YARAIDT: Which RAID for 2x500GB Seagate drives

[BrokenVisage]

Hey guys, I'm planning on setting up a RAID array on my fileserver at home. I already have one 500GB drive and plan on getting another one, but the question is should I do RAID 0 or 1?

I know many people say RAID 0 is bad news, but if I could get away with doing daily image backups for reliability I would gladly go RAID 0 and sacrafice safety for performance. However, I've been reading that the "read time" on disks in RAID 1 are actually better then RAID 0, which is kinda what I'm shooting for since I just want to be able to access the data quickly from any computer on my LAN.

Obviously space isn't going to be a problem with both drives being 500GB, so which RAID should I go with for my setup? I don't plan on adding more than just the 2 HDD's and I won't be doing anything on this computer other then downloading torrents/P2P/binaries, using it as my MP3 storage, and occasionally watching movies being stored on it from my laptop. Thanks in advance.

 

[GrammatonJP]

Read time depends on the controller. If you're controller is smart enough to read from both drives, yes, it will be faster. Else it won't.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
Hey guys, I'm planning on setting up a RAID array on my fileserver at home. I already have one 500GB drive and plan on getting another one, but the question is should I do RAID 0 or 1?

I know many people say RAID 0 is bad news, but if I could get away with doing daily image backups for reliability I would gladly go RAID 0 and sacrafice safety for performance.

I don't plan on adding more than just the 2 HDD's and I won't be doing anything on this computer other then downloading torrents/P2P/binaries, using it as my MP3 storage, and occasionally watching movies being stored on it from my laptop. Thanks in advance.

You can't "get away with doing backups" if you only have "just the 2 HDD's".
With those size drives, go with RAID 1 and forget about it.

 

[RaiderJ]

If you're worried about losing any data, then RAID 1 is really your only option outside of backups. On the plus side, you could easily add a third drive and start doing RAID 5 w/ a controller.

However, why not JBOD, or even no RAID itself? Seems silly to me to waste an entire hard drive.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: Blain

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
Hey guys, I'm planning on setting up a RAID array on my fileserver at home. I already have one 500GB drive and plan on getting another one, but the question is should I do RAID 0 or 1?

I know many people say RAID 0 is bad news, but if I could get away with doing daily image backups for reliability I would gladly go RAID 0 and sacrafice safety for performance.

I don't plan on adding more than just the 2 HDD's and I won't be doing anything on this computer other then downloading torrents/P2P/binaries, using it as my MP3 storage, and occasionally watching movies being stored on it from my laptop. Thanks in advance.

You can't "get away with doing backups" if you only have "just the 2 HDD's".
With those size drives, go with RAID 1 and forget about it.

:thumbsup:

 

[BrokenVisage]

Here is the controller card I'm getting

It's was only around $50 shipped, but supports ATA-150 and NCQ.

 

[Madwand1]

For the price of the 500 GB, you could get 2 300 GB's, put them in RAID 0, and have the 500 GB as a backup.

 

[jlbenedict]

why even RAID at all?

Thats just one more component in the equation for a chance of failure.... not to mention the fact you are looking at controllers in the $50 range. I'm sure they are real reliable for data you do not want to lose.

 

[GrammatonJP]

RAID 1 is to reduce downtime from drive failure. You can be like the other guy that had 3 years of work data on 1 drive and did not backup or have a 2nd storage

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: jlbenedict
why even RAID at all?

not to mention the fact you are looking at controllers in the $50 range.

:laugh:
$50 controller = onboard controller quality

 

[jlbenedict]

Originally posted by: GrammatonJP
RAID 1 is to reduce downtime from drive failure. You can be like the other guy that had 3 years of work data on 1 drive and did not backup or have a 2nd storage

If I needed reliability on the safeguard of 3 years of work data, I would invest in tape backup, not RAID 1.

 

[BrokenVisage]

Originally posted by: Blain

Originally posted by: jlbenedict
why even RAID at all?

not to mention the fact you are looking at controllers in the $50 range.

:laugh:
$50 controller = onboard controller quality

Welp, I can't break the bank on every peripheral I add or I'd be broke. So I figured a $50 controller would be fine just for 2 similar HDD's running RAID 0 or 1. But I want to run RAID basically to get better performance and/or redundancy with my data, my MB only supports SATA @ ATA-100 so I figured pick up another 500GB down the line when it gets closer to the $100-$150 range and I'd be set.

 

[Madwand1]

Do you have a gigabit network? If not, you'd be better off spending your money on setting up that network -- if you want to improve performance. Also, if you have a gigE card in a PCI slot, you wouldn't want a PCI disk controller.

 

[eastvillager]

RAID is a waste in your configuration. Going RAID 0 won't give you a noticeable performance increase in that configuration. Going RAID 1 is just going to save you some restore time in the event of a drive failure. For the use you're planning, and the data in question, I don't know that it makes sense to blow the money on another 500gig drive and a RAID controller.

If the data matters, look into a tape drive. If it doesn't, you don't need RAID 1 anyways.

 

[BrokenVisage]

Originally posted by: eastvillager
RAID is a waste in your configuration. Going RAID 0 won't give you a noticeable performance increase in that configuration. Going RAID 1 is just going to save you some restore time in the event of a drive failure. For the use you're planning, and the data in question, I don't know that it makes sense to blow the money on another 500gig drive and a RAID controller.

If the data matters, look into a tape drive. If it doesn't, you don't need RAID 1 anyways.

So you're saying I won't see any substansial increase in read/write speed with RAID 1 or 0 between my fileserver and any other computer on my network? Maybe I should mention it's a WIRELESS fileserver as well, could that be a bottleneck for what I'm looking to achieve?

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
So you're saying I won't see any substansial increase in read/write speed with RAID 1 or 0 between my fileserver and any other computer on my network? Maybe I should mention it's a WIRELESS fileserver as well, could that be a bottleneck for what I'm looking to achieve?

D'oh!

That would be a "yep", you're wasting your time trying increase performance with RAID if you're going through wireless. You need to go to gigabit before RAID will matter, as I suggested previously. Check the data rates of the network and the HD's, and you'll understand this clearly.

 

[BrokenVisage]

Originally posted by: Madwand1

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
So you're saying I won't see any substansial increase in read/write speed with RAID 1 or 0 between my fileserver and any other computer on my network? Maybe I should mention it's a WIRELESS fileserver as well, could that be a bottleneck for what I'm looking to achieve?

D'oh!

That would be a "yep", you're wasting your time trying increase performance with RAID if you're going through wireless. You need to go to gigabit before RAID will matter, as I suggested previously. Check the data rates of the network and the HD's, and you'll understand this clearly.

Yeah I had a feeling the wireless aspect would bottleneck me no matter what, thanks for the input everyone.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: Madwand1
You need to go to gigabit before RAID will matter, as I suggested previously. Check the data rates of the network and the HD's, and you'll understand this clearly.

I'm glad someone finally pointed this out. Depending on the quality of the networking hardware involved, even a gigabit network might be slower than the disk's read speed. Most consumer level gigabit networks (i.e. those that don't support jumbo frames and don't have well-tuned network parameters) won't see much more than a few times 100Mb speed if they're lucky. Figuring that the 100Mb speed limits the drive to about 10MB/s, you would need a 5x to 6x improvement in throughput before the network outruns the disk, at least. That's probably not going to happen.

 

[BrokenVisage]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle

Originally posted by: Madwand1
You need to go to gigabit before RAID will matter, as I suggested previously. Check the data rates of the network and the HD's, and you'll understand this clearly.

I'm glad someone finally pointed this out. Depending on the quality of the networking hardware involved, even a gigabit network might be slower than the disk's read speed. Most consumer level gigabit networks (i.e. those that don't support jumbo frames and don't have well-tuned network parameters) won't see much more than a few times 100Mb speed if they're lucky. Figuring that the 100Mb speed limits the drive to about 10MB/s, you would need a 5x to 6x improvement in throughput before the network outruns the disk, at least. That's probably not going to happen.

So you're saying even if I can get up to 108Mpbs between my fileserver and the router, ANY speed increase that RAID 1/0 would provide would be neglectable?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage

Originally posted by: cleverhandle

Originally posted by: Madwand1
You need to go to gigabit before RAID will matter, as I suggested previously. Check the data rates of the network and the HD's, and you'll understand this clearly.

I'm glad someone finally pointed this out. Depending on the quality of the networking hardware involved, even a gigabit network might be slower than the disk's read speed. Most consumer level gigabit networks (i.e. those that don't support jumbo frames and don't have well-tuned network parameters) won't see much more than a few times 100Mb speed if they're lucky. Figuring that the 100Mb speed limits the drive to about 10MB/s, you would need a 5x to 6x improvement in throughput before the network outruns the disk, at least. That's probably not going to happen.

So you're saying even if I can get up to 108Mpbs between my fileserver and the router, ANY speed increase that RAID 1/0 would provide would be neglectable?

this is a theoretical speed, you won't get it, trust us.

you are wanting speeds of a true wired Gbe network using pci-e or pci-x scsi/enterprise raids but only want to spend $50 on a controller. not going to happen.

also, your onboard controller, if it is sata is 150MB/s or 3.0Gb/s, if it is pata is ata100, but that is fine because your hdds seperately will max out at ~60MB/s sustained on large file transfers, smaller files will be much slower because of the seek times involved.

do raid 1 or don't even do a raid at all, like others have stated, you are just adding more items to fail with no benefit.

your current setup is more than adequate for your piracy uses

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
So you're saying even if I can get up to 108Mpbs between my fileserver and the router, ANY speed increase that RAID 1/0 would provide would be neglectable?

Um... yeah, not just neglectable/negligible, actually non-existent. You are familiar with the difference between bits and bytes? That would be a factor of 8, so 108Mb/s = ~14 MB/s. That's theoretical - accounting for overhead, make it a factor of 10, so 108Mb/s = ~11MB/s. The typical modern IDE drive has a sustained transfer rate of somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-60MB/s, depending on where the data lives on the platter. So your disk is 3-4 times faster than even a "fast" 108Mb/s wireless network. You would need a very fast, very well-tuned, and rather expensive gigabit network (including the buses that connect the disks at the endpoints) to outrun the disk. And even then, it would just barely do so.

RAID 0 is utterly pointless and stupid in your situation. RAID 1 might be helpful in providing you with better availability, but don't confuse it with a proper backup. RAID 1 won't save you when you accidentally delete that really important file on your server - it will just delete it on two disks at once.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle
You would need a very fast, very well-tuned, and rather expensive gigabit network (including the buses that connect the disks at the endpoints) to outrun the disk.

While this is true to some degree, it's not true that you have to spend a lot on the networking hardware. You can get very good networking performance from cheap hardware these days, at least in some cases. On-board gigabit and on-board RAID 0 for example can easily perform very well. That said...

Originally posted by: cleverhandle
And even then, it would just barely do so.

There is some truth here, but also some room for improvement. Numbers would be better than the phrase "just barely", but this detail probably deserves a separate thread altogether -- it's not important to the OP in his context.