RAID-0 questions

Dutch Guy · 5 Apr 2006 at 09:10

I will be getting 2x250Gb Hitachi T7K250 drives and was thinking about a RAID-0 setup but have a few questions.

- I know that if one drive fails all data is lost but is there also a big chance of data becoming corrupt without a drive failure?
- Is the nForce4 RAID option a good one or isn't it any faster than two single drives?
- Do you know any reviews/articles about how to set it up?
- Can I use Acronis True Image to clone my Windows install on IDE to the RAID array?
- Should I bother with RAID-0 or is the risk too great for a small increase in performance?

Skilldibop · 5 Apr 2006 at 09:26

corruption without drive failure is highly unlikely. You'd need an area with excessive bad clusters or something drastic to go wrong with the Raid/SATA controller.

Nforce4 RAID is good. You will notice a difference in speed over 2 separate disks.

You should be able to clone the install from an old disk onto the array as for all intents and purposes it's viewed as a single 500GB disk once set up.
{edit} Unless! you have to install 3rd party Raid/SATA drivers that are not currently installed on that OS clone.

Yes do go with RAID0. It is worth it, but do make sure any sensetive data is backed up to a non raid disk or preferably some external medium.

Setup is pretty simple and is should be covered in your Motherboard manual. Only real thing you may want to tweak is the stripe size, Smaller the better. The performance degrades the longer your reading/writing to the disk, so the shorter this time the faster you go (i.e burst is always faster than sustained)

Dutch Guy · 5 Apr 2006 at 09:47

Thanks for the repluy, got some more Q's

- Do I connect the new drives alongside the old ones, setup RAID-0 on them, partition them, clone the old drive, disconnect the old drive and boot from the RAID array?
- What stripe size do you recommend, I don't do much video editing, only sometimes, mostly it's browsing, e-mailing, gaming and distributed computing so I was thinking about 128k or 64k?

Skilldibop · 5 Apr 2006 at 09:53

Yes, set up the raid array so that you can see it in windows and it's all good. Make sure any drivers for it are installed in the IDE boot. Make an image, and copy it across. Then you should be able to pull the IDE disk and boot from the array.

For those usages mentioned leave it at default. But if you want to custom it 128k or 64k should be fine, 64k would be faster probably but in this case i doubt you'd notice the difference It'd only really make much odds if you had a really expensive kick ass raid controller or were running quite a few disks.

tomos · 5 Apr 2006 at 10:29

i've just done this with the exact same drives last week

no probs at all. just went into the bios for the sata controllers, setup a raid array on the drives (choice of 0,1,5 or jbod), go to windows and activate/partition/format the drive as normal then

Combat squirrel · 5 Apr 2006 at 12:48

If its for windows use id say a stripe size of 16kb or 32kb, but if games go with 128kb, theres lots of small fiddly files in windows and if the file is smaller (which a lot are) than 128kb, the data will be written to one disk only, hence making raid pointless, mines at 16kb with 2 raptors, windows boots (after bios has finshed) in around 5-6 seconds, FLYS

tomos · 5 Apr 2006 at 12:52

how do you choose a bigger size? on mine i only have a max of 4098 bytes :confused:

i have some raid systems and since most files are over 4 gig in size i would prefer a larger size

Rambaud · 5 Apr 2006 at 13:17

The stripe size is chosen when the RAID Array is "built" in the BIOS.

I have gone for 128k - but my Intel Controller only offered me 3 options :

16k

64k

128k

smids · 5 Apr 2006 at 13:18

tomos said:
how do you choose a bigger size? on mine i only have a max of 4098 bytes

i have some raid systems and since most files are over 4 gig in size i would prefer a larger size

Is that the cluster size though, and not the stripe size? The only way to change that is to format the disk using another windows installation or using some sort of DOS formatter. Windows defaults to 4K and you cannot change it in setup :mad:

.

To Dutch Guy : As Combat squirrel said, I'd go for 32K or 16K as that will make windows lightning whilst still offering some performance increase in game loading albeit not the best you could have if you chose a larger stripe. The nF4 controller has a very good RAID solution. Data corruption chances are quite low. I mean obviously if you pull out a sata cable during operation I wouldn't hold out too much hope but other than that, it's not really much more than a single disk. As you already know disk failure is the biggest bug bear. And I do believe Acronis works fine on RAID's - having read around a few forums and is much better than Ghost.

I'd setup the RAID as you said - in your current install as a storage space and then Ghost across like that. That way you can be sure that nothing has gone wrong and that you will run fine. Be sure to install the nV IDE SW drivers first though. Without that, windows will not load as they contain the RAID drivers. If all goes to plan, it should work.

@ tomos in the nV RAID screen, the thing that say Optimal (64K default) is where you change the stripe size.

tomos · 5 Apr 2006 at 13:21

ah, i was thinking about the options when formatting.

i have 3 raptors for windows to boot from so i'd choose 16k for that and the max for the raid for large files? makes sense thinking about it like that

Rambaud · 5 Apr 2006 at 13:27

smids said:
Is that the cluster size though, and not the stripe size? The only way to change that is to format the disk using another windows installation or using some sort of DOS formatter. Windows defaults to 4K and you cannot change it in setup .

Acronis Disk Director Suite and Partition Magic 8 can re-size clusters.

I used Acronis and it set the cluster size depending on the size of the partitions.

This time I shall use PM 8.

smids · 5 Apr 2006 at 13:30

Rambaud said:
Acronis Disk Director Suite and Partition Magic 8 can re-size clusters.

I used Acronis and it set the cluster size depending on the size of the partitions.

This time I shall use PM 8.

Can it do it on a working/running install though?

Rambaud · 5 Apr 2006 at 14:34

smids said:
Can it do it on a working/running install though?

Yes, although something did render some of my OSs unbootable the last time. But it might have been down to my using both Acronis and PM 8 on the same drives

My clone is complete - I am typing this on the RAID0 system - and I shall be attempting to re-size the existing partiitons (12 of them), change their cluster sizes and create some new partitions.

If I do not re-appear on this forum for some time, you can guess that some disaster has occured.

smids · 5 Apr 2006 at 14:36

Rambaud said:
Yes, although something did render some of my OSs unbootable the last time. But it might have been down to my using both Acronis and PM 8 on the same drives

My clone is complete - I am typing this on the RAID0 system - and I shall be attempting to re-size the existing partiitons (12 of them), change their cluster sizes and create some new partitions.

If I do not re-appear on this forum for some time, you can guess that some disaster has occured.

Good luck. Thing about Partition manager is that it isn't really that reliable. Anyway, sorry Dutch Guy for derailing your thread a bit there - it's still useful knowledge though!

Dutch Guy · 5 Apr 2006 at 15:31

smids said:
Good luck. Thing about Partition manager is that it isn't really that reliable. Anyway, sorry Dutch Guy for derailing your thread a bit there - it's still useful knowledge though!

I had a horrible time with Partition Manager in the past with resizing a partition, but it might be too late now as you are prolly doing it now, I hope it went well.

And tbh it's about RAID and is good information, at least I know you can change the stripe size without having to start over.

Dutch Guy · 5 Apr 2006 at 19:23

Harddrives are ordered so hopefully they turn up soon so I can get going with this.