4 HDD in Raid 0?

While it would give you (somewhat) increased performance, having four drives in RAID 0 means that if any one of the four fails, you would lose all of the data on the array - so not something to risk with anything you want to keep!
 
Nothing too important and after one so called 'reliable' HDD has failed on me, I would think it pretty unlucky for it to happen again. Western Digital sounds really reliable anyway. I could always back up my files somewhere.
 
I think you should have replied that four guys like your friend would achieve in total Einstein's IQ in some aspects ;)
Sorry, but sequential read/write is not what people want, or do in usual work. Nobody reads/writes 400 MB per second all the time, except BluRay ISO copiers ;-) There's no comparison in feeling OS installed on HDD and SSD. RAID-0 - of, course, is nice, but it multiplies failure chance of whole mirror at the same time and raises access time a little.

I've got RAID-0 consisted of 2 HDDs and it features nice installation (for example) time comparing to single drive. But I've got SSD, too and it gives me such response time that will be unavailable for long time for HDDs.

Summing up - I'd recommend you to buy two HDDs for RAID-0 and one SSD (like Agility 120 GB, or Sandisk Extreme - if you look for great bang for bucks) for operating system. Then you will compare yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
 
I think a good option would be RAID1+0. I use it and I like it. With 4*500GB you'd get 1TB with twice the speed of a single drive, with a full mirror image for backup. Instantaneous recovery. If your motherboard supports it it's an option
 
Once the RAID has been set up, would I just have to copy everything from my current hard drive onto the new RAID setup to make my old HDD redundant?
 
I would suggest just going with an SSD and 2 HDD's on Raid 0 but if your set on 4 HDD's then id go with RAID 5 for the data redundancy so if a drive fails your still safe. Depends how much of an issue losing all your data would be really.
 
Juvenile said:
Apparently RAID 6 can tolerate 2 drive faults with a minimum of 4 drives which is what I'm looking at now anyway.
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RAID6 causes quite a large hit on the speed, even with a dedicated hardware RAID card, plus it's a waste of 2 drives in a 4 drive setup.

RAID5 means you only lose 1 drive to parity, so you get more space.
However you still take a performance hit with RAID5, especially on non hardware RAID like on motherboards.
 
I wouldn't consider any home RAID array over an SSD for performance.

The only time nowadays I'd consider RAID at home is for backups.
 
PistolPete said:
:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
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What? I mean RAID 1 for backups, or another RAID set that has redundancy.

I don't see why someone at home would need a higher sequential read speed than any decent SSD would offer. The seek time of an SSD kills off any argument for RAID 0 with conventional drives over an SSD anyway.
 
MilanoChris said:
What? I mean RAID 1 for backups, or another RAID set that has redundancy.

I don't see why someone at home would need a higher sequential read speed than any decent SSD would offer. The seek time of an SSD kills off any argument for RAID 0 with conventional drives over an SSD anyway.
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You seem to be under the quite common misconception that RAID = backups.

RAID does not equal backups, RAID (as it has in its name) is for redundancy only.

I learnt this the hard way when a disk in my RAID 1 array failed, and for some reason I cannot fathom the data on the second disk was also gone.

Having two disks, copied by two different programs is better than RAID 1.



To the OP:

The question you have to ask yourself is WHY. Are you a video editor that requires high sequential read/write rates? I suspect your not.

Therefore RAID is a waste of time. Buy yourself an SSD, a data & backup HD and that will be faster, less hassle and more reliable than a RAID setup.
 
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No, I'm saying the only time I would use RAID at home is for backups, I wouldn't use it for any other purpose.

At work though, it's a different story.

And I'm well aware that a RAID 1 array is not ideal as a backup, due to corrupted data being copied to all drives in the array. I would however run it in a NAS, backing up data that is already backed up on my PC, or another scenario.
 
Nothing wrong with backing up data to a raid array. However, using Raid as a backup solution is another matter. :)

Back on topic, get an SSD if you want speed, its all well and good have a 4disk raid array but the noise/heat involved soon looses against any appeal gained over a SSD imo.
 
Asothers have said just get an SSD, simple fact is that the much lower access time is the thing that really makes them better than any setup of mechanical hard drives for speed.
 
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