RAID BABY!!!

[zayened]

I am 11% done formatting a 600 gb striped array. This thing is MASSIVE! 2xMaxtor 300gb 16mb cache ata133 drives, all for my storing pleasure!

 

[John]

Do you work with a lot of large files?

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1

Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: John
Do you work with a lot of large files?

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1

Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth.

ding ding ding!

Exactly. Raid has a LOT of hype...especially if you are not working with large files such as intensive DV editing

 

[zayened]

Well, I currently (until now) have 2 200gb seagate drives, one for boot and one for storage. My storage one has 190mb free space. I dont want to start storing on my boot drive, so hence the raid!

 

[KoolDrew]

RAID-0 offers no performance benefits in most cases and significantly reduces reliability. So, I don't see what you're so excited about.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

RAID 5 is where it's at

 

[John]

Originally posted by: zayened
Well, I currently (until now) have 2 200gb seagate drives, one for boot and one for storage. My storage one has 190mb free space. I dont want to start storing on my boot drive, so hence the raid!

That's not a very good reason to run raid0.

 

[tiap]

Originally posted by: zayened
Well, I currently (until now) have 2 200gb seagate drives, one for boot and one for storage. My storage one has 190mb free space. I dont want to start storing on my boot drive, so hence the raid!

If its storage your after go with mobile racks. Save your big drives for storage and get a smaller faster drive for your os and progs.
With a rack(s) installed you can have an infinite number of hdrives in trays for your storage and copy etc between them.
Added plus is that you jerk them when not needed and increase their mtf accordingly. You can also rack and clone your os drive and have an instant backup.

 

[zayened]

so should i just use them single?

 

[imported_Nacelle]

Everyone is always puttin' down the raid. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.

 

[tiap]

I don't realy know what you mean by single, but here is what I would do given an average case having 3 - 5.25 bays.
#1 bay dvd burner ide channel 1 slave.
#2 bay mobile rack ide channel 2 master
#3 bay mobile rack ide channel 2 slave
or
add a pci ide 2channel card and all hdrives can be on master (ideal)

This is not relevant to sata, since all are essentially master.

Of course the more drive bays you have available the more can be used at once.
You are unlimited to the number of hdrives in trays that can be swapped.

Parts are very cheap Look here Ones with fans are best.
Wouldn't build a system without them.

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: Nacelle
Everyone is always puttin' down the raid. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.

You don't need to use a RAID-0 array to know the benefits. By your logic I wouldn't be able to say their is a difference between a 7800GT and a 6600GT just because I have not tried them.

 

[Maximilian]

Ive used RAID for many years, its excellent stuff.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: magomago

Originally posted by: John
Do you work with a lot of large files?

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1

Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth.

ding ding ding!

Exactly. Raid has a LOT of hype...especially if you are not working with large files such as intensive DV editing

For performane, RAID is mostly hype. For redundancy, RAID lives up to expectatoins and sometimes beyond.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: zayened
so should i just use them single?

RAID 1 instead of RAID 0. You may thank me later for it.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: Soviet
Ive used RAID for many years, its excellent stuff.

THanks for the Input noob.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: Soviet
Ive used RAID for many years, its excellent stuff.

THanks for the Input noob.

No problem

 

[Shenkoa]

Nice flame, Booger!

 

[zayened]

Originally posted by: tiap

Parts are very cheap Look here Ones with fans are best.
Wouldn't build a system without them.

hmm...i'm liking these, they will match my black lian-li warrior perfectly! Is that the best prices on these that you know of?

 

[doughtree]

there's a difference between raid 0 and nonraid for me. Unzipping those multipart files off usenet is noticably faster as well as using quickpar. It may not be twice as fast (I have two drives) but it is noticably faster like I said. Also, your computer doesn't slow to a crawl when you are unzipping, browser launches pretty quickly, msn messenger, etc. I don't agree with that anandtech article.
I also had a raid0 with 3 drives, could not notice difference between having only 2 drives though.

 

[orangat]

Originally posted by: John
Do you work with a lot of large files?

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=1

Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth.

The review doesn't state the stripe size used. I think there could be a big difference with some tuning. The default of 64k/128k is probably too big for good performance with typical PCs.
But small stripe sizes may also be a problem with some integrated chipset raid because of cpu utilization.

I'm not writing off raid-0 yet.Maybe another AT review is in order.

 

[caz67]

Yes, RAID5 is good, but it's not an option with only 2 drives..!!!

 

[GOREGRINDER]

so they used default stripe size and what?,..the default cluster size?,..a 64k stripe size and a default 4k cluster size = standard disk performance =poor raid0 performance

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: GOREGRINDER
so they used default stripe size and what?,..the default cluster size?,..a 64k stripe size and a default 4k cluster size = standard disk performance =poor raid0 performance

I think it was Maximum PC that did some tests. They found that 3 drives with a 256k stripe size was the most efficiant RAID 0 setup.

 

[ribbon13]

Originally posted by: GOREGRINDER
so they used default stripe size and what?,..the default cluster size?,..a 64k stripe size and a default 4k cluster size = standard disk performance =poor raid0 performance

Yeah, this is also where you can take the most advantage of 16MB drive buffers, and the write-back cache of your HBA as well, but must people don't consider that.