Reading about RAID

HatMan · 9 Nov 2007 at 23:17

I have been reading up on RAID but am still not convinced as to the merits of it to a normal user like me.

I have a Sammy HD501LJ presently and I thought to get another and run in RAID stripe mode. Yes I would like a quicker PC bit is is worth it. If I do buy another should I just add 500Gb or go RAID????? That's my question.

Thanks

BENdage · 10 Nov 2007 at 12:00

RAID does improve performance, but its only noticeable in certain situations. With the PC able to read the data from 2 drives, transfer speeds are up, however access times are down since it has to find a location on both drives. Things that are quicker are large read and write operations. Loading windows for example is significantly quicker with RAID, as is loading levels etc in games, hibernating etc. It wont make any noticable difference when web browsing, saving word docs etc, only with large operations.

Mattus · 10 Nov 2007 at 14:56

BENdage said:
however access times are down since it has to find a location on both drives.

Is that really true? Surely both drives would seek the location simultaneously...

Cob · 10 Nov 2007 at 15:12

My access times stayed the same after RAIDing my Raptors (8.8ms).

HatMan · 10 Nov 2007 at 19:17

That's interesting. As the HDD is the bottleneck in moreorless everyones system having RAID gives a speed increase. You say it's very noticable so I think I'll go with it. If I see no benefit I'll simply change over to 500Gb extra. Oh if I install the new drive and tell the bios to go RAID, does the system then copy everything over to the new drive as needed for stripping or do I have to start over??

Thanks

zetec452 · 10 Nov 2007 at 20:03

HatMan said:
Oh if I install the new drive and tell the bios to go RAID, does the system then copy everything over to the new drive as needed for stripping or do I have to start over??

Thanks

If you are going from a single disk to a stripe array then no, you will need a full reinstall. Also be very very careful when going from single disk to mirror. You may have the option to copy the data from a master drive to the new slave drive in the mirror array.

Backup, backup and backup some more would be my advice.

Personally I wouldn't bother with a stripe array for performance as IMO you won't see any great benefit and will double your chance of system failure.