hard-drives

Jon Miller · January 2, 2003, 23:28

well, I just purchased a new harddrive (And more ram) for my computer, sort of a christmas gift to mysefl

I got a 80 GB western digital with an 8 MB cache (UMDA 100, 7200 RPM)

while at Fry's, I noticed that there was a 200 GB HArddrive on sale (similiar to the one I bought)

It was 350 though (there might have been a rebate, not sure)

mine was 100 after rebate (hmm, I need to send that in)

now why would you get the 200 GB if it was so much more money?

what is the point which is most cost effective for the size of hard drives currently

(I was sort of suprised to see the 200 GB, although I should not have been seeing as I had known that 180 GB had been out for a while)

Jon Miller

Urban Ranger · January 2, 2003, 23:41

To store lots of porn.

Jon Miller · January 2, 2003, 23:44

that does not ansrew the cost effectiveness issue

(and my current 40 GB drive does not have the space to install all of my games, plus my shares of those games on edonkey)

Jon Miller

Six Thousand Year Old Man · January 2, 2003, 23:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
To store lots of porn.

At 10MB for a 2 minute video, that's 700 hours of porn, or a month nonstop. That IS a lot.

Logically 3 80 Mb drives at $100 each is 40 Mb more memory and $50 less than the 200 mb @ $350

Jon Miller · January 2, 2003, 23:49

that is what I was thinking

Jon Miller

Dis · January 2, 2003, 23:49

what are you getting at Jon?

The fact the 200 gig is so expensive is because the technology involved in order to cram 200 gigs on one hard disk!

So the 80 gig is far more cost efficient. They have been around for a year or two now. I suppose if you had the room you could install 3 of them

Urban Ranger · January 2, 2003, 23:49

Cost effectiveness as in GB/$? It depends. When all other factors are the same (seek time, transfer rate, etc.) that is a valid comparison.

Jon Miller · January 2, 2003, 23:51

I have the room for 8 or so hard drives (well, a couple slots have CD-burners plsu DVDs)

so I just went with what I thought was best for me

Jon Miller

Ted Striker · January 2, 2003, 23:54

Well Jon, since the 200 MB are still premium items (they are the biggest drives), you are still going to have to pay a premium price for them.

Personally I think it's better to have a pair of 80GB drives and then mirror them with a RAID1 card. That way if one goes bad you just put in another 80GB drive and don't have to worry about data loss.

Urban Ranger · January 3, 2003, 00:33

RAID is good. Many mobos come with IDE RAID these days.

Edan · January 3, 2003, 00:49

Quote:

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Personally I think it's better to have a pair of 80GB drives and then mirror them with a RAID1 card. That way if one goes bad you just put in another 80GB drive and don't have to worry about data loss.

IMO, mirror raid isn't worth it unless you had stuff you couldn't lose. Other backup methods are less expensive, and don't require space for 2 drives. Also, performance will go down slightly (especially if the drives are on the same channel). Raid 5, if you've got 3+ drives, is probably more worth it (although you would need all the drives to be the same size). Raid 5 would also have a performance increase.

The reasons for getting a larger drive than the price point might include only having 1 slot free for a drive, needing a very large partition (though you could always raid two disks together), or for a performance increase (if you use a 200gb drive, but only partition and use 80gb, the drive will perform better than an 80gb drive with an 80gb partition).

loinburger · January 3, 2003, 00:58

Data loss isn't too much of a problem in my experience, so long as you've got ready access to a second (or third) harddrive (i.e. so long as you go with the 2-3 80 GB drives and not the single 200 GB drive) -- I had ample warning the first time I had a drive go bad, and had (barely) sufficient warning the second time (had I only had a single drive then I'd've been sunk). Go with the 2-3 smaller drives, regardless of whether you plan on putting in a Raid card -- it's a helluva lot safer.

Ted Striker · January 3, 2003, 01:10

Quote:

Originally posted by Edan

IMO, mirror raid isn't worth it unless you had stuff you couldn't lose. Other backup methods are less expensive, and don't require space for 2 drives. Also, performance will go down slightly (especially if the drives are on the same channel). Raid 5, if you've got 3+ drives, is probably more worth it (although you would need all the drives to be the same size). Raid 5 would also have a performance increase.

There is no performance loss with a RAID1, as most cards come with memory cache. In my opinion the RAID 1 offers the best all around solution for high availablility. Instead of having to throw in a new drive, rebuild the OS, and then restore from your backups, you just open up the case and throw in a new drive, and let the card build the new drive in the background while you continue to work.

If you're gonna go for a RAID5, then you might as well go for a RAID10. RAID10 is the best RAID solution available, blowing the RAID5 out of the water in terms of performance, and also offers the reliability of the RAID1 mirror.

There is also a RAID50 but I have no experience with it.

Loinburger,

I disagree! Sometimes those things just die out of nowhere! I won't take the chance!

loinburger · January 3, 2003, 01:14

At least my computer had the decency to give me a "Drive Failure Imminent" warning...

Edan · January 3, 2003, 01:33

Quote:

Originally posted by Ted Striker
There is no performance loss with a RAID1, as most cards come with memory cache.

Hmm, there might be none in that case (though I'm a little skeptical) but if they're on the same channel, there probably would be.

Quote:

In my opinion the RAID 1 offers the best all around solution for high availablility.

As long as you don't mind the cost per GB

Quote:

If you're gonna go for a RAID5, then you might as well go for a RAID10. RAID10 is the best RAID solution available, blowing the RAID5 out of the water in terms of performance, and also offers the reliability of the RAID1 mirror.

As long as you don't mind the cost per GB

The reason I suggested Raid 5 is that it allows some protection at a little more cost which is probably more in line with what a typical home user might be willing to spend on their personal computer.

And really, how many home comuters need all of that much backed up, anyways? I probably have, maybe about 100-200 mb worth of stuff (system files, latest drivers, documents/work, basic programs like winzip, emacs and tera term, etc) that I would need to get back running quickly, plus add another 100 or 200 mb of saved games that would be nice to have - everything else I can just reinstall, since thats what fills up my disk, and none of it's vital (heck, I've got games installed that I haven't played in over 6 months...)

Ted Striker · January 3, 2003, 01:38

In terms of cost per GB, sure RAID5 is the more economical choice. But like Urban pointed out, there are alot of boards that come with onboard RAID cards now. In my experience, most of the boards come with built in RAID1/0 cards.

Hey Loinburger, that's pretty cool. Where did you see that message? BIOS? Was it a S.M.A.R.T message?

Quote:

And really, how many home comuters need all of that much backed up, anyways?

Well, I just keep hearing stories about people who have lost alot of important data, I think a RAID card would have saved alot of them.

Nubclear · January 3, 2003, 01:39

Quote:

Originally posted by Edan
And really, how many home comuters need all of that much backed up, anyways?

Well heres one house

I have over 5 GB of stuff that I have to always burn onto several CDs if I'm ever to format my computer.

loinburger · January 3, 2003, 01:44

Quote:

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Hey Loinburger, that's pretty cool. Where did you see that message? BIOS? Was it a S.M.A.R.T message?

It was a BIOS message, IIRC, though it might have been the OS. The drive crapped out for good about six hours later, which gave me more than enough time to move all of my important (and not-so-important) stuff to the other hard drive.

On the first drive that crapped out, I noticed that I had 5% bad sectors after running scandisk one day. I then had 8% a week later, and 10% two days after that. I backed everything up in a big goddamn hurry at that point...

Edan · January 3, 2003, 01:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Tassadar5000

Well heres one house

I have over 5 GB of stuff that I have to always burn onto several CDs if I'm ever to format my computer.

Well, of course there's always exceptions

Edan · January 3, 2003, 01:51

Quote:

Originally posted by Ted Striker
In terms of cost per GB, sure RAID5 is the more economical choice. But like Urban pointed out, there are alot of boards that come with onboard RAID cards now. In my experience, most of the boards come with built in RAID1/0 cards.

IIRC, a number of drives nowadays offer free raid cards, and the raid cards themselves can be had for like $20, though I take your point. I think my mb comes with Raid 5 built in as well, (cause I wanted that option available if I was going to have a raid) but I never bothered to build one.

Jon Miller · January 3, 2003, 01:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
RAID is good. Many mobos come with IDE RAID these days.

mine has that (1.6 years old), but I haven't used it yet

Jon Miller

Urban Ranger · January 3, 2003, 02:10

I don't think RAID-10 or RAID-50 is part of the spec. Anycow, I'd go with either RAID-1 or RAID-5 depending on the situation. RAID-1 for SOHO and RAID-5 for enterprises.

Ted Striker · January 3, 2003, 02:11

Ya, you are right Urban, I was just showing off my RAID knowledge. RAID10 and 50 are for server class systems.

But RAID10 is actually better performance and fault tolerance wise over the RAID5. The penalty you pay though is the MB cost the Edan mentioned.

Urban Ranger · January 3, 2003, 02:13

Interesting link: raid.edu - not a real website just part of it, and the link is for RAID-5.

Urban Ranger · January 3, 2003, 02:15

I thought you want to be an Oracle DBA ted? How's that coming along?

Ted Striker · January 3, 2003, 02:22

I should have some news for you on that in a couple of days Urban!! Thanks for asking, I'm pretty excited but I have to sit on the news so I don't jinx myself.

MichaeltheGreat · January 3, 2003, 02:23

Quote:

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man

At 10MB for a 2 minute video, that's 700 hours of porn, or a month nonstop. That IS a lot.

Logically 3 80 Mb drives at $100 each is 40 Mb more memory and $50 less than the 200 mb @ $350

You can't measure just by MB size. For IDE/EIDE/UDMA drives, they share the same bus and each pair shares an IRQ on typical dual channel motherboards, so moving data around three physical drives is slower than moving it around on one physical drive with multiple partitions.

Drive rotating speed, seek time and cache all influence cost, although I think ultra large UDMA drives are silly, since there is really only server apps where you need that much storage, and nobody in their right mind would use UDMA/IDE drives instead of SCSI.

For normal desktop performance issues, the more common drive sizes are more cost effective. If you're really looking at performance, (enterprise servers and especially database and data warehouse servers) UDMA / IDE isn't even in the picture. On my home/work desktop computers, I'm running Ultra160 SCSI 10k RPM drives, and running an Ultra320 SCSI RAID5 with 10k RPM drives on my servers.

For ultra high speed drives (15k RPM and 10k RPM, there are capacity limits because the drive heads need more slop space at those speeds, so the data density is lower on the same size platter. For 5400 and 7200 RPM drives, this isn't a problem, so you can do 250 gig or more (at least in SCSI) with no problem.

As far as how much useful data and hard to get stuff I have (as opposed to software I can reinstall from DVD or CD), on my home and office computers, I have about 25 gigs on each that need to be backed up. I use extra drives for that, and lock them up.

Ted Striker · January 3, 2003, 02:26

Quote:

On my home/work desktop computers, I'm running Ultra160 SCSI 10k RPM drives, and running an Ultra320 SCSI RAID5 with 10k RPM drives on my servers.

Damn Senor Rolls Royce!

How many drives you got on those RAID5 servers?

Oerdin · January 3, 2003, 02:37

I've got a 120 GB hard drive which means I can store a ton of MP3s off of Kazaa.

MichaeltheGreat · January 3, 2003, 02:43

Quote:

Originally posted by Ted Striker

Damn Senor Rolls Royce!

How many drives you got on those RAID5 servers?

3 hotswappable 73 gigs on one (it'll go to six), and six hotswappable 73 gigs on the other. I would have liked to go to 15k RPM, but that would have forced me down to 36 gig, which isn't enough for the databases I'm running.