I have a spare 500GB drive, but I don't want to impact FRAPS write speed. The RAID array is definitely faster than a single drive.

 

However, due to being 5400RPM SATAII drives they are somewhat limited in overall bandwidth.

 

The 500GB drive I have is SATA III.

 

My question, after giving you all this information, would be this:

 

Is a single 7200RPM SATAIII drive faster than two 5400RPM SATAII drives in RAID0?

 

[frrile]

You are probably not saturating the SATA II or Sata III bandwith so that's probably a non issue.  The 2x 250GB RAID 0 setup is probably going to be a bit faster, even with the 5400RPM.  May I ask why FRAPS isn't running on the 3x500GB 7200RPM Raid 0 drives you already have?

 

[vanished]

First of all, I'm not aware of any HDD that can even saturate SATA II, especially on the consumer desktop side, so SATA revision is irrelevant.

 

Next, RPM is not the only factor in HDD speed.  Capacity directly affect it as well, and so do other various things they can do (think blacks vs blues).

 

RAID0 will probably get you almost double the sequential write speed when using two drives, with diminishing returns with additional drives, and no meaningful change to random IO speed.

[H0R53]

2 minutes ago, frrile said:

You are probably not saturating the SATA II or Sata III bandwith so that's probably a non issue.  The 2x 250GB RAID 0 setup is probably going to be a bit faster, even with the 5400RPM.  May I ask why FRAPS isn't running on the 3x500GB 7200RPM Raid 0 drives you already have?

 

So games load much faster. Skyrim takes like 5 seconds to fully load.

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

First of all, I'm not aware of any HDD that can even saturate SATA II, especially on the consumer desktop side, so SATA revision is irrelevant.

 

Next, RPM is not the only factor in HDD speed.  Capacity directly affect it as well, and so do other various things they can do (think blacks vs blues).

Okay, cool.

 

So which will be faster directly?

[vanished]

Just now, H0R53 said:

So games load much faster. Skyrim takes like 5 seconds to fully load.

Okay, cool.

 

So which will be faster directly?

What I'm saying is I don't have enough information to be able to make that call.  At the very least, seeing benchmarks of the two drives you're considering (the one you would use alone or one of the ones you would put in RAID) would be needed to be sure.

[H0R53]

5 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

What I'm saying is I don't have enough information to be able to make that call.  At the very least, seeing benchmarks of the two drives you're considering (the one you would use alone or one of the ones you would put in RAID) would be needed to be sure.

How about an educated guess?

[vanished]

1 minute ago, H0R53 said:

How about an educated guess?

My gut would be that RAID 0 would be much better if the drives are even remotely similar, but if the single drive is considerably better, then it wouldn't be out of the question for it to win.

[H0R53]

10 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

My gut would be that RAID 0 would be much better if the drives are even remotely similar, but if the single drive is considerably better, then it wouldn't be out of the question for it to win.

It's not 'considerably' better, just a standard Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200RPM SATAIII drive you'd find in any Dell tower these days.

 

The Caviar SEs are from 2006, but the SMART data reads A+.