2 hdd 2x as fast?

ic0n

ic0n

ic0n

Associate
Joined
12 Oct 2005
Posts
850
Location
left abit no your other l
hi guys so i have been told that there is a way of setting raid up with 2 500gb hard drives to load everything twice as fast down side being you only get 500gb storage not 1tb is this right?

also can i add this at any point or will i need a new install of windows.

also if i just want to add more storage in raid can i do this at anytime?

any help and info will really help me out thanks guys
 
Nope, you won't get double the speeds. I assume you are talking about Raid0 here which involves striping the data across both drives, you actually get the full capacity of both but no redundancy so if one drive fails then you lose the lot. You also can't add drives without rebuilding the array.
 
In addition to whats said above, you can add more storage in RAID, however it will not be added to the current array so you will need to create a new one (as long as your motherboard has enough ports).

Once you have installed windows on your first array, you can keep adding new arrays (if you have enough ports / extra sata controllers) and windows will detect them like a single hard drive.
 
right at the mo i have 3 500gb hdd only one connected up to the computer the other 2 sat on the site looking at me what are my options for connecting them up to my computer?
 
ic0n said:
hi guys so i have been told that there is a way of setting raid up with 2 500gb hard drives to load everything twice as fast down side being you only get 500gb storage not 1tb is this right?

also can i add this at any point or will i need a new install of windows.

also if i just want to add more storage in raid can i do this at anytime?

any help and info will really help me out thanks guys
Click to expand...

Sounds like your thinking of raid 1 as it's half the capacity. In theory yes you should get double the read speed and half the seek time as both drives in the array can be read from at once though in the real world you won't get double the performance and not all implementations of raid 1 will improve performance. The capacity of raid 1 will be limited to the capacity of the smallest drive, so all drives would have to be replaced and a new copy of windows installed to add more storage. Mobo raid 1 doesn't improve performance as it only reads from one drive in the array.

Raid 0 will give you the full capacity and significantly improve linear read and write speeds, but won't improve seek times and thus won't improve random reads (ie program loading times).
 
Last edited:
ok well all my drives are 500gb 7200rpm and i am using mobo for raid set up so whats best option as i would pick speed over storage but if its not worth it then will use storage
 
If you really want speed use 2x 500GB for RAID 0 (you will need to reinstall windows on this array and all your applications/games), and use the 500GB as a backup drive.
 
raid0 has given me a *significant* speed increase

I'll admit that 2TB without redundancy is a bad idea, but my speed increase in, for example, TF2 load times is just massive. Same with Windows load times, and apps, such as Photoshop.

I'll openly admit that raid0 is a bad idea if you don't backup your data, but I backup my important data once monthly, and the throughput on 2x1TB F1's is just silly fast :p

don't listen to all the raid0 nay-sayers!
 
Last edited:
uvmain said:
I'll openly admit that raid0 is a bad idea if you don't backup your data, but I backup my important data once monthly, and the throughput on 2x1TB F1's is just silly fast :p

don't listen to all the raid0 nay-sayers!
Click to expand...

That is my primary problem with it, too many people (myself included) will forget about backups and with the size of drives now it can be a huge amount of data to lose.

However I've had Raid0 arrays for a few years and am now back on independent drives and I can't say I notice the difference in speed terms, now you might think that is just down to advances in drive technology but it that was even when I was using the previously Raided drives. It may just be that my uses don't tend to lend themselves to Raid0 but I would generally only recommend it when working with large contiguous files (video, audio or graphics) as they will gain the most benefit.
 
semi-pro waster said:
large contiguous files (video, audio or graphics) as they will gain the most benefit.
Click to expand...

that's fair enough. I do a fair bit of encoding, and the bottleneck for audio splitting and vob combining was my hard drives.. now, it's my cpu :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom