Kiwi
Premium
join:2003-05-26
USA | reply to asdfdfdfdfdf
Re: Contemplating a rebuild
Why? The OP is not poor and appears to be looking for the higher mid to high range. Sometimes I'll have to be forgiven, balancing load and speed has become a way of life. There is not a thing wrong with considering the VRaptor. |
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asdfdfdfdfdf
@Level3.net
| It's not that I feel there is anything particularly wrong with the raptors.
I'm just not impressed with the raptor any more. They coast on a reputation that was built years ago but is largely outdated. They don't perform significantly better than a recent 1-2TB drive. At best their benefit if quite modest today.
I understand if seagreen doesn't feel ready to move to an ssd. That can always be done later with only a new OS install. I think concerns about performance degradation are becoming obsolete now, especially with trim around the corner, but I can understand the desire to hold of for a while yet.
Still, I don't see the point in spending for the raptor: double the price, for 1/3 the space and a modest, if any, performance difference. An ssd is a whole different performance ballpark. A raptor isn't and I would just save the money. It just seems like a costly half-measure with little benefit at this point. |
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seagreen
Premium,Mod
join:2001-05-14
out there | Good points - thanks. Although they are intriguing, I believe I will hold off on the SSD and see how things shake out over the next couple of years. Maybe my next build...  |
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srr2
join:2001-12-20
Bethlehem, PA
 ·RCN CABLE
| said by seagreen  : I believe I will hold off on the SSD and see how things shake out over the next couple of years. Having bought a few of them to try out in several different systems, I emphatically agree with your caution. Right now, the marketplace for these things is a chaotic expensive mess. The technology itself is still in turmoil as you can see from the "controller of the day" situation and neverending firmware updates. Then there's the matter of installation Voodoo where the user is expected to know how to "align" the system partition at installation, and administer tweak after tweak to the O/S. Naturally, NONE of the SSD manufacturers give you the least bit of guidance on how to do this, much less providing utilities with the drive that do the dirty work for you.
Then there's the matter of maintaining performance that apparently degrades through normal usage. Back to the forums for more hours of trying to sift through post after post trying to grasp what's really going on, and finding that there *is* no good answer.
The takeaway from this is that the manufacturers themselves really don't know much about what they're selling and the post-sale support situation reflects it.
You're far better off with something like a Caviar Black drive set for a system partition at the front of the drive. The speed difference in actual use, compared to a SSD, is very small, and certainly not worth the high price and installation/maintenance headaches of the SSD. |
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seagreen
Premium,Mod
join:2001-05-14
out there | reply to seagreen
Items ordered (except for the HD which is now out-of-stock) - I'll post back when it's built. I have an unused Caviar green which I can plug in until the blacks are back in stock. |
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pnjunction
Teksavvy Premium
Premium
join:2008-01-24
Toronto, ON
 ·TekSavvy Solutions..
| reply to srr2
I'm not ready to take the SSD plunge either.
I'm looking Matrix RAID for my next build. You can make a stripe using just part of 2+ drives and put your performance stuff on there (OS, apps, games, swap file) and meanwhile use the rest for a RAID1 or RAID5 to provide redundancy. Or I might just bite the bullet, buy 4 1TB drives and build a RAID10. |
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Kiwi
Premium
join:2003-05-26
USA
·Comcast
·Aristotle Internet
| reply to asdfdfdfdfdf
Price is not always the concern, I agree that elements are becoming negligible for performance and that in it's self separates those interested in function.
There is a larger concern for me related to the endeavour of assisting people; A larger drive [I+G] is not always the best solution to optimising an OS or function. There ARE in fact other criteria that should be considered and if I have to spell that out, I'm in the wrong place. |
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seagreen
Premium,Mod
join:2001-05-14
out there
·Rock Island Commun..
Host:
CenturyTel
Wireless Service P..
Southern California
HughesNet Satellite
WildBlue Satellite
| I freely admit to not being as knowledgeable as others here and am happy for the opportunity to learn something new. These forums are good places to pick up new information, which I always appreciate the opportunity to do, so, if you wouldn't mind, spell away. |
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Kiwi
Premium
join:2003-05-26
USA
·Comcast
·Aristotle Internet
| The banter back & forth 
The reply was not to you though and I'm not trying to minimise valuable input, sometimes it's a difference of opinion. Nobody will actually nail a solution 100% for somebody else, including myself because needs are different for everybody and all those needs are hardly ever expressed completely, shouldn't matter either. 
To recap why I gave the response I did, I'm really old school and over many years like to keep an OS tight on a small footprint, in it's own partition. Often people get large drives and don't do maintenance or divide partitions and therefore it's easier to steer people away from something they might well regret. To me a primary drive should be big enough to house the OS and a few readily accessed files/downloads for software; the rest goes onto secondary dives, I do use them to the tune of three terabytes. |
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seagreen
Premium,Mod
join:2001-05-14
out there
·Rock Island Commun..
Host:
CenturyTel
Wireless Service P..
Southern California
HughesNet Satellite
WildBlue Satellite
| That's about how I manage my systems. OS on one partition; everything else somewhere else.
BTW, this is being posted from the rebuilt machine with W7U. Unfortunately I cannot seem to run the WEI index on it but it seems to be running fine beautifully.
Left the old graphics card in and used the old disks in RAID 10 array. Replaced the PSU as previously discussed and plugged in the new parts and was up and running within 3 hours of getting the box. |
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asdfdfdfdfdf
@socket.net | reply to seagreen
Thank you for the update. Glad everything went smoothly. |
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seagreen
Premium,Mod
join:2001-05-14
out there
·Rock Island Commun..
Host:
CenturyTel
Wireless Service P..
Southern California
HughesNet Satellite
WildBlue Satellite
| I think I will have to junk some of those drives - I just booted up the machine to an array that was "initializing". 
Back to NewEgg. I believe those caviar black drives are back in stock.
Thank you again the help. |
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seagreen
Premium,Mod
join:2001-05-14
out there
·Rock Island Commun..
Host:
CenturyTel
Wireless Service P..
Southern California
HughesNet Satellite
WildBlue Satellite
| Final followup:
After a number of updates to the motherboard/chipset/drivers etc. and the new hard drives I finally got the WEI to run.
WEI
Obviously the GPU is the weak link (as expected) but I was generally pretty pleased with the evaluation results. |
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