New 3 disk raid, would you check for errors first?

Harbz

Harbz

Harbz

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Just purchased 3x "SATA 250GB Seagate 7200.10 16MB" drives for a raid 0 setup. First time I will be running raid so I have some questions please!

* Would you slow format each drive first before setting up the raid to ensure there are no bad sectors?

* What is the best stripe size. the drive will be just used as a vista boot and apps drive, with a second partition on it to store music and videos. I will be using the onboard intel raid controller on my Gigabyte DS4 965 mobo.

Thanks!
 
yep thats no problem. Not too concerned about the movies and music as most are backed up onto dvd anyway, I will do weekly ghosts of the OS partition.
 
Would you slow format each drive first before setting up the raid to ensure there are no bad sectors?
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I wouldn't bother, just use the "Quick format" setting for each HDD.

What is the best stripe size.
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I found (by experiementation) that a 32KB stripe size (4KB cluster) was the best "general" usage size (for working with large file and running Windows)....:)
 
Thanks. I've been reading posts saying that the intel onboard controllers like 128k stripe size. Does that mean 128k is the best and fastest to use?
 
Harbz said:
Thanks. I've been reading posts saying that the intel onboard controllers like 128k stripe size. Does that mean 128k is the best and fastest to use?
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It was an Intel controller that I used for experiementation....it all depends on the "file" size, small files (like Windows OS) is most efficiently run on a small stripe (ie 8-16KB), large files (like video) runs more efficiently on a large stripe (64-128KB), hence I said that for "general" usage (including working with large video file) a 32KB stripe size was what I found to be best (for my purposes). :)
 
hi harbz

may i ask why 3 x 250gb in raid0? i've had a bad experienced with RAID0 (2x80GB), one of the hard drive died and lost everything. technically if you got 2 hard drive, you got twice the chance of losing data cos 2 hard drives. same with 3 hard drives, u'll get 3 times more chance of losing the data.

i'd just get the seagate 750GB version, a little cheaper and less chance of losing data.

unless you got a very good reason to go for RAID0 with 3 hard drives. if you want speed, u know the more hard drives in RAID0 will increase the seek time, you know that? My 74GB raptor is faster than the RAID0 i had due ultra low seek time.
 
I should mention there is really only one reason to use RAID0, and that is if you are working with (copying/moving) and unzipping large files (ie like video files)...this is the only use you will see any "significient" performance increase over single HDDs...

Also, in using RAID0 a good backup system needs to be in place, ie something like Acronis True Image 10/11, plus the like of SyncToy.

It might be worthwhile using (3 HDDs) in RAID5..this will give you an Average read of 2 HDDs in RAID0, althought on the ICHxR the write values will be quite poor.

Have a read Here
 
Thanks for the replies, i went for the 250gig drives because they are the new single platter versions so they are the fastest around. 3 because i want faster vista boot speed. Is it possible to create 2 raid volumes on the same drives using half space each and different stripe sizes?
 
Harbz said:
Is it possible to create 2 raid volumes on the same drives using half space each and different stripe sizes?
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On the Intel Matrix Controllers (ICH7R, ICH8R & ICH9R) that is possible but be aware that performance will suffer if you have simultaneous access to both arrays in the same way as if you had two partitions on a single disk.
 
Thanks. Would it be possible to leave some space on the disks as un-raided? So create a raid partition using the first 100gigs of space on the drives and the rest leave as normal drives?
 
RaiderX said:
once part of a drive is in RAID, you cant leave the rest not in raid.
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With traditional RAID controllers that is the case, on the newer Intel controllers however it is possible to use part of the drive for a RAID array and part for either another array or as a single volume.
 
awesome, thanks guys. Should be setting up a new 3 disk raid array of 250gig as raid0, and the remaining 500gig as a raid3 for my data.
 
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