Fastest HD hybrid system

dnoren · November 2nd, 2009, 09:53 AM

Building new computer sys for clean install of Windows 7 and am considering the following HD system ( just to see how fast a non-SCSI desktop HD system can be for a somewhat reasonable price ):

120GB SSD C: drive, for OS stuff - OCZSSD2-1AGT120G Agility 2.5 Inch Solid State Drive - about $350

1TB D: drive, for Program Files - Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black Internal Hard Drive - WD1001FALS, 7200rpm, Serial ATA/300 - about $110

1TB E: drive, for data - Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black Internal Hard Drive - WD1001FALS, 7200rpm, Serial ATA/300 - about $110

Question, will the on-board SATA controller ( ASUS M4A79XTD EVO ATX AMD Motherboard ) async to the C, D and E drives, or should additional SATA controllers be installed for best overall async performance of the three drives?

MTAtech · November 2nd, 2009, 10:59 AM

What are you doing that requires the bleeding edge in speed?

My feeling is that the on-board SATA controller is more than adequate for anyone's needs and that adding additional SATA controllers would not make a noticeable difference if there is any difference at all.

dnoren · November 2nd, 2009, 12:37 PM

I work for the Museum of Science Boston, Cahners ComputerPlace and need to keep up to 'speed' with latest technology ( pun intended ).

Many visitors ask about computer performance, price / performance tradeoff's, ect. As well we are a staffed with, you guessed it, tech geek volunteers who just want to know about, or may actually play around with, bleeding edge just for bragging rights....

EXreaction · November 2nd, 2009, 12:46 PM

Why not use the SSD to store program files too?

$110 is a bit much for 1TB, you can get 1.5TB for that price. If you have any important data being stored, I'd put them in raid 1.

dnoren · November 2nd, 2009, 03:56 PM

Well, perhaps about the price, but at this time we are more interested in checking out performance than overall storage capacity.

The SATA II WD Caviar Black ( 1TB ) have two controllers per drive, which should give it a bit of an edge for 7200 RPM drives. Also, SSD for the OS vs. the other two is a tradeoff between cost, performance and storage capacity.

10,000 RPM SATA drives are expensive per GB and do not have much storage capacity...

RAID brings in another twist. From performance we believe that the way we are going is better. For RAID one really should get RAID SATA drives ( again more expensive ), and if one needs RAID for mission critical things ( which we do not ), then go with SCSI RAID, not SATA RAID. In all cases have a decent backup system/policy as RAID still has single points of failure - RAID controller, OS/MB, PS, human factors, etc.

EXreaction · November 2nd, 2009, 04:26 PM

RAID means "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks." There is no reason you need high end drives for a Raid setup, the chance that all drives in a Raid 1 setup will fail at the same time is miniscule.

dnoren · November 2nd, 2009, 04:38 PM

check out what WD has to say about non-RAID SATA drives in a RAID array,

What is the difference between Desktop edition and RAID (Enterprise) edition hard drives?

Also, I have a lot of experience with all types of RAID, and unless done right ( meaning high end controllers and SCSI RAID drives ), there typically are more problems over time than you can imagine, and overall performance is marginal vs. good single drive systems ( unless you have a seperate controller for every spindle ).

MTAtech · November 2nd, 2009, 04:46 PM

The SCSI drives I use in my company's RAID array are very expensive. The expense is not because they are more reliable but because they are higher performance -- 15,000 RPM disks.