New system setup questions

[soul .gc]

Alright you experts -

 

With my new system I have been considering a Raid setup.

 

What is the advantage to a raid setup? More recovery options and safety?

 

Windows OS - I have XP now but am thinking of moving to Vista Ultimate - I have not heard many good things about Vista yet but with some of the support I do for friends and offices around here I am thinking I should probably get familiar with it. Will I run into constant crashes and driver conflicts?

 

Also - What is the benefit to Vista 64 over Vista 32?

 

My new system is as follows:

 

Case - TBD - Antec 900 or the CoolerMaster CM690

Board - Asus Striker Extreme Gamer

Ram - OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 2x1GB - DDR2 800

CPU - TBD E6550 or E6600 - waiting on the best price from hardforums right now

HDD - 250GB SATA, 120GB SATA, 75GB ATA - I can trade some of these out and get another 250GB for raid once I understand benefits to it

DVD - Lightscribe dual-layer super-multi drive

DVD - Generic DVD player

Sound - Waiting on a Creative with front panel setup but prices are still too high for me

 

Thanks again for the help all.

[dragonfly]

Basically,

Raid 0 = speed (striped, uses 2 hdd's like there's just one in that it writes/reads to both at once)

Raid 1 = safety (redundancy of using 2 hdd's like there's one in that it backs EVERYTHING up constantly - just a second copy of your first hdd)

 

I think those are the two basics that most use. If you had enough HDD's, you could do raid 0+1 (I think it's called) which would take ~4hdd's and it's both a mirror(raid1) and stipe(raid0) for both speed and redundancy.

 

I've used raid 0 and did see a performance increase. I need to get back to taht sometime too, when i totally stop playing ut2k4 and therefore no longer need xp.

 

Edit: with xp you'll need to install drivers to run raid. With vista you dont. I'm using vistax64 business, so you can too. My sig shows a very similar setup to whatyou plan on building.

Edited November 23, 2007 by DarkArchon

[Cujo]

here is an excellent resource:

http://www.acnc.com/04_00.html

 

i use 2x150gb raptors in raid 0 as my C: drive and i have a second drive that is 4x500gb in raid 0+1 or 10. i'm not sure which because bios says 0+1 but intel storage manager says 10. either way it's really fast and i feel totally safe if a hdd dies. between the 2 virtual drives i get transfer speeds passing 100mb/s. i have all my documents, desktop, music, etc routed to my raid 10. the only thing on raid 0 is installs which makes installing games lightning fast (my games are all stored on the raid 10) and also makes loading games lightning fast. i also locate my steam directory on the raid 10.

 

i would not recommend using raid 0 as your only system drive if you have no solid backup because if you lose one drive you lose everything.

 

if going to vista i would definitely use raid of some form as it's simple to set up. in xp it's a pita because you need a floppy drive plugged in to load the drivers from.

[soul .gc]

Damn Cujo - 4x500? So a terabyte of storage that use can use and the extra is mirrored for safety in case on crashes?

 

I am going through that website now. I did not realize that Raid 0 gave such a performance boost.

 

I am thinking of buying 2x150 (not raptors as those are too damn expensive) for my C: and then using my existing 250 as storage for my media crap.

[dragonfly]

Cujo, what program do you use to check the speed of your HDDs for write/read?

[ZeroDamage]

Raid-0 will load a game or css map a little quicker but it will not improve fps performance. Unless you have the extra money to spend, it really is not worth it. If you do video or graphics work, then it may be worth the extra dime (which isn't much with how cheap hard drives are these days). By the way, if your bios does the raid setup for like raid-0, XP will not (or should not) see the extra hard drive and the raid work is done behind the scenes by the motherboard. For example, my board support 0,1,5 via the bios. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813131142

 

The run of the mill X38 based board does as well but better: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813131219

[wilco]

hi soul

[Cujo]

Cujo, what program do you use to check the speed of your HDDs for write/read?

 

i've used atto32 in the past. haven't really benched recently but with vista you can see the actual speeds of the transfers when copying or moving files.

[soul .gc]

WILCO!!! - Long time no see bud! How goes life?

 

ZD - I decided against Raid after reading a bunch of articles on it - at least against Raid0 configs. I am going to try and get an 8800GT, and eventually get 2 so I can SLI them.

 

Here is my current stuff in the mail to me this week:

 

Case - Cooler Master CM690 Case - $49

PSU - Cooler Master 600w Extreme Power - $39

Board - Asus Striker Extreme - $180

CPU - Intel E6550 - $125

Ram - 2GB OCZ Reaper 800 - $45

HDD - 250GB Western Digital SATA (I have two other SATA drives that are smaller to serve as backups and storage) - $40

GPU - ATI x850xt - this sucks but I have run out of cash until my Office 2007 sells - $35

DVD - Lightscribe Writemaster super-multi drive and a spare DVD drive - Had it already in current system

OS - Vista 64-bit - $180

 

Total so far - $693 - I think this is pretty good so far, a bit more then I wanted to spend but this should last awhile.

 

Once done I am hoping to sell or part my current system for $500-600 on Ebay/Craigslist/Hardforum

 

Needed:

GPU - I need an 8800GT or GTX or Ultra but need cash first haha

Sound - Waiting for a Creative Fatality with the control panel

Heatsink - trying to decide which heatsink to get

Monitor - Current one only does 1280x1024

I do not mind using the Asus built-in sound, it has optical out and a ton of options. The thing I really need is a good vid card - wish my Office version would sell so I can get one. Ebay closed my auction and warned me since it was the Military Appreciation edition and I guess that cannot be resold per Microsoft.

Edited November 28, 2007 by soul .gc

[mohawk]

Nice soul! let us know how it runs..

 

cujo - i used to have two 36 gig raptors in raid 0, but was reformatting over and over due to some video/sound driver issues and got sick of transporting a floppy drive from apt to apt just to do so.

 

I'm currently running windows off a 36 gig raptor and using a 300 gig for storage, media, etc.. My question is - would I have to reformat in order to get my 2nd 36 gig raptor set up in raid 1?

 

I'd like to actually get some use out of my 2nd raptor, and it'd be nice to have a backup up hd to throw in there if I experience a crash, say, 10 minutes before an xt cal match

[Cujo]

soul, don't know much about that psu but it's cheap so i'd check some reviews first. oh and you'll never go sli. those cards don't have the ram for the higher res games. plus, anyone on here who's ever said they'll go sli have never done it.

 

mo, i believe you'd have to format to get raid 1 working. i've never done it without. btw, the reason i'm on vista is you don't need a floppy for raid drivers.

Edited November 28, 2007 by Cujo

[soul .gc]

It is a current $119 PSU with rebates and crap this week.

 

The 8800GT/GTX or ultra do not have the ram?

[Cujo]

It is a current $119 PSU with rebates and crap this week.

 

The 8800GT/GTX or ultra do not have the ram?

 

the gtx does but the gt doesn't in higher res games. with your current monitor sli would be useless. if you go to say a 24inch then at full aa and af levels you'll start to hit a ram limit with each card only having 512mb. the gpu performance will be there for more but you'll get hitching. the gtx is not worth the price right now though.

 

plus, in a month or two when you're ready to get that second card, a new card with speeds equal to the sli setup will come out and will be the better purchase. that's why no one really goes sli unless they do it right away.