To Raid 0 or not to Raid 0

forest4

forest4

forest4

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Canada
I am almost finished building (but mainly, almost finished BUYING, lol) a new computer that I will be using for a lot of different tasks. Primarily gaming, but also for school, I watch news video streams online, as well as download a lot of TV shows to my hard drive(s).

I have bought to far:
ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard
Core i7 920 CPU
6 GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 Patriot RAM
XFX ATI Radeon HD 5870 Videocard
Lite-On 4x Blu-Ray Drive (the "4x" is the speed, not 4 drives)
1 Terabyte Western Digital Caviar Black Internal Hard Drive
Thermalright U-120 eXtreme CPU heatsink
ANTEC 1200W Power Supply

I still need to buy:
CoolerMaster Sniper Black Edition Computer Case
Possibly another Hard Drive to run in Raid 1

However, I have only bought a single 1 Tetabyte Western Digital Caviar Black. My motherboard supports Raid setups. Should I buy another 1 TB drive in order to back up the primary hard drive should it fail? Could my second hard drive, running in Raid 0, be smaller, like 500 GB or 250 GB instead (cheaper to buy)? I am new to the Raid 0 scene.

In my soon to be "old" computer, a Celeron 3.33 GB, Geforce 8500 GT PC (the one I am using to type this), I have a 103 GB hard drive as my primary with Vista installed on it. I needed more space for all of my games and videos though. So I bought a second internal hard drive, a Seagate 500 GB. But one morning when I wanted to surf the net and watch some videos, my 500 GB hard drive, which at that point was almost 3/4 full, had died overnight somehow. I want to avoid that scenario, since all of my videos, savegames, everything, was all lost :(
 
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Mod, please close the thread so I can make one with the correct title. Or, if u can, rename this thread to 'To Raid 1 Or Not To Raid 1.' Seems like, since the title is wrong, no one is posting. Thanks.
 
Raid 5 if you stretch to another drive. However, never depend on RAID as your backup solution. Always perform off storage backups regardless.
 
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Well, recently my big extra 500 gig fried itself, and if I had had a second as a backup, well, yeah. But hmm, Raid 5, eh? So if I use Raid 5, I could have my 1 TB, and a Raid 5'ed 250 GB, for instance, as backup? Cool.

And yeah, my Dad's computer has a 500 GB external hard drive as its backup. Is the external hard drive the best way to go? I prefer less clutter in my computer room, which is actually my central living room. An extra external hard drive would cause more cluter in an already clutter-filled room. Not that the room is small by any means, it could support the extra used up space. I could set the external 500 GB hard drive next to my external router/modem, and it would not look out of place. Just more clutter in an already cluttered room.

Also, I was at the computer shop recently, and my friend who works there who helps me to choose all the best hardware told me that if I want to run my 1 TB WD Caviar Black hard drive in Raid 1, I would need an identical hard drive, even down to the serial number. I bought the 1 TB about 2 and a half months ago, so if I want to run it in Raid 1, he said, I would need to buy a second one VERY soon, because the serial numbers change periodically. But I just bought my XFX Radeon 5870 and my ANTEC 1200W Power Supply this month, so I am out of money except for essentials, like food and stuff like that. I will have to wait for the end of Febuary to buy another piece of PC hardware. I might be out of luck when it comes to buying another 1 TB Western Digital Caviar Black of the exact same serial number.
 
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To those who recommend RAID 1 as backup you're all RAID noobs if you believe that. RAID is a redundency system...NOT a backup system. You use RAID for speed, maximum up time incase of drive failure or to build very large system volumes. Otherwise its the waste of time and money. I totally recommend offsite backups or offline mirroring of drives so if one copy corrupts then you have a clean backup. That is one thing RAID cannot prevent and that is data corruption....that helps to loose your data far more often than drive failure.
 
Raid 0 wont help anyone with protection against hardware failer though. Raid1 is pretty good, it will protect against a broken disk quite effectivly, and a good raid1 controller (dunno about most motherboard ones) will allow both disks to be used for read, so you get improved read performance, but slightly lower write performance.

Just remember with Raid 1, if you get virus/data corruption, accidently delete files, the raid wont save you, so backup is still highly recommended :P. Its a protection net, but its not immunity to dataloss.
 
deepblue69uk said:
recommend offsite backups or offline mirroring of drives so if one copy corrupts then you have a clean backup. That is one thing RAID cannot prevent and that is data corruption....that helps to loose your data far more often than drive failure.
Click to expand...

Sorry, noob here building an i7, 5870 pc. Need help to understand. You mean an external backup hard drive, like Windows Home Server?
 
Corasik said:
Raid 0 wont help anyone with protection against hardware failer though. Raid1 is pretty good, it will protect against a broken disk quite effectivly, and a good raid1 controller (dunno about most motherboard ones) will allow both disks to be used for read, so you get improved read performance, but slightly lower write performance.

Just remember with Raid 1, if you get virus/data corruption, accidently delete files, the raid wont save you, so backup is still highly recommended :P. Its a protection net, but its not immunity to dataloss.
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Thanks! I do not accidentally delete files, so that is not an issue, and it is only me on the PC, so there are no troublemaking kids or anything. The 500 GB drive that fried itself was a HUGE loss.
+1 for Raid 1?

But I think what you are saying is that is a virus infects my PC's hard drive, the other 1 TB hard drive in Raid 1 will also be infected by the virus, the same as the primary hard drive. But the virus would not be able to infect an external hard drive? Would the virus be able to infect the other hard drive if it was in Raid 5?
Just want to say that I am confident with my PC's antivirus capabilities. The biggest threat by far to my data on my hard drive is the hard drive itself (if it fails).
 
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forest4 said:
Sorry, noob here building an i7, 5870 pc. Need help to understand. You mean an external backup hard drive, like Windows Home Server?
Click to expand...

LOL....I almost mis-read your post and thought you were having a go at me. ;-) Glad I took the time to re-read what you actually wrote before I replied.

You can use an external hard drive, a bare drive in an external hard drive case with USB/eSata or even a bare drive with a hotswap caddy. Essentially so long as you have more than one copy of your data then it is backed up. Otherwise, it is a case of WHEN it will disappear not if.

Are you thinking of NAS drives when you mentioned Windows Home Server? You could build a little storage server I guess but it involves a lot of needless expense. For sheer speed and convenience I prefer just working with bare drives in caddies.


Ask me to explain anything to you if you don't understand why I have said...I sometimes get carried away. ;-)

To summarise; the cheapest way to backup I have found in my experience is through external backup drives or the use of bare drives in caddies or docks that you can buy easily.

I used to use CD/DVD media....but backing up 850GB is no fun when just relying on that. Blueray is still too expensive at the moment.



Tell me more about your build....I'd be interested to know.
 
forest4 said:
Well, recently my big extra 500 gig fried itself, and if I had had a second as a backup, well, yeah. But hmm, Raid 5, eh? So if I use Raid 5, I could have my 1 TB, and a Raid 5'ed 250 GB, for instance, as backup? Cool.

And yeah, my Dad's computer has a 500 GB external hard drive as its backup. Is the external hard drive the best way to go? I prefer less clutter in my computer room, which is actually my central living room. An extra external hard drive would cause more cluter in an already clutter-filled room. Not that the room is small by any means, it could support the extra used up space. I could set the external 500 GB hard drive next to my external router/modem, and it would not look out of place. Just more clutter in an already cluttered room.

Also, I was at the computer shop recently, and my friend who works there who helps me to choose all the best hardware told me that if I want to run my 1 TB WD Caviar Black hard drive in Raid 1, I would need an identical hard drive, even down to the serial number. I bought the 1 TB about 2 and a half months ago, so if I want to run it in Raid 1, he said, I would need to buy a second one VERY soon, because the serial numbers change periodically. But I just bought my XFX Radeon 5870 and my ANTEC 1200W Power Supply this month, so I am out of money except for essentials, like food and stuff like that. I will have to wait for the end of Febuary to buy another piece of PC hardware. I might be out of luck when it comes to buying another 1 TB Western Digital Caviar Black of the exact same serial number.
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Specifically where you mention about your friend saying you need two drives with the same serial number is incorrect. Otherwise.....what is the point in giving a drive a serial number.

To build a RAID 1 array you need two drives of the same specification and preferably the same model number. It just means it will work best with two identical drives. However, you can use two drives of different makes and specification so long as they are the same size. However, it makes more sense to use identical drives because if you have one drive that was slower than the other it would cause issues in the RAID array.


I will try not to repeat myself....but as I have suggested in my other post....I would suggest to just buy two hard drives and use a file sync tool like SyncBack SE or similar. The reason I suggest that over RAID 1 is because, if one drive corrupts data, that corrupt data would be copied to the second drive. If you are not worried by that then just RAID 1 them.
 
Ok, basic run down of raid. :D

Raid 0, as you are no doubt aware spreads the data across both (or more) disks for higher speeds. The downside is there is a higher risk of data loss due to any disk failure causing the raid array to fail, and lose your data. There is also only a single copy of your data, so when it's gone, it's gone. :(

Raid 1, is mirroring. It basically constantly updates a 2nd drive to duplicate the first one. Great for hardware failures - but if any form of data corruption occurs on the main disk (whether it's due to a crash, virus, deleted data etc) it will immediately be replicated to the other drive. So not great for backups if this is the reason why you want to use it.

Raid 5 requires 3+ disks, and spreads the data across the drives similar to Raid 1, but using "parity data" so that if a disk fails it can still work out what the missing bits are. Good for a single disk failure - but you loose some capacity for the parity data (about a disks worth - odd coincidence :p ;) ). Not ideal for data corruption security though, as there is only a single copy of the data. Raid 6 (or ADG) is similar but uses 2 disks for parity and can cope with 2 disk failures, and is generally used if there are a lot of disks.

To be honest, the best scenario in most cases for raid home use is something like 2 x 500GB drives in Raid 0 for speed, and an external (or seperate internal) 1TB to make regular copies for data security. Obviously size the drives to whatever you need.

Using any form of raid (except perhaps raid 1) generally means messing about with windows raid drivers as well, rather that being able to use windows' built in disk controller drivers. Can make trouble shooting/data recovery more complicated if using boot cd's etc.

Hope that helps, and I'm not just waffling - it is a Friday. :p
 
I liked what deepblue69uk said about using an external drive with SyncBack SE software. Raid might not be all it's cracked up to be, since it only protects against 1 hardware failiure out of the 2 hard disks when using Raid 1. Thank you for all the help!
 
forest4 said:
I liked what deepblue69uk said about using an external drive with SyncBack SE software. Raid might not be all it's cracked up to be, since it only protects against 1 hardware failiure out of the 2 hard disks when using Raid 1. Thank you for all the help!
Click to expand...

Raid is very useful in large volume/scale disk arrays, but of limited use in the majority of home computers since most of the actual raid processing is done in software - its kind of a hybrid.

Enterprise class raid devices have dedicated processors and cache etc on the raid card which helps immensely, but is a LOT more expensive. May as well stick to single disks at home, especially as they are considerably faster these days anyway.

For making copies of your disk you can also use windows utilities such as "robocopy" which can be set to create an exact copy of your file system. Next time it runs it just copies the files that have changed. Very useful tool. There are other tools that do a low level block level transfer (i.e. actual disk sectors rather than files) for an exact copy of the disk, not just the file system. Bit overkill to be honest as a file level duplicate is normally sufficient.

I'll stop waffling now. :D
 
Yet another great post by fizzy!
Yes, Raid seems like a hybrid. My freind told me that by using onboard Raid, my CPU will be used for it, diverting CPU power away from Crysis, for example. Raid cards are expensive? Not surprising, as Solid State Drives are also rediculously expensive. $400 for a 135 GB (maybe less) SSD? Unless it makes loading times instant, I would rather spend the $400 on 4 1 terabyte hard drives!
I never shopped for a Raid card before. Possible to post a link to one, and to give me an idea on the price, please? You have all been a great help.

Robocopy sounds neat-o. What is the .exe called? Is it just Robocopy.exe? Would I already have it installed in with Windows Vista Home Basic 32-bit?
The program(s) that copy hard drive blocks sound cool, too, and might be a good alternative to buying a Raid card. Cheaper, and better? That sounds good.
 
Well, for a "proper" raid controller with on board processor & cache memory you would talking several hundred plus to buy, especially if the cache has a backup battery and the like. They are designed for business use generally, so cost is not so much of a concern - just reliability & performance.

They also tend to use scsi/sas high speed drives which although perform well are not quiet or cheap - which again isn't normally a concern for companies since its normally stashed away in a room/data centre and the like.

This is the cheapest card on here that is looking like a proper card, but still not sure how much of the work is being handled by the on board chip.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CC-000-LI&groupid=701&catid=49&subcat=

But as before though - this is a lot of money for equipment that is complete overkill for home pc's.

As for robocopy - for XP it was part of the admin pack that you could download from microsoft. It comes as standard with Windows 7 though, so probably with vista too. It's actually a dos/command prompt level command but there have been some GUI's written for it, such as this one :-

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2006.11.utilityspotlight.aspx?pr=blog

I'll have to check regarding the block level copiers - most of the cloning software I've used (acronis, ghost etc) actually still use file system level copies, just through their own boot cd's. Again this is fine for home use since there is normally no need for an exact copy of a hard disk, just a duplicate of the contents.
 
fizzy said:
cheapest card on here that is looking like a proper card, but still not sure how much of the work is being handled by the on board chip.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CC-000-LI&groupid=701&catid=49&subcat=
Click to expand...

306.51 Euros = 451.09497 Canadian dollars. Just to put that price into perspective, the cost of my ATI Radeon 5870, before Canadian Taxes, was $477, and after the taxes, was well over $500. I was never too good at Math, I think Canadian sales tax is 14% now. I would probably spend that amount of cash on a second ATI Radeon 5870 to run in CrossfireX before I would buy a Raid card. And, as you said, this is the cheapest Raid card you could find? :rolleyes: :eek: :rolleyes:

fizzy said:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2006.11.utilityspotlight.aspx?pr=blog
Click to expand...

Looks interesting! I have not downloaded any of those programs as of yet, but really cool link!

Darn. Even if I was rich, I do not know if I would spend money on a Raid card. I would probably just buy a whole second PC with lots of computing power, or just an OK amount of power, like maybe just a Celeron 3.33 GHz CPU, 8500GT (oh wait, that is my current PC! :p ) and copy everything to that PC via USB cable. I think I saw somewhere that there is a USB cable that you can plug in to a USB drive on one PC, then plug in the other end to the USB slot of another PC, then copy all of the contents of the hard drive(s) to the other PC or vice-versa using this USB connected cable.
 
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