2x60GB @ 7200rpm [Raid 0] vs. 2x80GB SATA @5400rpm [Raid 0]

#2. it's the extra space that helps. i think someone mentioned a half full 60gb 7200rpm would perform (slightly?) worse than a half full 80gb 5400. but don't take my word for it, wait for a true geek to reply.

congrats and welcome to the 9860 family!

i have no personal experience but if i was in ur position i wld have chosen 7200 drives..

the 80ies in raid0 will give you higher performance due to the 150mbs sata. but i doubt you will ever notice, as long as you dont edit video or similar enourmous datafiles. should you deal with video/audio def. get 2gb ram.

I believe PCTorque actually addressed this question in their 9860 review. IIRC their conclusion was that RAID0 with the 80GB SATA drives was slightly faster than RAID0 on the 60GB PATA drives - but that in single-drive configs the 60GB drive was faster than the 80GB drive. Guess the RAID overhead is much higher for PATA than SATA.

So, if it were me, I would get SATA if I planned to RAID and PATA (7,200 RPM) if not.

Which raises the question: when can we expect 7,200 RPM SATA notebook drives?

may want to look at this before going with a Raid 0 setup. do you really need it? http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101

Great link. Thanks.

Well, for my opinion, that article is crap. I'll take personal observation and experience over theoretics and benchmarks anyday. Laptop drives are slower than desktop drives, even the 7200 rpm ones which equal probably a 5400 in the desktop world. I've used RAID 0 on desktops and a laptop and the performance boost is remarkable. Obvious results I have seen in booting, going into hibernation, copying large files, editing large files and loading games. Sure, if you discount booting and never do anything but email and browse the web, you are waisting your money on RAID.

I got the same impression that if you planned on RAID, to go with SATA. I vaguely recall G-Omaha mentioning it. Try searching the forums, DeadPixel.

As for the 7,200 SATAs.... I hope so

It's in the PCtorque review(above) that the 80gigs are faster.

writing video

my 2 cents

I did not see any results for writing video files. I think that when I am writing a 15-20 gig uncompressed video file that Raid 0 might make a larger difference than implied in this article. Let me state I do not own a sager but I am thinking of buying a 9860. One of my big decissions is how to configure the drives. I am leaning towards raid 0.
I don't think it will be nessecary for me to back up the larger media drive if I am religious about backing up my batch and program files then I can probably just recapture my media in the event of drive failure.
IMO Raid 0 is something only a small number of people (mostly video editors) will need. If you regularly work with files over 5 gb then consider raid 0.

Except Anandtech isn't the only one that is saying that. Storagereview has as well (you'll need to do a search to find my old links)

Raid-0 - go with the dual 80GB 5,400 rpm SATA Drives.

All other go for the 60GB PATA drives.

If you do not process very large files (1GB and better), might not really matter much. If you process smaller files most frequently, RAID-0 may not be the best performer unless you really want the two drives to "look" as if they are one. Some applications perform better with two drives rather than RAID-0 stripped single image. If multiple read/write to different drives is the "norm", then get the SATA drives. SATA controller provides a two channels and the PATA provides a single shared channel.

I'd decide on storage requirements and costs more than anything else.

Something you have to consider that I haven't seen explicitly addressed here is that RAID on most desktop cards is accomplished much differently than in a server environment. Servers will have raid processing built right into the controller card... every bit of it. Where as these desktop controllers depend largely on the system CPU. So during office work or some database situations the RAID can be greatly advatageous. However, for gaming you want all that CPU for the game, not the hard drive controller. I'd imagine video processing will do well with either solution on a notebook.

My SATA based system at home had a cheap raid card in it that technically did RAID 1 and 0 which suited my needs, but as soon as you start trying to do large copies (100+GB at a time) the cpu starts crunching it's way up to 50% to do the job. Mind you this was an Athlon 1200, but you get my point.

Unless you're spending 4 or 500 dollars on a controller alone, it won't have the processor built in to do the work required of it. It seems this is the case with the Intel 915P chipset. If they had a seperate processor like high end cards on this chipset you can be sure they'd say so. This is where these theoretical numbers come in to play. As long as you're not using the CPU for anything else but a file read/copy/write then you get fantastic data rates. But you get trade offs when gaming.

For instance, 3ware makes some nice SATA cards... on board processing: http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata.asp
Promise on the other hand, while still performing RAID duties, says nothing of onboard processing just like Intel's 915 chipsets: http://www.promise.com/product/segme...orage%20ASICs#

Well the answer is both yes and no, I used to have a Sager 8790 with an 80GB 5400rpm PATA drive (as my boot drive) and a 60GB 7200rpm PATA drive dedicated to video editing (originally I had them round the other way).

The 60GB 7200rpm drive is faster than an 80GB 5400rpm drive (PATA or SATA) in a stand-alone config when it's empty (achieving transfer rates of about 33MB/s) but as it fills up the performance drops, by the time it's two thirds to three quarters full (37-42GB used) the performance drops to 20-25MB/s (even when used for data other than video, even with constant defragging). In contrast an 80GB 5400rpm PATA drive has a starting performance of about 25MB/s, the same amount of stored data (37-42GB) only uses up 50-55% of its capacity thus the performance drop is less - at this point it's still achieving 20-25MB/s.

The 80GB drive has a higher areal density causing it to perform almost as well at the start as the 60GB drive which has a faster rate of spin, over time the 80GB drive fills more slowly due to it's extra capacity thus the associated performance drop is slower in the 80GB drive - these two factors combined produce a situation where an 80GB 5400rpm drive containing 40-45GB of data can actually outperform (overall) a 60GB 7200rpm drive containing the same amount of data.

As for RAID 0 performance with either 2x60GB 7200rpm PATA drives or 2x80GB 5400rpm SATA drives - yes the 80GB SATA config is faster overall but the 60GB 7200rpm config is faster in some specific tests - namely Sequential Read and Random Write operations which are faster with the 60GB 7200rpm combination especially when the Windows file cache is turned on.

IMO where the performance difference is marginal (which overall I believe it is either with one drive or with two in a RAID 0 config) go for the option that gives you the larger capacity. I'd personally be interested to see a comparative benchmark of the performance of 2x100GB 5400rpm PATA drives in a RAID 0 config as I believe they might even give the 80GB 5400rpm SATA drives a run for their money - due once again to the increased areal density, if not they at least should not be very much slower (overall).

For an outside review of notebook hard drives that compares the Hitachi 60GB 7200rpm (7K60) and 80GB 5400rpm (5K80) PATA drives see here...

http://www4.tomshardware.com/mobile/...ook_hd-14.html

..note the often small difference (relatively) between them.

RAID 0 on my 8890 has made a HUGE difference on performance when running multiple Virtual Machines. I typically have 2 running along with the host OS (XP host and W2k3 in the VMs). I do not have an official timing on these but compile times are noticably faster as well as overall application performance when debugging.

DeadPixel,

Just a gentle reminder - with Raid 0, if either HD dies, you are completely hosed. If you decide to use a Raid 0 system, backup often!

This is also true of having one hard drive, RAID-0 should really be thought of as having just one large very fast drive - that's effectively what it is, consequently I use an external 80GB 2.5" USB 2.0 hard drive for backing up all important data. In my experience RAID-0 configs are no more prone to hardware failure than a single drive config.