Raid, or not to Raid?

MrJubbly

MrJubbly

MrJubbly

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Hi, I am going to be building my first sytem soon and initially I intended to have a dabble with a RAID set-up. I was going to go for 2 Samsung Spinpoint 160's in RAID 0 and a single, standalone, Samsung Spinpoint 320. In my 'noobiness' I thought it logical that I would run my OS, programs, utilities etc on the 320 and use the two 160's for data. When posting my spec on the General Hardware forum though I was duly corrected, but do not understand the logic begind this. Could someone explain?

In addition I was advised that there was little to gain (if anything) by adopting a RAID 0 setup, and that i'd be better off getting a larger disk and partitioning it accordingly. Is this correct, and if so, how does this deliver better performance?

Cheers,

Jubbly
 
The whole point of raid is that it is suppose to be a lot faster than a single drive set up. Therefore, you want the OS and Progs on your raid setup because thats what you will be using/acessing all the time, you will only ocassional use your 320 drive to get date off, therefore the raid setup wouldn't be worth it on the 320.

Personally I use a raid 0 setup and am perfectly happy with it. It is faster than having a single drive but people don't like it because they are scared of losing there date. However if your putting all your data on your 320 drive and not the raid drive then your not going to be in danger are you. If you want to see the performance difference look at the benchmarkets further up the hardrive forum.

If you are using it for your OS and progs Id recomend it especially as you would have nothing to lose IF one drive did break.
 
Being using RAID0 for a couple of years - no problems, so far.......:)

Started with 2 x 74Gb Raptors, but they were too noisy, so sold them.

I thought about 2 150Gb Raptors, but too pricey for size, so I bought 2 x 250Gb WD Sata drives.
 
Thanks for your input guys.

Something else I just thought of. In stead of going for the setup mentionend previously, would i be able to run the two 160's in RAID 0 and then run the 160 pair in RAID 1 with the 320?

My mobo will be the Asus P5B Deluxe, if that helps.

Cheers

Jubbly
 
It depends what you do with it as to whether Raid0 will be worthwhile, if you do a lot of work with large contiguous files (e.g. audio/graphics/video work) then it certainly helps but for more general use it is less clear cut. You also have to take into account the additional risk of losing data since you are relying on two drives to continue to function as one (Raid0 is sometimes called Aid0 as it fails to meet an important criteria of Raid namely the Redundant part of Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks).

If it doesn't matter to you too much about the data then there is no harm in trying it, I ran a Raid0 array on my main PCs for a couple of years but decided that it wasn't really worth it when I re-installed on this PC and I haven't noticed any speed loss at all. :)
 
MrJubbly said:
Something else I just thought of. In stead of going for the setup mentionend previously, would i be able to run the two 160's in RAID 0 and then run the 160 pair in RAID 1 with the 320?
Click to expand...
The Intel Matrix RAID controller lets you do some wacky things but I doubt that's one of them. In theory it's possible but totally pointless: RAID1 won't complete a write operation until both disks have done it so you'd be limited by the write speed of the single disk. On reads you wouldn't be able to guarantee that the RAID0 array would be used so you lose the performance element.

If you want speed and redundancy then take a look at RAID10 or 0+1 - technically they're different but most SATA implementations are effectively interchangeable since all 4 disks are on the same controller.
 
rpstewart said:
The Intel Matrix RAID controller lets you do some wacky things but I doubt that's one of them. In theory it's possible but totally pointless: RAID1 won't complete a write operation until both disks have done it so you'd be limited by the write speed of the single disk. On reads you wouldn't be able to guarantee that the RAID0 array would be used so you lose the performance element.
Click to expand...

Of course. Being a bit of a dimwit there :o. That makes makes perfect sense.

rpstewart said:
If you want speed and redundancy then take a look at RAID10 or 0+1 - technically they're different but most SATA implementations are effectively interchangeable since all 4 disks are on the same controller.
Click to expand...

I was going to go for this sort of setup, but been having a bit if mare trying to choose a case. In then end I decided pretty much that i'm going for the Lian Li PC7, which can only house 3 HDDs.

Cheers,

Jubbly
 
rpstewart said:
You don't need to be limited by it only having three 3 1/2" bays, you can stick HDDs in the 5 1/4" bays either with converter rails or with a bungee suspension setup.
Click to expand...

I suppose cramming a 4th drive in is an option.

Another alternative I am now considering is running the Raid 0 pair (possibly bumping their size up) and partitioning this for os, apps, etc, and data. I could then just utilise the 3rd drive for backup purposes. I could even go as far as using an External drive for this, as opposed to an internal, for more security I guess? does this all sound reasonable, or am I missing the point?

One other thing, I've notice that a lot of the External drives (been looking at the Freecom and WD) come with backup software. If I used an internal drive, what sofware do you guys use (free or otherwise) that you would recommend? (apologies if this question is a bit off topic BTW).

Cheers,

Jubbly
 
rpstewart said:
Nothing wrong with partitioning RAID0 and having a backup drive, it's what I use.

There are plenty of different backup software options out there, Microsoft's Synctoy powertoy is pretty good and free too.
Click to expand...

Excellent :) . I'll probably do this then. Do you use Internal or External HDD for backup?
 
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