Disks fail more often than one can imagine. Because my data is the most important part of my computer my main objective is data safety so I’ll go for RAID 1 – disk mirroring that guarantees data integrity even if one of the two disks fails. Heck, I wouldn’t even miss a working day in such case – I’d just work with one disk until the damaged one gets replaced. RAID 1 is expensive because it mirrors the data – you’ll need two disks for the same data, however, the data will be redundant and furthermore RAID 1 reads data almost as twice faster than a single disk solution, write process is a bit slower compared to the single disk solution though. Another benefit of RAID 1 is possibility of using a motherboard-integrated RAID controller (which uses few CPU cycles, yet one won’t notice it on 4-core CPU) without any performance loss. RAID 5 is out of question because of really slow writes and requirements for an (expensive) add-on controller (although there are integrated controllers that handle RAID 5 but they will make it even slower). Add-on controllers have additional features such as memory cache (I’ll just use cheaper OS caching) and an option for batteries that will save the data in case of power failure (I will use an UPS to power my computer anyway – no need for those batteries).
Secondary objective is performance/price ratio. These days storage devices are the main performance bottleneck because they are relatively slow and computer often accesses them. They are even more important when you ran out of RAM (hope not, but it can happen) – then the page file swapping party begins. So the main goal is to get as good price/performance ratio as possible.
First, there are two choices: hard disk (HD) or solid state drive (SSD). I’ll pick HD option because SSDs are:
- unproven new technology (in the long term)
- usually slow for writing operations (they are improving though)
- very pricey
So, I have three choices with HD technology:
- SATA (mainstream)
- SAS
SAS drives are very expensive, relatively small and I am not sure whether their faster speed would bring enough benefits in the performance/price sense. Furthermore they require additional SAS controller which isn’t cheap either. I think that SATA technology is far better for me. Every motherboard has an integrated SATA controller, better motherboards support RAID 1. But which drive? I’ll go for WD Velociraptors because, albeit they are more expensive, they are considerably faster than standard 7.200 RPM disks. Interestingly, Velociraptors are 2.5” disks packed in 3.5” chassis (no, they can’t be mounted in a laptop).
I bought a pair of Western Digital Velociraptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10.000 RPM drives from mimovrste.com for 2 x 246,79 Euros.
See other relevant posts:
Introduction
CPU cooler
The goal
Power Supply Unit
Memory
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