RAID results

[Frugal1ty]

now i have three 80GB 7200 RPM SATA drives and i was thinkin about puttin em up in RAID0. do you think it would be worth the effort of the OS re-install, config the whole thing, etc, etc for the performance increase?

EDIT: spent a day recently putting these drives in various RAID arrays and benchmarking them. results posted on 4/17

 

[LOUISSSSS]

nope, not worth it. i'm assuming you're just going to be throwing in windows xp or vista in a computer for "general usage" such as internet, movie playback, some gaming, some "video/audio work". then no, raid isn't worth it at all. i'd sell those drives and get a new 640gb HDD for $130

 

[Tweakin]

I think it would be worth it. Take a look at my thread showing the difference between a WD 160JS and two in RAID0. The difference was very noticable. I don't think you will gain anything after the 2nd drive though, I used up to 4 drives and the returns didn't mount to anything noticable, just extra heat being produced.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I would say that it wouldn't be worth it if you are doing it just for performance. If you have additional space requirements that a single drive can not accomplish or have speciifc need for RAID, then sure. But for performance on a motherboard based two disk RAID 0 array--I wouldn't bother. Not to mention the added complications of running RAID and risk of running RAID 0.

 

[Tweakin]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I would say that it wouldn't be worth it if you are doing it just for performance. If you have additional space requirements that a single drive can not accomplish or have speciifc need for RAID, then sure. But for performance on a motherboard based two disk RAID 0 array--I wouldn't bother. Not to mention the added complications of running RAID and risk of running RAID 0.

If you think about it, the OP has three drives that are only 80GB in size. 80GB is pretty small for a OS partition today, hence the value of the RAID 0 configuration. Two drives for the OS and the third for a backup partition. I have had great luck squeezing extra performance out of older drives by using RAID, and I have never had a RAID related incident...although they can occur if your constantly tweaking with your system.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Tweakin

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I would say that it wouldn't be worth it if you are doing it just for performance. If you have additional space requirements that a single drive can not accomplish or have speciifc need for RAID, then sure. But for performance on a motherboard based two disk RAID 0 array--I wouldn't bother. Not to mention the added complications of running RAID and risk of running RAID 0.

If you think about it, the OP has three drives that are only 80GB in size. 80GB is pretty small for a OS partition today, hence the value of the RAID 0 configuration. Two drives for the OS and the third for a backup partition. I have had great luck squeezing extra performance out of older drives by using RAID, and I have never had a RAID related incident...although they can occur if your constantly tweaking with your system.

Hmm. I have a single 150gb Raptor for boot, and it's only using 14.1gb with Windows XP SP2 plus applications installed. My Server 2003 box is only using 7.82gb for the OS (very few apps installed). 80gb should be plenty for an OS install. Without knowing the specifics about what the OP uses his computer for, I am of the opinion that any performance gain will not be significant enough to warrant the possible issues.

You are fortunate that you've never had RAID issues. I've had a RAID 5 array die on me due to power supply issues, so I'm always extra careful.

 

[Ratman6161]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo

Without knowing the specifics about what the OP uses his computer for, I am of the opinion that any performance gain will not be significant enough to warrant the possible issues.

You are fortunate that you've never had RAID issues. I've had a RAID 5 array die on me due to power supply issues, so I'm always extra careful.

Another consideration is that the 80GB drives are probably several generations old technology wise. If you could sell them for a few bucks and buy a new drive, I have a feeling that 1 of the latest drives would probably beat the old drives in RAID 0 without all the hassles. And don't forget that RAID 0 does have a higher probability of failure than a single drive since a failure of either drive can mean total data loss.

 

[Tweakin]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo

Originally posted by: Tweakin

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I would say that it wouldn't be worth it if you are doing it just for performance. If you have additional space requirements that a single drive can not accomplish or have speciifc need for RAID, then sure. But for performance on a motherboard based two disk RAID 0 array--I wouldn't bother. Not to mention the added complications of running RAID and risk of running RAID 0.

If you think about it, the OP has three drives that are only 80GB in size. 80GB is pretty small for a OS partition today, hence the value of the RAID 0 configuration. Two drives for the OS and the third for a backup partition. I have had great luck squeezing extra performance out of older drives by using RAID, and I have never had a RAID related incident...although they can occur if your constantly tweaking with your system.

Hmm. I have a single 150gb Raptor for boot, and it's only using 14.1gb with Windows XP SP2 plus applications installed. My Server 2003 box is only using 7.82gb for the OS (very few apps installed). 80gb should be plenty for an OS install. Without knowing the specifics about what the OP uses his computer for, I am of the opinion that any performance gain will not be significant enough to warrant the possible issues.

You are fortunate that you've never had RAID issues. I've had a RAID 5 array die on me due to power supply issues, so I'm always extra careful.

I understand what you are saying, and this is or could be a heated issue as we all have our opinions on what is a worthwhile risk and what is not. I'm sorry to hear about your RAID, but I am supprised that you couldn't rebuild it and save the data. If it was a severe power problem, it could have caused damage to the files on a regular drive also...who knows.

Regardless, lets forget the amount of storage used by the OS and installed applications, that was not what I was trying to get across, I'm looking at it from a performance/value issue as this is what the original question was asking.

If you want performace you want to keep your hard drive working in the outer sectors, and in the case of older hard drives the density of the platters is very low, which causes the throughput to drop off very quickly. Using two old drives allows this "sweet spot" to be increased to the point that the respective performance may reach or exceed newer drives. As long as all the important information is backed up to a normal volume on a seperate drive, I feel the risk of having to reformat and install the OS and applications is minimal compared to the increase of system performance.

Would I recommend this with the newer drives attached to an Intel or Marvel chipset, probably not as SATA is essentially capped with regards to throughput and it would be money wasted, unless you are trying to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of your machine. That was the point I was trying to make, but I'm glad to see other valued opinions are being shared with the OP as it comes down to his/her decision ultimately.

 

[EarthwormJim]

If you've already got the drives, then why not?

It's not that big of a deal to do an OS reinstall to me.

 

[imported_wired247]

Originally posted by: Frugal1ty
now i have three 80GB 7200 RPM SATA drives and i was thinkin about puttin em up in RAID0. do you think it would be worth the effort of the OS re-install, config the whole thing, etc, etc for the performance increase?

no... just forget it. I think it would be a waste of your time.

hard drives these days are much much faster even as single drives than that thing will be.

 

[Frugal1ty]

Originally posted by: wired247

Originally posted by: Frugal1ty
now i have three 80GB 7200 RPM SATA drives and i was thinkin about puttin em up in RAID0. do you think it would be worth the effort of the OS re-install, config the whole thing, etc, etc for the performance increase?

no... just forget it. I think it would be a waste of your time.

hard drives these days are much much faster even as single drives than that thing will be.

dang! such contempt for my RAID idea. lol

 

[themisfit610]

Depends... if you're doing a lot of DVD ripping or audio encoding (or other sequential read / write heavy) you can see a good benefit.

OS drives are rarely much faster on a RAID though, since most OS stuff is random access. Swap files especially.

~MiSfit

 

[Frugal1ty]

thanks to those who have replied.

i think i'm gonna go on ahead and try to put up the RAID array.

because. . .

1. i have the drives right now. it's not like i'm goin out lookin for old SATA drives to put up in RAID0. I actually pulled these drives out of the trash at my university and sent em into seagate on warranty. . . so the entire array of three 80GB drives will only cost me ~ $7 i payed to fedex em to seagate. whatever % increase i could get in performance would be pretty good per dollar, no?

2. i don't feel like sellin them. (starting to hate eBay, an i'm not really lookin to unload these drives on AT folk)

3. as far as the 'risk' of RAID0, i'm not too concerned. if the thing did go terribly wrong and all my data went up in flames no big deal, i just reinstall XP, battlefield 2, office, etc. all my valuable stuffs on other drives

4. as far as waste of time, i'm not too concerned about that either. as it turns out right now i'm workin my way through 8 months of chemo for cancer i got diagnosed with in back october. i usually have a couple weeks in between treatments and plenty a spare time on my hands.

5. just so i can say i know how to set up a RAID array. put it on the resume, ya know.

maybe i'll do some benchmarking before and after just to see what actually did happen, and post it here.

thanks again folks !

 

[EarthwormJim]

Oh man, sorry to hear about your cancer. Chemo can be beyond brutal, my uncle went through it, and my step mom.

Have fun setting up your raid array though, be sure to make a floppy with the drivers all ready before you start installing Windows.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Good luck (both with the medical and RAID stuff). If you need anything, let us know.
Do you use fraps or anything to judge frame rates in Battlefield 2? It might be interesting to compare RAID to normal speeds in it along with the benchmarks.

 

[imported_wired247]

Good luck with your cancer battle. For many it's anything but fatal these days. I wish you the best!

 

[themisfit610]

It won't help your FPS at all, but it will help with those huge load times in BF2. A 3 drive RAID is pretty fast. Make them all part of the RAID0

RAID is fun to set up..

~MiSfit

 

[Frugal1ty]

welp i finished settin up the RAID and got some graphs from HDTUNE.
i went ahead and set up a few different kinds of arrays.

the benchmarks off the individual seagate ST380817AS are
28.5 MB/s min
57.1 MB/s max
46.1 MB/s average
12.9 ms access

pretty slow, my 80GB IDE western digital does better than that, but let's see what RAID did for
them

two Seagate ST380817AS in RAID0
46.0 MB/s min
89.8 MB/s max
71.6 MB/s average
12.8 ms access

three Seagate ST380817AS in RAID0
40.8 MB/s min
89.5 MB/s max
58.1 MB/s average
12.6 ms access

Seagate ST380817AS mirror
19.7 MB/s min
56.6 MB/s max
39.7 MB/s average
12.7 ms access

three Seagate ST380817AS in RAID5
35.7 MB/s min
87.2 MB/s max
48.3 MB/s average
12.5 ms access

two Western Digital WD1600JD in RAID0
61.5 MB/s min
101.8 MB/s max
92.9 MB/s average
13.5 ms access

the seagates were a disappointment, obviously, but also put up some really funky lookin grapphs. somebody's gonna havta help me understand what these things mean. but as far as numbers go: why is there s performance hit when mirrored (not even a gain in access time). why would RAID0 with three drives be slower than two? i'm sure that's not always the case.

the pleasant surprise were the western digital drives running in RAID0, with the most sain looking graph.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Pretty good results on the WD drive. Not sure why the Seagates had bad performance. What stripe size are you using?

Raid 1 only provides better read results than a single drive if the controller actually supports multi-threaded reading.

 

[Vixx]

The results you posted seem a bit low for a 3 disk array. What controller are you using?

Myself, I'm running into problems because I seem to have maxed out the ICH9R on my motherboard. 4 drive RAID seems smooth, but 6 drive RAID really seems off.

4 drives
Minimum 268.2 MB/s
Maximum: 315.4 MB/s
Average: 299.1 MB/s
Access: 6.4 ms

6 drives
Minimum 110.2 MB/s
Maximum: 479.0 MB/s
Average: 439.0 MB/s
Access: 6.3 ms

 

[Frugal1ty]

it's the nVIDIA controller on a foxconn C51. whatever that is. (nVIDIA 590 MPC chipset)

 

[Frugal1ty]

Originally posted by: EarthwormJim
Pretty good results on the WD drive. Not sure why the Seagates had bad performance. What stripe size are you using?

Raid 1 only provides better read results than a single drive if the controller actually supports multi-threaded reading.

hm, i don't see any options for setting the stripe size

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: Vixx
The results you posted seem a bit low for a 3 disk array. What controller are you using?

Myself, I'm running into problems because I seem to have maxed out the ICH9R on my motherboard. 4 drive RAID seems smooth, but 6 drive RAID really seems off.

4 drives
Minimum 268.2 MB/s
Maximum: 315.4 MB/s
Average: 299.1 MB/s
Access: 6.4 ms

6 drives
Minimum 110.2 MB/s
Maximum: 479.0 MB/s
Average: 439.0 MB/s
Access: 6.3 ms

Woah those are good results, what stripe size are you using?

I'm setting up a 4 drive raid 0 array and not sure what to go with.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: Frugal1ty

Originally posted by: EarthwormJim
Pretty good results on the WD drive. Not sure why the Seagates had bad performance. What stripe size are you using?

Raid 1 only provides better read results than a single drive if the controller actually supports multi-threaded reading.

hm, i don't see any options for setting the stripe size

Should have had the option in your raid bios.

Oh another thing, do you have write back caching enabled? Could help boost your speed a bit.