Raid

baks · 13 May 2006 at 15:32

Hi, I have 2 Maxtor 6b160MO hard drives and I was wondering whether it is worth buying a 74 gb Raptor and use these two as secondary storage or whether its better to just put these 2 in a raid and buy a large secondary hard drive.

Thanks

semi-pro waster · 13 May 2006 at 21:09

What do you normally use your computer for? Raid0 does have certain advantages but equally a major disadvantage in that it means you have an increased risk of data loss. If you can narrow down what you use your PC for then it might help determine if Raid is going to be useful for you

CurlyWhirly · 13 May 2006 at 22:15

semi-pro waster said:
Raid0 does have certain advantages but equally a major disadvantage in that it means you have an increased risk of data loss.

I have never bothered with RAID 0 as I am not sure how easy it is to restore your data even if you have a backup.
If I couldn't have the peace of mind of having a backup to fall back on then I don't think I'd bother with it to be honest.

I know a mate from work who set up RAID 0 and had to leave his PC on 24/7 as every time he booted up (for some reason) one of his hard drives was faster at booting up than the other one and he had to keep repairing the array as it had gone offline :rolleyes:

Also when I went over there, his loading times didn't seem twice as quick as a conventional hard drive so I couldn't see the advantage of it to be honest.

baks · 14 May 2006 at 02:22

Hi thanks for your replies.

I use the first drive for Windows and programs and the second for my music, movies and emulators. I also backup the first using Acronis to the second drive just in case the drive fails so really I would want a raid or raptor so that windows and programs in general load faster.

But if the performance is negligible then I suppose I might not bother. Also I dont really need more than 50gb for the first drive.

semi-pro waster · 14 May 2006 at 09:53

I'd go with a Raptor then, unless you are working with large files on a regular basis(video/picture/audio editing) the performance benefits of Raid0 don't tend to offset the downsides of increased data loss in my view.

CurlyWhirly's friends experience is very unusual though, I'd suspect he used two drives of different speeds unless he was massively unlucky and had the dodgiest Raid controller around. I have previously used Raid0 for a long time on my last two PCs without any issues but the speed benefits weren't that great in comparison to the risks for what I needed

CurlyWhirly · 14 May 2006 at 19:15

semi-pro waster said:
CurlyWhirly's friends experience is very unusual though, I'd suspect he used two drives of different speeds unless he was massively unlucky and had the dodgiest Raid controller around.

I can't remember the mobo model but I can remember the name of the on-board RAID controller chip, it was Promise and at the time was notorious for it's faults so my friend gave up on RAID and went back to a conventional hard drive set-up.
The drives were both the same size and speed and were both Western Digital which is a quality brand I assume.