RAID Arrary

Drazic · 13 Apr 2006 at 10:28

Thinking of going to this now but question is whats best

I want the safest i can and have been told at work that RAID 1 is the best for this as both disc will work togther but should one go i'll be okay

I was thinking of having 3 discs, 2 for all my software so pc is fast and a 3rd as all my dadt so if it did go wrong my data be safe

Pleas ehelp and advise

Mobo is a DFI SLI DR

n3x · 13 Apr 2006 at 11:49

RAID 1 is just disk mirroring (slightly faster reading but slower writing + kinda wasting an entire drive)... what are you trying to achieve?

RAID 5 is the best option for both speed and redundancy.

rpstewart · 13 Apr 2006 at 11:53

OK, I'm a little confused by what you're planning so bear with me...

It sounds like you're thinking of striping across 2 disks for speed - this is RAID0. The problem is that if one drive dies ALL the data on that array is lost. For data it sounds like you're planning a single drive - this is OK but you're still vulnerable if that drive goes.

At the end of the day there is no guaranteed solution, just various levels of reduced risk.

rpstewart · 13 Apr 2006 at 11:55

n3x said:
RAID 5 is the best option for both speed and redundancy.

True but watch out for software RAID5, ie NF4 style. The XOR calculations for the parity stripe are very intensive so without a dedicated hardware engine the write speed of the array can be slow. Reads on the other hand will be fast.

n3x · 13 Apr 2006 at 12:06

Yeah true, i wouldnt bother to be honest, i'd just get a RAPTOR for system a SATA2 for data + an external for backups! If i had the cash

Drazic · 14 Apr 2006 at 20:44

Can i not run 2 hd's say rapters in RAid 0 so it's uber fast and that with all my software on there

And then have one more HD with all my data on that i back up one a week on say the 3rd sata port?

Not sure which ports i need havent looked but you get the idea

rpstewart · 14 Apr 2006 at 21:04

Yup, perfectly possible.

ricky1981 · 16 Apr 2006 at 21:38

Drazic said:
Can i not run 2 hd's say rapters in RAid 0 so it's uber fast and that with all my software on there

And then have one more HD with all my data on that i back up one a week on say the 3rd sata port?

Not sure which ports i need havent looked but you get the idea

Thats precisely what I have and it is noticeably quicker but not massively so to be honest. In hindsight I'd just spend the money on normal drives and not bother with a RAID setup unless you really really need the speed ie you do a lot of encoding, heavy file transfers, not just gaming.

Dutch Guy · 18 Apr 2006 at 09:43

ricky1981 said:
Thats precisely what I have and it is noticeably quicker but not massively so to be honest. In hindsight I'd just spend the money on normal drives and not bother with a RAID setup unless you really really need the speed ie you do a lot of encoding, heavy file transfers, not just gaming.

I agree, it is faster but not by much, my two Hitachi 250Gb drives run at 140mb/sec max and 111mb/sec average but the speed difference is very small.

Only in some situations is it faster but I thought why not do it.

ChrisLX200 · 18 Apr 2006 at 12:32

Dutch Guy said:
I agree, it is faster but not by much, my two Hitachi 250Gb drives run at 140mb/sec max and 111mb/sec average but the speed difference is very small.

Only in some situations is it faster but I thought why not do it.

If it will never bother you to lose what's on them, no reason not to do it.
However, if data security is of any value to you give it a miss.

I ran a 4-disk 0+1 array for years and it failed a number of times for a variety of reasons. I have to say the mirror drive saved my ass when it gave problems. Prior to that ran a straight RAID 0 array (also failed a few times and was never recoverable). Biggest issues are: difficult to repair and recover when it does get corrupted, and loss of SMART status warnings as the raid controler often hides them. In the end I decided the benefits were not enough to warrant it.