Raid 5 question

easyrider · 5 Aug 2006 at 16:58

I need 3 hdds?

Is it worth it?

I want to have this raid array as a storage and scratch disk for my mini DV files.

As I understand I get striping raid 0 perfromance with redundancy and parity
Seems ideal for what I need.

Anyone doing it?

smids · 5 Aug 2006 at 17:30

Onboard or card - I'm guessing ICH7R tbh, in which case parity is calculated by the CPU, giving only about 15-20MB/s writes whilst good reads of about 140Mb/s. Writes will be very important is creating and editing files on the disk itself - you don't want to run out of buffer whilst recording now...

Goumet · 5 Aug 2006 at 17:38

Raid 5 is good but expensive for a home user.

Just makesure you have a good backup, even get a cheap tape drive.

easyrider · 6 Aug 2006 at 02:52

smids said:
Onboard or card - I'm guessing ICH7R tbh, in which case parity is calculated by the CPU, giving only about 15-20MB/s writes whilst good reads of about 140Mb/s. Writes will be very important is creating and editing files on the disk itself - you don't want to run out of buffer whilst recording now...

he he smids

ICH7R on the asus p5wdh so worth it?

easyrider · 6 Aug 2006 at 02:53

Goumet said:
Raid 5 is good but expensive for a home user.

Just makesure you have a good backup, even get a cheap tape drive.

I understand I have redunancy?

Goumet · 6 Aug 2006 at 09:35

Who do you need redundancy for your home machine? is it really that important?

If it is, you can do whats known as a DR (Disaster Recovery) Backup, which is basically an image on Tape.

Should allow you to put your machine back in a couple of hours.

smids · 6 Aug 2006 at 10:09

Goumet said:
Who do you need redundancy for your home machine? is it really that important?

If it is, you can do whats known as a DR (Disaster Recovery) Backup, which is basically an image on Tape.

Should allow you to put your machine back in a couple of hours.

We're not talking employment data or government data here though, more like music collection and photos. A tape drive is certainly not required here I'm guessing

. All he wants is protected data from a disk failing whilst keeping speed.

Personally easy, I would try RAID0+1 or RAID10 if supported or even a RAID0 with a RAID1 backup drive (I have the latter).

Goumet · 6 Aug 2006 at 10:20

Fair Comment Smids.

smids · 6 Aug 2006 at 11:27

Goumet said:
Fair Comment Smids.

Your point was valid - I've just been around this forum long enough and have seen easyrider around enough to know what he was asking

.

img · 6 Aug 2006 at 11:44

smids said:
We're not talking employment data or government data here though, more like music collection and photos. A tape drive is certainly not required here I'm guessing . All he wants is protected data from a disk failing whilst keeping speed.

Personally easy, I would try RAID0+1 or RAID10 if supported or even a RAID0 with a RAID1 backup drive (I have the latter).

agree.

Also getting a pci/pcie raid card would be the way to go really if you can.

smids · 6 Aug 2006 at 11:46

I would love to get one of those highpoint PCIe RAID cards, it's just the damn expense

.

easyrider · 6 Aug 2006 at 14:03

Why try RAID0+1 or RAID10 smids?

Over raid 5?

Goumet · 6 Aug 2006 at 14:05

What kind of disks you got? SATA or IDE or SCSI??

If SCSI try to get a PERC from ebay.

easyrider · 6 Aug 2006 at 14:06

I have 3 x 300 GB SATA 16mb cache Maxtors

Windows is on my 150 GB raptor.

smids · 6 Aug 2006 at 14:11

Goumet said:
What kind of disks you got? SATA or IDE or SCSI??

If SCSI try to get a PERC from [an auction site].

He has SATA. I'd edit out as above, that place is also considered a competitor I'm afraid

.

RAID0+1 and RAID10:

simply, they are exceedingly fast in both accounts, reads and writes. The only problem is that theu require 4 disks with only 2 available for data. I had mine in a 4x80GB Hitachi SATA-II RAID0+1 array which carried about 65MB/s writes and 110MB/s read. Now I use separate RAID's of 1 and 0 which gives me more data space than RAID0+1 but obviously less secure RAID0. This doesn't matter though as I can use Acronis True Image to create a compressed image on the RAID 1 ready for restoration - this has its own downfalls though as in a RAID0+1 or RAID10 you don't have any downtime.

Hmm, interesting array easyrider. Go for RAID5 if using it as a storage drive.... because writes won't matter then. AS you have a good 150GB raptor already, I'm assuming you could work on there and then transfer across if needs be.

easyrider · 6 Aug 2006 at 14:19

I have my Raptor pretty much full with Windows,Games and programs.

So the idea was to have a big space for Edit files ect..as I am editing and rendering.

I will partion the array for my media(mp3 and photos etc..) and have another partition for the video edit files

So ideally I need good write performance too.

You mention Raid 5 does not have particulary good write performance?

If i gvet another 300 GB disk and have four does that mean I only get 600 GB storage running RAID0+1 or RAID10?

smids · 6 Aug 2006 at 14:58

Hmm, RAID5 does have decent write performance, but only on dedicated RAID cards like the Highpoint RocketRAID 2300 series (PCIe) or any PCI card which natively handles XOR calculations (parity info). Passing it off to the CPU gives very poor writes.

And yes, you are correct about the 600GB storage total (then again it would be the same with RAID5 would it not, only with less disks).