I now have a pair of WD SE 120 for raid zero.

[spiderman2]

Can't wait to try my brand new WD SE 8mb 120'S=240gigs. One was made in May 03 and other one coming right from WD factory and is newer tomorrow. Not easy getting two WD SE 120gig 8mb because it is a lot of dough. I am going to raid zero them on a highpoint 272 controller using latest bois 2.34 with XP Pro. I know, I should run them as raid 1 . But, I just want all the speed I can get.The WD'S are brand New, so I do not think drive failure is very likely at least for two or more years. It is going in a old tiger midtower with a 1700t tbred Overclock and running stable at 2,323mz at 185bus in a KX7-R. Cooling is a Copper 485grams- Sk-7, with artic silver 111, with duel adj 80Ytech 48cmf and thermalright 48cmf fans using thermalrights MOD DUCT, with exhost 80 fan right next to MOD DUCT blowing out hot air. Also Alpha PEP 66T monster North Bridge Cooler and Southbridge has old NB heatsink glued with artic silver adhesive.Mosfets cooled by ALU Althon heatsink parts cut to fir by hacksaw with artic silver adhesive. Memory is Winbond 5nos Hand picked-Black copper Heatspreaders -Mushkin 3200 222 two sticks of 256mb.This is finishing my upgrading for a while:x :x :x

[Philip1952]

so I do not think drive failure is very likely at least for two or more years.

A drive dieing is not that much of a concern. A broken stripe is. A broken stripe can happen from a power surge or a power failure when data is being written to the HDD. Or it can happen for no reason that you could see. The main rule with raid 0 is to backup often. Backup to a cdr or a seperate HDD. Do not trust a partation on the raided drives.

[Ankerson]

Raid 0 is a huge mistake, you will regret it in the long run.;)

[Ankerson]

But, I just want all the speed I can get.


Then you should be running SCSI, not IDE.;)

[spiderman2]

I been running raid zero for three years with not too much problems and I like the extra boot up speed and it has been working perfect in the KX7-R motherboard with no broken stripes:x :x :x I do back up important data on a maxtor 40gig drive 5400rpm:x If you backup whats the big deal?

[spiderman2]

scri whatever is too much dough ,noisy, and drives too small.

[Ankerson]

No comment....:p

[spiderman2]

Ups just droped off my second drive, time to backup data any way:x :x :x

[Ankerson]

Originally posted by spiderman2
scri whatever is too much dough ,noisy, and drives too small.

Really?


The SEAGATE SCSI 146.7GB 10,000RPM is bigger than the drives you are getting.

The new SCSI drives aren't loud. (I have 5 of them in my fileserver and can't hear them)

Yes they are more money, but you get what you pay for.

[spiderman2]

I am pissed off at WD they sent me a year old 120gig now,I might have to go with raid 1:mad: :mad: :mad: They suck dog doo:(

[Ankerson]

You thought you were going to get a new drive...:t

You won't unless you bought it retail and return it to the store were you got it.


Ahhh....SCSI.....5 year warrenty, new drives as replacements.:t

[spiderman2]

These two WD 120gig may not be good for raid, One is from Malaysia dec 2002 looks like a refurbished drive-now I am sure it is (refurbished) drive from WD for $130 and the good is from Thailand-retail box-May 2003. How can WD expect you too raid these? I guess they don't care. They don't even tell you if one drive has two platters or three this is very poor customer relations-I hope they beak ten times in three years , so they don't make any money-I will just keep sending them back:x :x :x Raid 1 here I come:confused:

[Ankerson]

With IDE they don't care if you can use them in raid or not, that's not what IDE drives were ment to do anyway. They are not designed to take stress like the SCSI drives are.

You can use them in RAID 0 if they are both 120gb drives though.

[spiderman2]

I can see the two 120gig drives are different,by looking on the circuit board my guess , I have a two platter drive and a three platter dirve , the worst thing to happen for a raid setup , two different speed drives. I now see why people say WD SE 8mb are bad for raid and only run like 2mb 7200 hard drives. This is the reason,people donot know that WD trys to snow people and give them refurbished old drives as new ones to make a few extra bucks, good luck with my dead c -just kidding:r :x :D

[sm8000]

I wouldn't run a RAID array on IDE drives because IDE RAID controllers make your CPU do the work.

[BipolarBill]

The difference between two 80GB 8MB WDs isn't worth crying about.

[spiderman2]

Screw the little differences, I will try a raid zero any way. I have a extra drive just for backing up data and can boot by using either one. I got the retail drive of $94 after rebate,so I got the drives pretty cheap , maybe they will work ok for a year or so and I will get some other drives later-I am sure they are better than my old 10gig AS 7200 Quantums at raid zero. I have been running raid zero for over three years and only the early version of highpoint 370 gave me broken stripes. My new setup is using a fresh factory model abit KX7-R and it's highpoint 372 has been running perfect for four months. The only way to know is try it. And I can always run the old drives if I need too.:rolleyes: And cpu use is only %10-15% and does not matter in a 2,200+mz system.

[spiderman2]

I do not know of any major differences in the 80gig wd models , but the 120gig use two and three platter versions, the two plater version is faster. If anybody raids the 120gig model, go with a retail versions only, WD sent me a one year old drive and this does make a difference in the 3 year war-I just lost one year. This is not fair to me:mad: Read the post at New egg, there is a lot of mad people at WD there with broken refurbished drives-retail are the newest best model-it does make a big difference.:p

[Midknyte]

I think the risks are not worth running ide raid 0.

excerpt from www.storagereview.com

Is RAID 0 Really Worth It? Entry 915 04 February 2003

At any given point in time, all one needs to do is look at topic list in the SR Discussion Community to see a frenzy of enthusiasts pursuing increased drive performance through striping, or RAID 0. Many readers are pouring lots of money into such equipment and spending a great deal of time and effort configuring their arrays.
Details on RAID 0 may be found in this section of the SR Reference Guide. Suffice it to say that with two drives, when properly configured, RAID 0 will offer double capacity and sequential transfer rate offered by the standalone drive; but is it truly double the capacity and double the performance?

Capacity will indeed double. Bear in mind however, that data striped across two drives is much more vulnerable to loss as a physical failure of either drive results in loss of data on both. If capacity is the goal, it is better to run the two drives as distinct units.

What about performance? This, we suspect, is the primary reason why so many users doggedly pursue the RAID 0 "holy grail." Why they do, however, isn't clear.

Theory states that RAID 0 doubles transfer rates, but what do transfer rates really do for performance in contemporary desktop machines? As we've stated many times in the past, not much. STR simply does not significantly impact performance in typical desktop applications. There are certain cases, of course, such as editing of streaming data, where STR has a substantial impact. For other uses, however, its influence is insignificant.

So what's a "real world" speed increase? If we were to judge by the posts in the SR Community, everyone uses their RAID arrays for the sole purpose of running the deplorable ATTO PowerTools's benchmark. ATTO measures sequential transfer rates; it does not report anything remotely close to application-level performance.

Still interested in seeing what kind of benefits an inexpensive yet properly configured RAID 0 array delivers? While formal, ongoing RAID tests currently fall outside the existing purview of SR, consider an array that we constructed in our third-generation testbed using a Promise FastTrak SX2000 in conjunction with a pair of 200 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 drives. We've run StorageReview.com's Desktop DriveMarks to demonstrate what kind of application-level increases one may expect. Those who are unfamiliar with and those who doubt the veracity of the Desktop DriveMarks are strongly advised to re-read our methodology article to put these results in proper perspective.

StorageReview.com 1x 200 GB DM+9 2x 200 GB DM+9 RAID 0
IPEAK Average Read Service Time 13.2 ms 13.3 ms
WinBench 99 Outer Zone Transfer Rate 55.3 MB/sec 109.4 MB/sec
Inner Zone Transfer Rate 31.6 MB/sec 63.1 MB/sec
SR Office DriveMark 2002 395 IO/sec 426 IO/sec
SR High-End DriveMark 2002 373 IO/sec 408 IO/sec
SR Bootup DriveMark 2002 288 IO/sec 474 IO/sec
SR Gaming DriveMark 2002 519 IO/sec 529 IO/sec


Unsurprisingly, the dual-drive RAID 0 solution delivers double the sequential transfer rate of a single unit. The SR Office, High-End, and Gaming DriveMarks, however, all climb by less than 10%. Also consider the fact that the RAID array boasts double the capacity of the single drive: as a result, some of that performance increase we see between the single drive and the RAID array simply comes from the larger capacity and resultant shorter actuator travel distances. Is this worth twice the cost plus the cost of the controller?

A notable exception arises within the SR Bootup DriveMark 2002. Windows XP tracks the order of requests during the boot process and does its best to reorder data found on a drive to facilitate sequential reads as a system starts up. Since the Bootup DriveMark 2002 trace was captured from a system that had been restarted and defragmented many times, this individual test likely reflects the transfer rate advantage that one achieves through RAID 0. Therefore, if the primary purpose of one's machine is to start Windows XP, RAID 0 offers overwhelming performance benefits .

Again, RAID 0 does have its advantages in a handful of key applications and uses where data files are huge and/or data requests are highly sequential in nature. Data requests are not highly sequential, however, in typical desktop productivity and gaming usage patterns, the most often cited in "Help me build my RAID 0!" posts.

The point? Don't assume RAID 0 offers increased performance for all or even most applications... and don't assume that transfer rates reflect application-level performance.
(submitted by Davin at 08:37 EST) - top

[spiderman2]

Raid zero is like a hobby to me ,it's fun to watch it work, I like a fast boot up time and loading files is a blast. It does give a nice boost, but is a bit risky with data-it's major flaw, but if you back up data- it's not so bad. And a matched pair, really cuts down the failure rate. This is why Wd makes me mad ,if I new all this, I would have bought a maxtor 160gig 8mb drive instead.:r

[BipolarBill]

Originally posted by spiderman2
Screw the little differences, I will try a raid zero any way. If you'd stop wasting money (twice the price for about a 20% return in performance), you and the whiners at Newegg could enjoy very good single-drive speeds and stop losing sleep over number of disks.

RAID 1 gives about a 10% read boost and provides protection against drive loss. What does RAID 0 give you? It doesn't even give you bragging rights at the Newegg teeny-bopper's forum because one of those brats is bound to have SCSI RAID 5 anyway. He'll mop the floor with the rest of you too. :r

[spiderman2]

20% is a very big boost in the slowest part in the computer. Boosting some disk speed is like adding another 5oomz to your computer and it cost nothing more than a raid controller about $15-$20 more for a motherboard that has it. A 250gig drive goes for $400. A faster raid zero with two 120gig cost around $250 or less with rebates. So add it up, more disk space for less money. Raid is saving me money and boot time. Only draw back is WD sending me mismatched hard drives- I lose some more failure rate to the raid,maybe not much, but this is WD way of screwing it's customer's with cheapo replacement drives. WD slits thier own throat by doing so,sending more people to Maxtor. Not everything is just cut and dry.:x :x :x I am not raiding for teeny boppers with faster drives, I could care less.:D

[Midknyte]

The SR Office, High-End, and Gaming DriveMarks, however, all climb by less than 10%

It's up to you, but don't say you weren't warned. ;)

[spiderman2]

You forget, I have been running raids zero for three years with not much trouble, My quantums were a perfectly matched pair at raid zero running non stop[ for two years with out much back up , only cd burner for backup. Because I two slightly mis matched WD SE 120gigers< I am not sure about running them as a raid, but mostly they would work well. I was looking to replace my old raid drives with newer faster ones.I am still considering Raid 1 because it is a very good use of raid, read 10% more with auto backup plan and because the drives are a bit mismatched. I guess the only way to really find out is try both. :x I will try raid zero and see what happens, if it does not work good, I can still boot to my third backup drive:D :eek:

[Ankerson]

Well like the old saying goes:

You can lead a Horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

[spiderman2]

I will flip a coin>:D

[spiderman2]

Raid 1 won coin toss:rolleyes:

[sm8000]

Make sure it wasn't one of those two-headed coins

[spiderman2]

So your a raid zero man? With no backups too?:x

[sm8000]

Actually I'm a zero RAID man - I don't do it at the moment. :)

[spiderman2]

Scew the coin toss, I want my speed back, raid 0 is for me, I like to stay awake all night worrying about my hard drive. I think the WD is just old not refurbished, so its probly just as unreliably as the newer one. They blow up I will rma both of them and sell them to a dummy.:x :x :x :x

[Disk11]

Spidey, for your next hdd purchase, take a look into fiber drives. Nicely sized packs of them can be bought pretty cheep on ebay and can deliver a lot of bandwidth. But you also need a fiber controller and its recommended you get an external enclosure for them.

[doomforce]

good luck spidey m8 there!

[spiderman2]

I am calling up WD and complaining about being sent a year old drive when I bought a brand new one that was dead. WD should have sent me a new drive not a old version. I will let you know what they say.:r :r :r

[spiderman2]

The store my take back this dud,going to try tomorrow. If so, after 20days, I will have a perfectly matched pair of new drives not refurbished-what a pain in ***,but nothing come easy for the raid zero man.:x :x :x

[sm8000]

Just out of curiosity, how do you set up your swap/page file (if any) when your C: is a RAID 0 array? Do you do it on C: or is it any faster to place it elsewhere?

[spiderman2]

I just rename the c drive to raid .Not sure If that answered question.

[Midknyte]

for all intents and purposes, windows sees the raid array as a single drive. if you only have the one array, then the pagefile is going to be on C: of the array. if you partition the array, then you could put it in a different location.

[sm8000]

What I'm asking is if there is any benefit to place it off the array rather than on it (or vice-versa), and whether it ought to be a fixed size in either situation.

[spiderman2]

I am back just for Bill,Today is the big day my rma from Wd comes today, I sent back a dud to them , lets see if they send me another refurbished three platter drive or a good new one-mostly likey - a three platter refurbished -6 month drive, but i don't care too much anymore as this will be a back up drive and not raided ,if thats the case. This is my setup and because of my case,I don't really want to take out a floppy drive just for another hard drive, I am using this setup for my drives. A raided zero array with two 120WD Se 8mb drives-highpoint raid and one backup drive on ide master-primary. I like this setup because, I always have a instant backup, if one setup fails, two bootable drive setup-have a good day:t

[BipolarBill]

This thread is closed and will be moved soon.

I suggest to start talking about something else. Your RAID array is old - very old. Your imagined overclocking is old as well.

If you have a tech problem, ask. If you want to help someone else, go for it. Otherwise, stay in the Community forum. I can't see you raising your post count on this lame **** anymore, spiderman2.