Raid, or not to Raid?

[MrJubbly]

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

 

[MrJubbly]

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

 

[MrJubbly]

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.

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

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.

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

 

[MrJubbly]

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.

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

 

[MrJubbly]

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.

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