Quote: Originally Posted by hardwaresecrets.com "RAID0, also known as data striping, can be used if you want to increase your PC disk performance, being recommended to high-end PCs. It works by accessing two identical hard disk drives in parallel, so in theory it doubles the data transfer rate between the computer and the hard disk drives. We were very curious to see if RAID0 really increases the hard disk performance and how it reflects on PC overall performance, so we set a RAID0 system, benchmarked our system and compared it to the same system with just one hard disk drive installed. We set our RAID0 with several different stripe sizes, from 4 KB to 128 KB, to check which configuration would give us the best performance. Check it out." Full Story at Uncomplicating the Complicated | Hardware Secrets

Here is nice little article for all of you that run RAIDO...

Nice find. Now the only question is which block size??

Here is a review using a set of Raptors:

AnandTech: Western Digital's Raptors in RAID-0: Are two drives better than one?

Anand's final thoughts...

Quote: If you haven't gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place, and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. The real world performance increases are negligible at best and the reduction in reliability, thanks to a halving of the mean time between failure, makes RAID-0 far from worth it on the desktop. There are some exceptions, especially if you are running a particular application that itself benefits considerably from a striped array, and obviously, our comments do not apply to server-class IO of any sort. But for the vast majority of desktop users and gamers alike, save your money and stay away from RAID-0 Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth

I think there are a few places where RAID can benefit you, but surprisingly, game level load times was not one of them!
For people addicted to benchmarking with PCMARK, there is a very nice gain to be found here, people that do video editing may find it usefull, but not many other places in the real world will see any tangible benefits!

I've been running Raid0 for about 5 years now. You don't know
what your missing til you try it. Trust someone else's review if
you must.. But my Raid array is cheaper than a single raptor drive
and "i" think it outperfom's it.. Get yourself a couple 8mb cache
regular drives and you'll be the king of the county for load times.
Raid0 rules, but if one drive dies, all your data is going, going, gone.

Slaymate:

I have heard many people rave about "Raid" performance, but the only thing I would personally care about would be game level load times, and from what I have heard and read...it does not help a bit!

The faster boot times would be nice, that is one place I have seen it help a lot, but I don't do a lot of file swapping or music/video stuff...so I am generally pretty happy with the performance of a single 10,000RPM Raptor, that is a truly "Real World" noticable gain over a single 7200RPM drive (And boots realy fast!)

For those people without Raptors, maybe they would see a bit more of a difference...I just traded my Raptor to Digi, and I am waiting to see how he likes it if he ever gets around to "Raiding" it!

(He just uses it for a "Bench Drive" right now...lol)

Oh..and one more thing..like you said, if there is ever a problem, you are in deep trouble recovering data, so realy you need a third drive to back everything up to...wich kind of negates any savings over having payed up front for a Raptor!

Quote: Originally Posted by $SOLID$ Necro Slaymate: I have heard many people rave about "Raid" performance, but the only thing I would personally care about would be game level load times, and from what I have heard and read...it does not help a bit! The faster boot times would be nice, that is one place I have seen it help a lot, but I don't do a lot of file swapping or music/video stuff...so I am generally pretty happy with the performance of a single 10,000RPM Raptor, that is a truly "Real World" noticable gain over a single 7200RPM drive (And boots realy fast!) For those people without Raptors, maybe they would see a bit more of a difference...I just traded my Raptor to Digi, and I am waiting to see how he likes it if he ever gets around to "Raiding" it! (He just uses it for a "Bench Drive" right now...lol) Oh..and one more thing..like you said, if there is ever a problem, you are in deep trouble recovering data, so realy you need a third drive to back everything up to...wich kind of negates any savings over having payed up front for a Raptor!

Are Raptor game loading times substantially that much faster? If so, there goes my next check..

Quote: Originally Posted by Master Yunk Are Raptor game loading times substantially that much faster? If so, there goes my next check..

Ohh yah. Also if you take raptors and put them in RAID0 - everyone forgets to mention this benefit. Your e-penis grows 50% larger.

yeah, just your e-penis though... not your performance...

Quote: Originally Posted by TiZakit yeah, just your e-penis though... not your performance...

True, the difference with raid0 raptors, is a benchmark/seat of the pants thing. Sure synthetic benchmarks look much better - but the "butt dyno" in day to day activies is really subjective. Personally - if a person wants to do it, I say great. I don't think I've ever told a person they should, but I personally wanted to, and did for a very limited time. Boot up times were slightly faster than a single, game loading was slightly faster too... but at the end of the day - I sold both my raptors for a drunken binge in Portland, and I found the drunken binge far more rewarding.

lol you guys are ridiculous.

Thanks for le info.

Yeah, I must admit that I want to do a RAID0 raptor array... but it just isn't feasable pricewise for me... besides, I'd much rather spend that sort of cash on a video card.