RAID 0 , RAID 1, or RAID 0+1, which is best and most convenient for a joe average computer user?

[RDSport323]

I was thinking about trying RAID since Onvia messed up my order and accidently sent 2 45gb Deskstar HDs to me... I have the Abit HOT ROD 100 Pro RAID Card, and the two HDs...

I just want to know what the hype is about this RAID solution? Which do you think is better for an average everyday user? I want the speed and performance, not necesssarily the security... But, what are the odds of the disks failing? How long should I expect the HDs to last if used under RAID for a while continuously?

Are there any drawbacks? or disadvantages?

If anyone has any ifnormation, please let me know because I dont want to start it until I am sure that it will be beneficial for me, and for more than 5 years.

Thanks

 

[jsbush]

You should go RAID 0. Raid 1+0 you need 4 harddrives.

The most performence is RAID 0.

 

[RDSport323]

what's the lifespan of a HD that's been in a RAID configuration?

 

[Bartman]

the same as one that hasen't.... there's no dif...

 

[RDSport323]

does anyone know if or how you could partition the drives?

lets say, Drive 1 i would want C: (15gb) D: (10gb) E: (10gb) and drive 2 F: G: H:

is that possible w/ RAID? because i was planning on settig up a dual boot system...

thanks for all the info!

 

[Trashman]

FDISK will see it as 1 90gig. drive....so partition it anyway ya want.

 

[RDSport323]

aww, I see.. that makes sense... but if I were to ever decide to stop using RAID setup, then pretty much those two drives are useless until I format them... and all the data stored on there is pretty much wasted?

correct?

 

[Trashman]

yeah, you would lose everything.....unless ya backup all your important stuff.

 

[RDSport323]

argh... is it worth it then?? now i am more confused than ever... any recommendations or suggestions? personal experiences?

 

[Trashman]

Well......since ya have all the components for a Raid setup....try it out, you'll never know unless ya try, as long as ya backup everything before you go Raid.
There seems to be a lot of debate about RAID, but the majority say it's a bit faster, probably depends on what ya do with your system. Thats a tough call only you can make, I tried RAID0 on my other system, and didn't really see that much of improvement, but thats me, games loaded somewhat faster......I'll stick with my SCSI system, I used the Promise Fasttrack 100, not at all familiar with the HotRod.
If you do decide to go RAID and then change your mind, download IBM's Disk Utility to format those raid drives back to normal.

 

[AtomClock]

Why do RAID??? If 1 Hard disk dies you lose the data on both. And do you really need the extra speed to play games... NO!! The only reason I can think of for using RAID 0 is to speed up disk access if processing large video or audio files.

 

[RDSport323]

that's true huh??

geez, anyone know of any good websites that offer good information on RAID??

 

[Trashman]

Why do guys always state with RAID if 1 hard drive goes so does the other...that statement doesn't make any sense.....with any system if your drive goes you lose everything....so whats the difference........NOTHING!!
Don't make that a reason for not going RAID.

 

[kylebisme]

you do duble the chance of hardrve faiulre becuse raid 0 uses the 2 drives as one. alternitively you can use raid 1, and have one hardive mirror the other, halfing you chace of data loss, but no increse in speed. personaly i think raid 0 rocks, it more than doubles the speed of loading and moveing information around. as for partitioning f-disk wont see an aray as any larger than 64gb, so its not the best choice for your situation. however you can use the free dos f-disk for up to 128gb.

 

[itisi]

I thought about a raid solution too, but after much thought, I decided against it. First of all, the only reason to get a raid solution is if you run a business, or if keeping your computer up and running at all times is a must.

A RAID works well on a server for the following reasons:

if many users are accessing the hard drives at the same time, you will see a performance boost with two or three drives sharing the I/O functions. I doubt a single user will see a noticable difference though.

if one hard drive fails, you just have to put an identical drive in the computer, and voila, your computer is up and running again. Of course you are burning the extra space of that drive for an insurance policy like that. but hey, if your wealthy, who cares? Companies usually use a hot swappable solution to minimize down time, and thus, keep there workers productive. Of course, if you get hit with a virus, or you do something to one drive that damages the OS, you do the same thing to the other drive. So don't think of it as a viable backup solution.

A better solution for home use is a tape drive or even burning a backup to a CDRW. it isn't as quick of a solution as RAID, but at least you have two drives that you can use independently.

I wouldn't waste money on a RAID unless you can afford it.

 

[K6]

A RAID 0 system is beest used for very large files (video editind)

RAID 1 is the the safest way because there are 2 HDD working on the same data


RAID 0+1 is a mixed mode between 0 and 1 but you need 4 HDD to make it

 

[Technosnob]

If you have all of the hardware, do the raid 0. Things will load faster. You will have a little less reliabilty because if either drive fails, you loose all the data on the array, but you should be backing up everything important anyway. The drives you have are good quality and should run without problems for years. I've run raid 0 with an intel system with a Promise FT66 and currently have a KT7-raid with two Maxtor 30GB 7200 rpm drives. The Highpoint solution on the KT7 is much better than the Fasttrack, but both were noticably faster than standard IDE drives. You may also want to know that ITISI has no idea what raid 0 is but where he is talking about raid 1, he is correct. There really is no reason for a home user to run raid 1 or 0+1. Just keep things properly backed up.

 

[006agent]

isnt there a raid-5...just wondering.

i know 0 is best for joeshmoe

 

[Turbopit]

How often do you guys have hard drive failures? My little Samsung HD has been running almost non stop for 3 years, now I have an IBM 46.1 gig deskstar to go along with it.

 

[itisi]

I do understand about RAID 0, I just don't think that the average user will benefit from it and may actually be taking a risk by setting it up.

The Following is from an article about RAID on Tom's Hardware site:

"RAID 0 is by many not seen as a real RAID level, because it does not add any redundancy. As a matter of fact RAID 0 is even less reliable than a normal single hard drive, because all data of the array will be lost if only one drive should fail...."

"What you should know about RAID 0 or 'Stripe Sets'

The size of the array will always be the number of drives in the array times the size of the smallest drive in the array. This is because the data is distributed equally over the drives in the set. Therefore it's best to use identical drives or at least drives that have very similar sizes, unless you want to waste drive space.
The data transfer rate of the array is always the number of drives times the data transfer rate of the slowest drive, as long as the stripe size is small enough. This is also not too difficult to understand if you realize that the requested chunk needs to be read completely, before another chunk can be read. Therefore each drive has to deliver its stripe of the data chunk before the data can be sent to the processor or DMA-device and so the slowest drive defines the speed.
The data access time of a RAID 0 array is either the same as of the slowest drive, or in case of identical drives the access time is equal or slightly higher than of one drive in the array, because all drives need to access their data for the data transfer and unless they are synchronized (only possible with SCSI drives), one of the drives may take longer to access the data than the other.
If one drive in the array fails, all data will be lost, because if one stripe of a file is missing, the file cannot be retrieved anymore."


If you are primarily transfering large files like audio or video editing programs do, RAID 0 will probably speed things up a bit. Under normal conditions "an average everyday user" you will not see much of an improvement from the increased bandwidth.

BTW, RAID 5 is both striping and mirroring. You need a minimum of 3 drives to create a RAID 5 solution. It is a little more complex than RAID 0+1 because it uses 2/3 of the capacity of the sum of the 3 drives to create a mirror and a striped set on all three drives.

Wouldn't you be better saving the money you would have spent on a RAID controller or MB, and spend it on a faster processor, more RAM, or even a faster video card? I think the performance boost would be more noticable that if you bought a RAID controller.

 

[JustStarting]

Check out my benchmarking post- got an ABIT KT7/Raid and the hdd benchmark is off the page on Sandra. Only running this w/ a 700 Duron and it seems lightening fast setup in Raid 0 array.

 

[Technosnob]

Once again, if you already have the hardware, use it. You will see a performance improvement and you will see almost no decrease in reliability. You will not see a blinding performance increase, but it will be more than noticable. For the average user it may not be enough to justify buying two hard drives and a controller card, but since you already have them, why not reap the benefits? ITISI, how much of a performance increase did you see when you went to raid 0? Did you see a decrease in performance? What comparative benchmarks did you run and what were the results? On winbench 99 I am getting 60+ transfers and people on QuakeIII hate it when I get there first. (If only I were worth a *#?& at it!. One more point, you will have 90GB of hard drive space so I think you could spare a byte or two of efficency, and your drives will be much quieter.

 

[Wiz]

Well, I just had to chime in here...
I have a web application and domain hosting business so I use RAID extensively and exclusively.
A RAID01 setup will help you for speed and security if you have 4 identical drives. This is especially useful if you have two RAID channels. You put two drives on each channel and you build a mirrored sripe set.
This uses the most disk space to achieve the greatest security and transfer speed.
If you are using Ultra160 drives then you have a potential 320mbits/sec disk bandwidth.
Most users don't have this number of disks nor this high quality controller card available to them.
For my main production machines I use RAID5. This utilizes (N drives minus one) of the space available while providing disk redundancy, if you have 5 drives then it's 5-1=4 drives worth of data. The bandwidth is slightly limited and there is the overhead of always keeping an extra disk worth of data written to the set. When a drive fails the others continue working and there is no loss of data.
If you have Hot Spare capability (I do) then your controller automatically begins propogating the data to the spare drive and once finished your set is once again complete. This continues for however many Hot Spares you can afford.
My systems send me an alert when a drive goes offline, so I don't have to sit there watching and waiting.
It sends me another when everything is OK, or if things get worse.
RAID5 is a very good choice if you can afford 5 or more drives. I generally use 7 drives in a system, which gives me 4 for data, 1 for redundancy and 2 for hot spares. You can see it's not the case that you only need 5 drives and get to use 4. If you want extra security then you buy more drives.
This is vitally important if your data is valuable. The data on my systems provides not only all business expenses but also my families income. Not only is it vital to me, it's also important to my clients. Nevertheless I always tell them to keep a backup - just in case the data center gets bombed.
Hope this helps,

 

[itisi]

I would agree with Technosnob, if you already spent the money, might as well use it. I have had only a handful (out of hundreds) of harddrives go out on me in the last 5 years. My point was, don't spend the money if you don't have too. RAID is really a business solution.

I have setup several computers with RAID 0 or RAID 1, and one that was RAID 5. I did do some performance checks, and really couldn't see too much difference, accept for on the RAID 5 server. With over 100 employees using our file server at work, the RAID 5 solution did speed things up noticably. I'm sure that some of the performance boost came from the 10k rpm SCSI HDs. But I would like to think that the RAID card also gave a performance boost too.

If someone else is looking to spend the extra $ for RAID, please make sure that Hard drive bandwidth is you bottle neck for performance. And like others have said, video and audio files (we're talking HUGE files), will load faster with RAID 0. Small files will probably never even come close to your hard drives maximum transfer rate of 100 mb/s or even 66mb/s.

 

[Wiz]

I agree completely with itisi, except for the performance on a RAID01 with two RAID channels and plenty of cache on your hardware raid controller will yield higher performance for anyone than a single drive. Of course it's mainly useful for those with business applications where the drives are being hit by hundreds or thousands of users.

To me the determining factor for doing a stripe set with no mirriring would be performance.
If you have two channels on your raid card then your data bandwidth is nearly doubled.
If you have cache on your controller this greatly helps as it can keep often used files in memory.
I run 64 megs cache on my raid controllers, I have no throughput issues. (RAID5)
On my personal system I use a Ultra 160 SCSI controller (Adaptec 29160) and a single 36 gig U160 drive. I have my important data copied redundantly around my network for safekeeping.
I'm not nearly as anal about these things as some people I know, but I do like to keep my feathers numbered.