Hard Drive Options for the M1730

Alright so, that time has come because I'm fed up deleting stuff all the time and I want to also run a proper dual boot configuration with Vista and XP (Because I've heard from you all that XP = the win for SLI and stuttering issues.)

My options are to either run single hard drive mode or RAID 0. Obviously RAID 0 means the same size hard drives, but if i went single hard drive mode i could get the

320 gb WD 7200 RPM 16mb CACHE (use as main drive for vista)
AND
500gb WD 5400 RPM 8mb CACHE (use as XP drive and storage)

OR i could get 500gb x2 for RAID 0 and partition it with an XP partition on the D: drive.

I think 320x2 is not enough, if I'm upgrading I should go for at least 800gb.

My question for you guys, is do you think single mode performance of a 7200 RPM 16mb cache drive will be enough, and barely noticable than 5400 RPM 500GB discs in RAID0?

Cheers.

 

Well, I think RAID 0 in laptops is kind of dumb since laptops are most likely to have corrupted data and RAID 0, at least to me, just shouts data loss at the top of its lungs.

If you're looking to do a RAID 0, then you're obviously after performance... so IMO, that puts any 5400RPM drive out of the question. Personally, I'd go for 2x320GB 7200's for the most speed. I can't image filling 640GB as the system drive especially on a RAID0 just because that data all needs to be held in redundancy. May god have mercy on you if you have any corruption on one of those drives... the bigger the drive, the more data to lose!

That aside, a "proper" dual boot config is not one with an OS installed on each drive, and in fact, even if you install one on one drive and the other on another drive, the bootloader of the first drive will still be written to. Yeah, it works with two drives, but it's sloppy.

So my personal opinion is to do 2x320GB 7200RPM RAID 0, dual boot through partitioning (which IS the proper way to do it)... and be sure to keep your data backed up. Use an external if you really need more space, do you really need 640GB accessible at all times?

 

the 500gb 5400rpm are basically just as fast as the 320gb 7200's due to platter density. you will notice almost no difference. i would get the 500gb;s thats what i have now and i love them much better then my 320gb wd's i took out i had raid 0 and after they got corrupted i said forget it and run dual 500gb's i use one for programs and windows and the other for storage

 

Um, are the 320's single platter or double? Because the 500GB is double platter, so assuming you get a single platter 320GB drive, that doesn't apply at all. Well, I suppose it does, in that the 320GB will be even faster.

 

ill see if i can find the test results but when i tested them the 500's were almost just as fast as the 320's i had were they a bit slower yes but imo is it worth it .. no.. and a lot of the test results i have seen show the 500's really fast now.. i noticed basically no difference from running them in non raid. now in raid was different they were faster but im not risking all my data again

 

RAID 1 FTW.
And in my early defense, I could be mistaken, but I thought some single platter 7200RPM 320GB drives just came out.
But now thinking about it, we'd be seeing 640GB double platter drives then, so it's probably 250GB single platter max right now in 2.5"

...so get 2x250GB single platter 7200RPM drives. Same data density as the 500GB with a higher spindle speed.

 

as far as i know that is correct^^^

 

Nick,

Have you thought about SSD's?

I'm running a 128 as my primary and a 500 5400 as my secondary. On another 1730 I'm using a 128 as my primary and a 320 7200. I plan to bench them to see if there is any performance difference but just by using they seem to be nearly identical.

From my standpoint the SSD gives you a bit more fault T than a plater drive and its nice and fast.

Btw - can someone recommend a good drive benchmark utility?

 

SSDs give a lot more fault tolerance than a conventional platter drive, but I'm going to give them some time... flash memory only has a set number of read/writes before it stops retaining data properly. I want to see how these SSDs that are being used as system drivers are holding up two years from now before I invest.

For benchmarking, most of us use HDTune: http://www.hdtune.com/
Some prefer HDTach though: http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

 

Better to go for 500GB 5400RPM and 320GB 7200RPM and not RAID 0/1 them. Its software RAID, so RAID 0 will provide a 5-10% real-world performance boost. Plus, RAID helps when running intensive tasks, and it'll eat up some of the processing power as well.

 

Well considering how fast i've filled up 320.. games take a lot of space and so do my torrents. it's a tough world out there full of data.

I have a 500gb external though so you're right i should really not need more than 640gb. I think i'll go for the 320s then..

 

Wait is it really software based?

See... that sucks... I might do the 320/500

 

If it's a software RAID, then that does suck, and I would definitely just do 250GB 7200RPM single platter + 500GB 5400RPM.

But since the M1730 uses PM965 I thought it had a RAID on chip option. Could be wrong.

 

Raid on the MB.

 

Yeah, it is software-based. H/W-based RAID has a dedicated chipset to do all the stuff.
In the M1730, the RAID controller is built into the ICH8M-E controller.

On a S/W based RAID system, the system's CPU has to do all the processing work and it does whatever the H/W RAID chipset does, but through software (Intel MSM).
You will see a huge performance increase through S/W RAID in synthetic benchmarks (such as HD Tune), but a small 10-15% increase in real-world performance, as compared to the 50-100% increase in real-world performance through H/W RAID.

It won't be 2x the current performance, but there will be a slight boost, esp when running multiple intensive tasks. RAID 1 is normally better for software-based RAID controllers, but it doesn't really help performance.

 

Glad to see that I've spurred such an enthralling debate about hard drives

I'm going to go with the 7200 RPM 320gb hard drive and the 5400 RPM 500gb hard disk and run them in single mode. I'll use the 7200 320 as the main disk where it will be partitioned for XP and Vista and run games, and the 500gb as the storage drive to store music, movies, backups, etc.

RAID 0 in software mode doesn't seem worth it in a laptop, who knows maybe i'll get a bit of a battery bost as it will turn off the 2ndary hard disc when not in use.

 

Actually, you'll be better off using the 2 whole HDDs for dual-booting, rather than partitioning one.

On each drive, reduce the size of the first partition, to 30% of the whole drive size and install the OS on it. This way, the OS and the frequently-accessed files will be on the faster part of the platter, and you'll have a more reponsive system.

There is a very good software posted here, to benchmark individual partitions, and you'll see the difference between installing an OS on the whole drive, and on the first partition....

Direct-Links: XP/Vista 64-bit OS | XP/Vista 32-bit OS

Ref link

 

Andy - interesting - so you are saying there is no raid controller on the 1730 MB?

Thanks for the link - looks like I'd need to brush up on my language skills a bit in order to read.

 

The RAID controller is built-in into the ICH8M-E controller.

Other RAID controllers, have a dedicated chipset, apart from the southbridge controller. That chipset drives the RAID, so RAID is more efficient.

BTW, Michel K has described very well, how to use that tool in the above link, and the UI is pretty straightfwd.

 

Nice - will check it out and compare it with results I got from hdtune on my ssd's.