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RAID0 or not

post #1 of 4
8/28/08 at 12:03pm
Thread Starter 
I'm wondering if anyone with a larger Sager has tested the speed of RAID0 and compared it to a non raid configuration with the same drives.

I'm interested in how it affected battery life and boot times also. One of the main drawbacks of RAID in my opinion is that there is a significant time requirement during boot or recovery from hibernation as the RAID configures in BIOS compared to using IDE mode on your SATA drives. That requirement would easily negate any speed advantages during boot. The other main advantages of RAID0 in a gaming notebook is the load times of game levels but I'm not sure how much of a difference it would make.

The disadvantage of RAID0 is that both drives must run together at all times which will significantly affect battery life. In a non raid environment you can actually disable your second drive temporarily if you don't need it to improve battery life although it should stay spooled down anyway.
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post #2 of 4
8/28/08 at 2:48pm
I've tested RAID and non RAID for transfer speeds but not batter life. That would actually be a very good test.

http://www.notebookforums.com/thread215207.html

74 minutes with RAID 0
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post #3 of 4
8/28/08 at 5:04pm
Thread Starter 
That's a great test.

Have you tested those drives' performance as a single drive?

I have the OEM Fujitsu MHY2250BH 250GB 5400rpm Sata 1.5 in my 9262

For reference I ran it through HDTune and came up with the following:

Transfer Rate Maximum 52.8 MB/s (Ave 41.4)
Access Time 19.4ms
Burst Rate of 94.8 MB/s
CPU usage of 1.1%

That's with a single 5400rpm drive.

It would be nearly impossible to compare battery life between systems because the components are so different. I'm debating whether I should add a second identical Fujitsu drive for a pair of 5400rpm drives in RAID0 or a single high performance drive for booting windows and use the Fujitsu as a secondary drive. Some of the newer high capacity 5400rpm drives are outperforming many 7200rpm drives these days and they are cheaper, quieter, and more efficient.

I could also go crazy and get a pair of high performance drives in RAID0 and have three drives total but I would be forced to reinstall Windows XP.
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post #4 of 4
8/29/08 at 1:42pm
No, those HD Tune tests are while it is in RAID.
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