Should I go to Raid 0

SuperJ · 26 Oct 2007 at 11:58

Hi

I currently have the following setup

6300 C2D @3.1
2GB Ballistix 800Mhz
DS3 Mobo
160GB Seagate SATA OS drive
400GB Seagate SATA Data and Apps Drive

Question is, should I buy another 160GB drive and make a Raid 0?

I have 2 Externals that I do all my backups to.

Will a Raid 0 array give me a performance boost?

If I go Raid 0 should use it for OS and Apps, instead of just OS and keep the big drive for Data?

J

w3bbo · 26 Oct 2007 at 12:25

I have my big drive for data and two smaller drives in raid0 for OS and games. You will notice a performance boost - especially in game(level) loading times and initial windows bootup. Raid0 is not as significant a boost as it used to be though with the speed of the new drives making raid 0 less of an increase than there was previously. If you want to eek every last drop of performance out of your setup then raid0 is however worth considering.

SuperJ · 26 Oct 2007 at 12:27

Are we talking 1-5% or 20-30% increase?

Imy · 26 Oct 2007 at 13:02

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2969&p=8

With regards to game level load times, there is a next to nothing increase in performance when using an on-board RAID controller with high-end consumer desktop drives.

Janusz · 29 Oct 2007 at 20:15

How about for Audio production? Iam planning on a RAID setup to increase the DFD activitit for sampler intensive applications. Surely a RAID 0 setup would benefit me in this case?

Would the read data transfer be 300 GB/s with a RAID 0 setup.
How much would they be without RAID? 75 GB/s?

JayMax · 31 Oct 2007 at 11:18

300 GB/s

Raid 0, in benchmarks anyway, is roughly linear improvements with the extra drives added.
This benchmark shows the comparison from my old 3 disk array to adding a 4th disk to it.

Roughly, 1 drive was 65, 2 was 120, 3 was 170 and 4 was 230.

In real world terms I can only say that with every extra drive I added to the array I've noticed a significant improvement in general desktop/application & gaming usage. So much so I went from 1 drive to 2, then 3, then 4.
If you do go Raid 0 it is imperative you have a disaster recovery strategy, esp for your OS drive.

Dutch Guy · 1 Nov 2007 at 15:06

It depens on how old(fast) the 160GB drive is, if it is a little older and slower you might get RAID-0 performance that is comparable to a new 500GB/750GB drive.

Fr0dders · 1 Nov 2007 at 23:46

JayMax said:
300 GB/s

Raid 0, in benchmarks anyway, is roughly linear improvements with the extra drives added.

RAID is great for synthetic bench marks

not so great for actual real word beneifts

see the above anandtech article. RAID only offers significant performance boosts for certain tasks

general windows use and gaming arent some of them

JayMax · 1 Nov 2007 at 23:55

MrLOL said:
RAID is great for synthetic bench marks

not so great for actual real word beneifts

see the above anandtech article. RAID only offers significant performance boosts for certain tasks

general windows use and gaming arent some of them

I've read it and I disagree, please reread my additonal comments to my post. From my own experience every drive I have added has made a substantial improvement to my general OS behaviour.
I would not have went from 2 to 3 to 4 if I was not laughing to myself at which my general windows experience had improved with every additional drive.
I'm currently considering moving to ICH9R for 6 disk or even some fancy pci-e 6 or 8 port thing for ~£200. If I had gained no benefits I wouldn't bother doing this.

Janusz · 2 Nov 2007 at 16:55

JayMax said:
300 GB/s

Raid 0, in benchmarks anyway, is roughly linear improvements with the extra drives added.
This benchmark shows the comparison from my old 3 disk array to adding a 4th disk to it.

Roughly, 1 drive was 65, 2 was 120, 3 was 170 and 4 was 230.

In real world terms I can only say that with every extra drive I added to the array I've noticed a significant improvement in general desktop/application & gaming usage. So much so I went from 1 drive to 2, then 3, then 4.
If you do go Raid 0 it is imperative you have a disaster recovery strategy, esp for your OS drive.

sorry, I got my numbers wrong there...I wish it was 300 GB/s ha ha

Energize · 2 Nov 2007 at 17:15

SuperJ said:
Hi

I currently have the following setup

6300 C2D @3.1
2GB Ballistix 800Mhz
DS3 Mobo
160GB Seagate SATA OS drive
400GB Seagate SATA Data and Apps Drive

Question is, should I buy another 160GB drive and make a Raid 0?

I have 2 Externals that I do all my backups to.

Will a Raid 0 array give me a performance boost?

If I go Raid 0 should use it for OS and Apps, instead of just OS and keep the big drive for Data?

J

http://www.overclockers.com/articles1063/index02.asp

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...px?i=2101&p=10

http://techreport.com/articles.x/9124/6

No improvement in loading times and in fact increases seek times.

RaiderX · 2 Nov 2007 at 17:33

i use 2 160GB drives in RAID, it has improved performance a lot, it also gave more storage space

Paul11 · 3 Nov 2007 at 08:42

RaiderX said:
i use 2 160GB drives in RAID, it has improved performance a lot, it also gave more storage space

how does having the drive in raid give you more space than just having the drives on their own ?

MumboJumbo · 3 Nov 2007 at 20:42

i was wondering that.

Abz · 3 Nov 2007 at 21:06

Always go for Raid0 and have a spare for photo backups and maybe an external for backing up your spare

Imy · 3 Nov 2007 at 21:39

There should be performance benefits to RAID 0 but it doesn't quite do what it says on the tin with regards to where people are actually trying to improve system performance (os, game level load times, etc).

At least not with your typical 7,200rpm drives using an on-board controller. In theory it should scale in real-world apps just like how it does in synthetic benchmarks; but it doesn't always.

Beerbaron · 4 Nov 2007 at 16:03

whats the maximum number of drives you can have for a basic raid 0 array?

Imy · 4 Nov 2007 at 17:47

However many your RAID controller can handle (minimum of 2); mine does 128 I think.

You shouldn't have too many drives in RAID 0 as it only takes one of them to corrupt or die and the entire array is gone. With each additional drive you add to RAID 0, it increases the risk of loosing the array.

It all depends on how good your backup solution is as to whether you should risk having lots of drives in RAID 0, or switch to RAID 5 or 6 instead. RAID 5/6 is pretty poor on on-board controllers though.

Cromulent · 4 Nov 2007 at 17:49

RAID 10 is another solution is you are looking just for performance. RAID 5/6 is not quite up to the performance of RAID 0.

Imy · 4 Nov 2007 at 22:42

RAID 10 isn't so popular as its basically a RAID 1 array striped as a RAID 0 array. This means you need a minimum of 4 drives while only retaining the space of 2. RAID 5 is a good compromise as you get redundancy at the cost of only 1 drive, no matter how many drives in total (min 3) - but as I mentioned earlier, its not great when used on on-board controllers.

In the context of the original poster though, he has a full backup solution already and only one OS drive to begin with so to use RAID 10 would cost him quite a bit and have a minimal performance boost (if any?)

If it was me, I'd get shot of the 160GB and get a raptor. That will give you a performance boost in areas where the RAID 0 array being suggested won't.