Talk Raid to me, mainly 0 and 5

MouthBoy · 15 Oct 2010 at 18:23

I am currently using 2 x 74gb raptors in raid0 and a few random other sized HDDs. I am looking to get a new set of HDDs in my rig and was looking at raid options. Firstly, can I have more then one raid setup from the onboard motherboard raid controller? I was looking at maybe getting 2 HDDs in raid0 as boot/game drives, and a few larger drives in other raid type for storage.

I dont know where raid5 comes into this though, I just noticed that raid5 seems to be used with larger HDDs (3 or more) and thats it. What are the benefits?

Before anyone tells me to go SSD, I just cant afford it. I am looking at maybe some F3 500gb's and some F3 1Tbs, but undecided right now. The reason I am looking to rid of my raptors is that from what I am reading they are no longer faster then the market in a raid array anymore and so I want to choose to get more space. I am the type of person who likes everything accessable on his HDDs without having to reach for DVDs and CDs every 30seconds.

Thanks

Surveyor · 15 Oct 2010 at 18:34

What model is your motherboard?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/comp.htm

MouthBoy · 15 Oct 2010 at 18:48

Surveyor said:
What model is your motherboard?

Its in my sig, but its a Biostar TPower i45.

I had a look at those links, and I have read the wiki page before but I was looking for more information. I havent always trusted wiki in the past.

Surveyor · 15 Oct 2010 at 19:09

That MB uses the ICH10R chipset. You can have multiple arrays.

The type of RAID to use depends on what combination of capacity/efficiency/fault tolerance/performance you require.

Scroll through the pages here:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/single.htm

It explains all the different RAID levels.

MouthBoy · 15 Oct 2010 at 19:16

Thank you. I will have a look. I just ran HDtune on my HDDs and some of my older HDDs are lagging with as low as 35mb/s transfers. My raptors are only pulling 120-140mb/s for some reason. I hear that F3 500gbs in raid0 are well above that.

-=Vect0r=- · 15 Oct 2010 at 20:00

The new F4 320GB punches huge sustained transfer rates if you pair those in RAID0

MouthBoy · 15 Oct 2010 at 20:48

-=Vect0r=- said:
The new F4 320GB punches huge sustained transfer rates if you pair those in RAID0

Was looking at these but are they worth loosing 180gb over the F3 500gbs?