Does RAID make a real world difference?

[mrman3k]

I am debating this, would I notice a difference in standard Windows apps and games with IDE RAID as opposed to a single drive. For example, would I be able to see with my eyes a difference between 2 60GXP's or 1 60GXP? Basically I do not want to shell out an extra $200 for something I can not see but I could only see in benchmarks. Also, please tell me honestly if you have a RAID array, I do not want someone that is pretending to know to say something.

Thanks in advance!

 

[DaFinn]

I dont think you will see a difference in normal use (Office apps/ Gaming). I have at work a machine with a system disk, and 2 disks setup as raid 0. On these raid disks I keep all temp and swap files. I do a lot of photoediting with Photoshop, and there you can really feel the difference of having a fast disk system.

If you use your machine for serious photoediting and maybe some video stuff, then raid is for you. Otherwise... save your money.

 

[saltedeggman]

you will see a difference when loading games and such...however, once its loaded, you won't see a difference...

 

[KevinMU1]

I use RAID 1 on my computer, and I can't see much of a difference. To me, the only useful RAID for an "average" home user is RAID 1 in order to provide automatic protection against hard drive failure. That's just my take, though, others may disagree.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

<< I use RAID 1 on my computer, and I can't see much of a difference. To me, the only useful RAID for an "average" home user is RAID 1 in order to provide automatic protection against hard drive failure. That's just my take, though, others may disagree. >>

Isn't raid 1 slower than raid 0 or normal ide? wouldn't the overhead related to writing to both disks put it behind the other two?

 

[BD231]

Raid is only faster if your WRITING, reading performance is, if anything, slower. If your a gamer RAID would be a step backwords.

 

[BlindSeaman]

Slower for reading? How would it be good for photo editing then? I've never heard that before, RAID 0 of course.

 

[Curley]

Actually, if you set up your stripe in 16KB sectors rather than the 64KB, you will see a difference in read speed. I know some people that run 32KB also.

 

[WHipLAsh13]

Raid 0 is faster for both reads and writes. Does it make a real world difference? Probably not really. I have a raid 0 setup and while it loads up games faster than a single drive setup does. It would also be faster if you are moving large files around, but that would be about it.

 

[Howard]

RAID 1+0 and 0+1 setups are fast while maintaining drive integrity.

 

[x86]

<< Raid is only faster if your WRITING, reading performance is, if anything, slower. If your a gamer RAID would be a step backwords. >>



Not true. RAID is theoretically 100% faster than a normal IDE setup.

MrMan - You aren't "wasting" your money at all. If you buy 2 60GB HDDs that is still 120GB. RAID just makes the transfer of data faster. You will definitely see an improvement for that $20.00 that you shell out for a Promise controller.

 

[cleverhandle]

I've got RAID'ed 60GXP's and can say that there's not much of an improvement for day-to-day work. I do see the difference in Linux when working with large archives or during boot up, though. Overall, it's a bit of a pain to install and maintain, but nothing tremendous. A big part of why I'm using it is because I find the technology interesting and wanted to play around with it. The bit of extra performance here and there is a nice bonus. Really, you don't pay much extra - maybe ~$30 for the option on the motherboard and then a difference of ~$70 for buying two smaller drives rather than one large one. So $100 for some performance and a neat toy. Honestly, though, if I were building a system for someone else who wanted high performance storage (and couldn't afford SCSI), I would buy a WD Special Edition - probably better desktop performance for the money.

 

[spie34]

I have a raid 0 setup on my system and it works pretty nicely I think. there is some more speed than others as far as loading games and stuff I have noticed. also booting time is reduced some as well. If you were to go with an iwill board its like 10 bucks more to get the kk266plus raid board compared to the kk266 plus board. though I have a friend that has the iwill board and he isn't running a raid setup for some reason hehe.

 

[Eug]

<< Raid is only faster if your WRITING, reading performance is, if anything, slower. If your a gamer RAID would be a step backwords. >>

Huh? Whatchoo been smokin?

Anyways, I wouldn't recommend RAID 0 for anyone, unless you have no important data on the drives, like for a scratch disk. Otherwise stick with one of the other RAID setups.

My next computer will have a RAID 1 setup most likely. In the meantime I'm buying an extra external drive for backups. I should have gone RAID 1 right from the beginning.

 

[Curley]

A Raid 0 (Stripe) setup defaults to reading and writing in 64KB blocks. That means any program smaller that 64 KB will only reside on one drive and therefore have no speed increase. If you change the striping to 16KB or 32KB blocks, you will definately notice a speed increase in reading (loading) your smaller programs but can slow your larger programs down. You have to try different stripe block sizes that suits your needs.

Curley

 

[Antisocial Virge]

I just stopped raiding two 60 gxp's and what I noticed now is that bootup is slower and when I'm unraring alot of files the image extraction is alot slower. Not too much difference other than that though.

 

[IgoByte]

In RAID 0 writing is significantly faster than with a single drive, whereas reading/loading is slightly slower. Therefore, you should not see any difference when loading games. You should however see a difference when saving large files or formatting your partitions etc.

 

[Lord Gwynz]

Which would have a bigger impact on performance on something like a large database program, RAID 0 or SCSI?

 

[WHipLAsh13]

Here is a link that may clear up any misconceptions about raid 0, Igobyte. Raid 0 is faster in both reads and writes and there is more of an advantage in reads not writes like you stated.

 

[irrigating]

If you put some of the points made here together you will see how RAID would improve/not improve your day to day use.

Unrar, unzip, encode, decode, apply filters (for example, normalize mp3;s in NERO mp3 version), you will see huge performance increase.
Gaming loads faster(some games load a new scene and show a loading progress bar, this will take less time with RAID).
Hard drive failure?RAID mirror has a copy of your drive on the other drive.
Network upload/download of large files- big improvement.
Startup-noticeably faster.
Day to day use?-much zippier.

You will have to setup your file system better than the default to get the performance increase. Most casual info including the one bombed article at AT doesnt touch the subject. This is why a lot of people will tell you they don't see a difference.

Striped, mirrored combination is ideal for speed and redundancy.

Tom P.

 

[Eug]

<< RAID 1+0 and 0+1 setups are fast while maintaining drive integrity.
>>


RAID 10 seems nice but for our home systems who can afford it? For basic on the fly backup it seems to me that RAID 1 is the only one I can justify, but if someone can convince me about the benefits with going with a 3 drive system maybe I'll consider it. (This is only for my home computer and speed is not a huge consideration for me.) Like I said though, in the meantime I'm just buying a Firewire drive for manual backups. I was even considering getting a DVD drive, but they're too expensive (as is the media), and it'd be a hassle dealing with 4.7 MB discs.

The other question I have is when in 2 years one of my drives goes. Likely the same drive will no longer be available. What to do? I know they don't have to be the exact same drive, but how problematic is dealing with different drives in a RAID 1 array?

 

[menthol]

i was actually thinking of going w/ the same setup of 2 60GXPs in raid0 using my onboard highpoint controller. although i wouldn't put anything i would care about losing on the raid array, it sounds like the speed improvement isn't even worth the pain of reinstalling my software if i have a failure.

however, does anyone here have any experience with raid controllers that use an onboard dsp, such as a promise supertrack or 3ware escalade? (as opposed to the onboard controllers that use the host cpu for processing.) do they offer noticibly better performance?

 

[cleverhandle]

<< However, does anyone here have any experience with raid controllers that use an onboard dsp, such as a promise supertrack or 3ware escalade? (as opposed to the onboard controllers that use the host cpu for processing.) do they offer noticibly better performance? >>



No experience personally, but the Anandtech article mentioned above showed that, for RAID 0 and 1, the "pure hardware" controllers were actually a bit slower. The processing requirements for those modes is so low that the overhead of the more complicated hardware reduces performance. Those controllers are better used for the more processing intensive modes like RAID 0+1 and especially RAID 5, which would significantly tax the host CPU.

 

[cleverhandle]

<< You will have to setup your file system better than the default to get the performance increase. Most casual info including the one bombed article at AT doesnt touch the subject. This is why a lot of people will tell you they don't see a difference. >>



Care to explain this? For example, how would your filesystem setup for one 120GB drive be any different than for two 60GB's in RAID 0?

Perhaps I'm too "casual," but I don't see how the operating system would be configured any differently - both configurations mentioned above are 120GB drives as far as the OS is concerned.

 

[cpals]

bump