Intel RST cache + 6tb RAID 0

[SickBeast]

This week I bought a new 5tb Seagate external hard drive. I wound up with some extra free hard drive space after the upgrade; I have over 11tb of hard drive space when you consider my two 3tb Seagate drives along with the new 5tb one. I also have several old laptop hard drives that I have put in external enclosures to give me even more space and other backup options.

As of right now, I have all of my games on one of the 3tb drives and it's cached using Intel RST with one of my OCZ ARC 100 drives. My game load times are good, but the drive is getting quite full as I have amassed a massive Steam library along with all of my Origin and uPlay games. What I am thinking about doing is setting up my pair of 3tb drives in RAID-0 and then caching that array using Intel RST. Is that even possible? I have a feeling my games will load even faster that way. I'm not worried about reliability because if I lose all my data on the array, I have it all in the cloud anyway because it's just my Steam games and I can just re-download them if there is a problem.

I'm going to see if I can pull this off over the weekend. I think it could be very interesting. It will also give me a ton of space for my games and I won't have to worry about my current drive filling up.

[SickBeast]

Hmm actually it looks like RAID 0 does sweet nothing for game load times:

http://ca.ign.com/faqs/2005/pc-raid-0-faq-606669

Granted that is from 2005 and it's a completely different platform, however it has given me pause.

What do you guys think? Should I do it?

[SickBeast]

Now here is more conflicting information:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/har...ashed.html

Unfortunately the charts won't come up but those are my exact hard drives and they said that they were blazing fast in RAID-0, almost as fast as an SSD plus if I cache them then they will be even faster.

I think I will try it! I am moving my data around now so I can wipe the 3tb drives and put them in RAID 0!

[SickBeast]

Here's one more review for good measure:

http://www.gameplayinside.com/optimize/g...h-is-best/

Mixed results for gaming but I have a feeling it will be much faster overall with RAID 0.

[SickBeast]

Finally one last article that shows some very nice gains for RAID 0:

http://www.techwarelabs.com/articles/har...ex_4.shtml

I am confident it will make a difference. I will be trying it over the Easter weekend!

[BoFox]

How did it go?  FAST?!??  Make sure you back it up as RAID 0 is much more risky!

[SickBeast]

One of my 3tb hard drives failed a smart test. In my limited testing it was very fast.

[BoFox]

Damn, I gotta build myself a serious NAS rather than using one of my PC's quickly filling up drives as always-on sharing connections with others.

I have this:
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Wireless-P...B00AQRUW4Q

Seagate Wireless Plus, mobile storage you can access without wires or WebWith Seagateamp;reg; Wireless Plus, you can enjoy your media and access your files without wires or the Internet. This mobile storage device broadcasts its own Wi- Fi network, so you can wirelessly stream your media and files to your tablet or smartphone on-the-go and off-the-grid. The free Seagate Media app for iOS and Androidamp;reg; makes it easy to navigate and enjoy content wherever you go.Forget about having to choose which files to load onto your tablet or smartphone before a trip. Bring it all with you! Wireless Plus has 1TB of built-in storage, which means you can load up to 500 movies or thousands of songs, photos and documents. Simply drag-and-drop to load files wirelessly from your PC or Macamp;reg; computer or use the USB 3.0 adapter to load files up to 10 faster than Wi-Fi N.

But 1TB is wayyyy too small for me!  I seriously hope Seagate can release 4-8TB versions of these, because these wifi hard drives are so awesome!!!

It's like crazy awesome for a caravan trip, so I could just have all the music and movies on the hard drive, then all of my kids could connect to it via wifi, and enjoy terabytes of streaming stuff onto their tablets!  

This is genius by Seagate - just bigger capacity is needed already!

Also, I wish Western Digital would release a bigger WD Dual Black drive like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Black2-Dual-Drive-...ref=sr_1_1

Now it could very easily be 256GB SSD + 2TB HDD, or better yet 512GB+2TB
I love my 128MB+1TB as linked above, in my 17" touchscreen laptop.  Perfect for laptops with only 1 hard drive bay, but prices of 1TB SSD's are quickly plummeting..  so this no longer makes sense.  

Why are these companies sometimes very bright with coming out with these stuff, but then acting like such sluggard sloths waiting for their drool to leak into their own assholes?