Raid0 Question.

[Shenkoa]

I am thinking of buying another 80 GB HDD for RAID0, I allready have the same WD800JB Drive in my PC. Would Raid0 (Stripping) give me the full 160 GB of both drives combined or would it limit me to 80?

I know its a dumb question, but I am tired.

 

[carpenter]

It would give you 160gig, Shenkoa. Raid 0 combines both drives. Raid 1 would give you 80 gig as it mirrors the main drive onto the other for back up. I'm running a similar setup, 2-100 gig WDjb's in raid 0. I get around 186gig of usable space. You'll get about 150gig. Don't let it throw you, it's a difference in the way hard drive manufacturers count. Hope this helps.

 

[rumptis]

I wouldn't go with Raid 0. I have messed around with it alittle and read alot on it and its just not worth it you don't get that big of a preformance gain and the risk of losing everything goes way up if you lose one drive you lose everything that is on both.

 

[newParadigm]

RAID0 is fast and its cool to get into the whole raid thing in my opinion. I got two Seagate 80gigers in RAID0. Much faster than single drive.

I'd say go for it.

 

[carpenter]

I'm running the raid 0 on one box and a single hd on the other. The box with the single hd is faster. It's because of the components, they are all faster. The raid setup will load games and programs faster, but also takes a lot longer to boot up as raid arrays are checked for functionality every time you boot up. And the single hd comp runs everything faster because of the faster components. If I loose one of my raid hd's, I loose everything. I tried this as an experiment to see what the difference really is and can't really say it's something I'd do again.

 

[TheWarden]

RAID 0 is NOT "much faster" than a single drive:

Anandtech - "If you haven't gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place, and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. The real world performance increases are negligible at best and the reduction in reliability, thanks to a halving of the mean time between failure, makes RAID-0 far from worth it on the desktop."

StorageReview.com - The enthusiasm of the power user community combined with the marketing apparatus of firms catering to such crowds has led to an extraordinarily erroneous belief that striping data across two or more drives yields significant performance benefits for the majority of non-server uses. This could not be farther from the truth! ... Save your time, money and data- leave RAID for the servers!

Cheers,
Warden

 

[tweeve2002]

I like RAID 0 so much, I have 2 RAID 0 set up in my computer. I have 2 WD 80GB drives and 2 WD 120GB drives. The 2 80GB drives give me 149GB in drive space and the 2 120GB drives give me 223GB of space. One thing I have noticed about RAID 0 compaired to a single drive is that when the drive starts to fill up that the computer dosent start to slow down. Like in most single drive setups. My 223GB RAID drive with more than 75% full is still just as fast as most single drive systems after a reinstall of windows. My 149GB RAID is 94% full and is still just as fast as the day I reformated it.

I say if you want to go with a RAID 0 set up go for it. I love and have now plans in the near future.

 

[Ka0t1x]

I run 2x36Gb Raptors in a striped Raid ( R-0 ), and it's so much faster than a single Raptor drive. I have no idea what you're all talking about, everything loads/access/etc faster ( almost twice as fast. ).. The only thing you have to worry about with Raid-0 is the fact that if a small part of your install gets corrupted it's all FUBAR'd ( AFAIK ).

Originally posted by: tweeve2002
I say if you want to go with a RAID 0 set up go for it. I love and have now plans in the near future.

Definately, Raid-0 is worth a try if you're wondering about it.

 

[TheWarden]

Originally posted by: Ka0t1x
I run 2x36Gb Raptors in a striped Raid ( R-0 ), and it's so much faster than a single Raptor drive. I have no idea what you're all talking about

Read the links I posted and you'll know exactly what we're talking about.

Originally posted by: Ka0t1x
everything loads/access/etc faster ( almost twice as fast. ).

Do you have some benchmarks to back this up? Because I have looked at a lot of benchmarks for RAID 0 arrays, and none of them show anything like everything being almost twice as fast. In fact, all of them showed that RAID 0 gives no worthwhile speed gains for desktop applications and games.

Shenkoa, unless you're needing to do some of the few things that see a speed increase from RAID 0 (like doing a lot of video editing) then you are FAR better off spending your money on other areas of your system where you will get something for your buck and won't put your data at risk. If all you need is more drive space, just add the second drive without going RAID.

Cheers,
Warden

 

[Ka0t1x]

Looking at benchmarks and actually having it is two different things, general computing is much faster, and I hate waiting, also after about a month on a single drive system without a defrag you'll start to slow down. Striped raid doesn't ( atleast as far as I can tell anwyays. ) Oh yeah I timed my Windows XP Prof. Unattended install with and without Raid. Without: ~11-12mins, With: just over 7mins. Software, etc installs much faster as well as packing/unpacking files. Though benches don't seem to lean twards performance in games, it does feel faster with a Raid setup... Again, it might be something you just have to experience.

 

[TheWarden]

On one side we have reputable hardware sites doing multiple benchmarks on multiple setups showing little to no performance gains with RAID 0. On the other side we have people (not just you, Ka0t1x) saying "RAID feels faster." Personally I'm inclined to believe the benchmarks. But Maximum PC says it better than me:

I just built a Doom 3 gaming PC with two 36GB Western Digital Raptor drives set up in a RAID 0 array. Seven days ago, I would have sworn up and down that because of RAID, the level load times for id Software's latest version of Doom were significantly faster than they were on a single-drive system of similar configuration. In fact, I found myself thinking, Man, it's amazing how big a difference a RAID array makes.

It turns out that I, like many, many other gamers and PC manufacturers, was wrong. Level load times in Doom 3--along with scores of other modern PC games--are no faster with RAID than with a single drive. In fact, in some cases, level load times are actually slower with RAID than with a single drive! ...

Associate Editor Josh Norem literally stumbled upon an Internet story on a hardware site that detailed a finding in direct contrast to our long-held belief that RAID 0 provides faster read times, and therefore faster level loading times. If you're a hardcore PC user, it's quite likely you hold this belief yourself.

Norem and Senior Editor Gordon Mah Ung immediately set out to verify the results in a frenetic three-day period of testing, speculation, and bickering. Adhering to the principles of scientific method, which dictates thorough and repeated experimentation until one has validated or proved wrong the hypothesis--in this case, that RAID 0 is no faster than a single drive--the editors tested multiple system configurations with a slew of different games. The results of their testing supported the reports we originally read online.

(From October 2004 Maximum PC, written by Editor in Chief George Jones.)

Now I realize he's talking mostly about game loading times whereas you have mentioned several areas of computing, but my point is about his perceptions. He swore up and down that the RAID 0 array was making an amazingly big difference (almost twice as fast?). When he actually benchmarked those exact scenarios where he thought RAID was so fast, it turns out his perception was dead wrong. Since I have read dozens of testimonies about how fast RAID feels, but have yet to see a benchmark that agrees, I think everybody's perceptions of speed are in this same boat. When building or upgrading a system, I put my money where the benchmarks are.

Cheers,
Warden

 

[newParadigm]

Yeah, but most raid setups are run on BRAND Newly configured systems.

Over time as other people have said, drives fill up and slow down, with raid0 the effects of this are as drastic, thats where i think the whole spped factor really comes in, plus its a good thing to know if you want to help people out. I make money on campus fixing peop0les comp, a LOT of them have RAID, and if i didn't know how it functioned i would be S-O-L in many situations.

 

[gsellis]

If your goal is doubling your drive space with a second drive, it will work. JBOD will work too. Do remember that to create the volume, you will need to destroy what is on that drive currently to create a RAID 0 set. If the orginal drive is not the boot drive (or the system drive), you can span the volume IIRC with the new drive instead in Disk Management.

 

[Xatrix]

For RAID performance testing I checked out this site:

Check er' out!