RAID class drives for a home RAID?

SiD the Turtle · 5 May 2009 at 20:40

Hey guys,

I want to pick up two 1TB Samsung F1s and RAID them in my media centre. There are two Samsungs, one with RAID in the title, one without.

These will just be for storing movies and music and won't be hammered as if they were in a corporate server. So the question is, is there a technical reason why I should go for the RAID model or will I be fine with the non-RAID model?

fobose · 5 May 2009 at 21:04

I wouldn't bother with the "RAID" model for home use. I dont know about server use though, but for me I have 2 RAID 1 arrays and they have been fine for over a year now (Seagate 500GB 7200.9's and WD blue 640GB's).

SiD the Turtle · 6 May 2009 at 11:36

Ah thanks for that, sounds good. Anyone else have any input just in case?

linktoinsanity · 6 May 2009 at 11:45

I'd say that if it's not your OS drive then the non-RAID should be fine. They are much cheaper. It basicly means that RAID is less likely to fail on the RAID specific drives, something to do with parity or something like that. Tbh though I've had two RAID 0 setups with non-RAID drives as my main OS drive and they've been fine so far.

StevenRaith · 6 May 2009 at 11:56

Actually, it's more to do with imnproved internal dampening to reduce vibration, and other tweeks like that which are supposed to increase the MTBF, as opposed to it being designed to work better in RAID, AFAIK. Whether it does or not, christ knows - but I woudn't bother paying extra for them, unless they are actual enterprise-class drives, which I don't believe they are.

TBH I'd have two spinpoint 120Gbs in RAID0 in my other machine for four years - never a glitch. The Samsung stuff is pretty solid it seems.