To Raid 0 or not to Raid 0

forest4 said:
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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Hi Forest

First of all you can create a raid0 array on your chipset for your OS (probably 300gb) then once windows is installed you can use the Intel matrix to create a raid1 array to keep all your info on, safe in the knowledge that your covered if a drive should ever fail.

The better option (judging by your previous comments in other threads), is for you to get an 160gb x25-m and use that as an OS drive and use the other 2 WD's solely for data.

Just a little tip if using W7 or Vista.
Install your OS and all your Apps, generally get it just how you like it. Then use the imaging software in W7 to copy a backup of your OS to your Raid1 array. Now if ever your x25 fails or you get a nasty Virus etc you can just image your OS back over in 10mins instead of taking up most of the day.
 
rhys216 said:
Just a little tip if using W7 or Vista.
Install your OS and all your Apps, generally get it just how you like it. Then use the imaging software in W7 to copy a backup of your OS to your Raid1 array.
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I should have mentioned that I will install Vista Home Basic on my new PC, the one with the Core i7 and 5870.
A Raid 0 array? That means 2 drives in Raid 0 right? I was thinking Raid 1 though. But I was also thinking about the cost of a Raid card and the toll on my CPU if I use onboard Raid. So, I think, if I do backup my hard drive at all, I will probably use an external hard drive, even though I do not like it one bit. I do not want any more clutter. But it seems like the best way to go.

rhys216 said:
you can create a raid0 array on your chipset for your OS (probably 300gb) then once windows is installed you can use the Intel matrix to create a raid1 array
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Intel matrix? Are you The One? The One who will guide the city of Zion to victory against the machines? Is your name Neo? Seriously though, I have no idea what you just said :D

And an x25-m? I will pass on solid state drives. I would rather spend my cash on Graphics Cards, like a 5970 to run in CrossfireX with my 5870. If I lose all of my data, at least I will have the processing power to run the latest new game maxed out. So, yeah, probably an external hard drive backup system is the way i will go.

Just wondering, is it possible that the reason why my 500 GB Seagate (the one that was almost 3/4 full) died was because of voltage issues with the motherboard or something allong the lines of a voltage problem? I am thinking that it might have been due to a sloppy installation of the hard drive by my technician, is that possible? It makes me so sad and a bit angry that she (the technician) was no nonchallant and casual about it when she said, "Oh, it's (the hard drive) is toast." Does she care about her customers enough to check the voltage of the installation before saying it is ready to use?

I noticed that, sometimes when playing COD4, my game would freeze for about 3 seconds while my 500GB Seagate, the drive that COD4 was intalled on, sprung back to life because it had been in some kind of a dormant/power-saving state. But, since I noticed this and wanted to fix it, I went into Control Panel>Power Save Options and turned off ALL power save options, including "Turn off the hard drive after "X" minutes." After I turned off power saving for the hard drive, it never did that (freeze the game while the hard drive started to spin once again) again! I was happy! Untill it suddenly became a piece of fried chicken. Honestly, I feel like someone in my family died. That hard drive had SO much stuff on it.
 
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An ssd would probably have the biggest impact on your system as a whole and it also helps your games run smoother .
And what ever you do get a decent operating system.
 
rhys216 said:
Me to, me and my GF both had a HDD fail this month.
She didn't have raid but luckily there was enough time to backup.
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You dont expect them to go but i learnt from it that you should always expect the worst and losing everything isnt an option, so now i got an external to make extra sure i dont lose a thing
 
rhys216 said:
Considering the rest of your system you haven't experienced one then obviously.
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What is the failiure rate of SSDs compared to normal magnetic hard drives? Magnetic hard drives are dirt cheap, but seem to fail (fry) a lot.

The bottom line is that I care about reliability. Speed not so much, especially if the cost per GB of space is 4 or 5 times more.
 
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I read some where that with the speed of todays processors that on board raid was as quick as seperate raid card that you wouldn't notice a performance drop. The research i did stopped me from buying a dedicated card and use my onboard raid.
 
ard-tullaich said:
I read some where that with the speed of todays processors that on board raid was as quick as seperate raid card that you wouldn't notice a performance drop. The research i did stopped me from buying a dedicated card and use my onboard raid.
Click to expand...

How much CPU does it use?
 
forest4 said:
I just do not see an SSD as cost-effctive.
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i7 and 5870 are?

A 2nd generation SSD OS drive would not only radically speed up your PC, it also will be infinitely more reliable than staying with a traditional hard drive. Buy the backup drive still by all means, but you are much less likely to need it.

Spending what you have on a high end processor and graphics card and not going SSD makes no sense, it really is night and day once you've got a decent SSD drive and you will never go back.

P
 
forest4 said:
How much CPU does it use?
Click to expand...

It doesn't matter if your only using the HDD's for storage and the SSD for performance.
The price of a Raid card would pay for an SSD!

Do you know your not very logical sometimes Forest? Perhaps you should go ask Martini what he thinks...
 
rhys216 said:
It doesn't matter if your only using the HDD's for storage and the SSD for performance.
The price of a Raid card would pay for an SSD!

Do you know your not very logical sometimes Forest? Perhaps you should go ask Martini what he thinks...
Click to expand...

Hahaha, not logical? People are telling me to buy the ultra-expensive thing instead of the normally-priced thing. I recall a discussion when I wanted to buy the ultra-expensive thing (ATI Radeon 5970 dual GPU video card) and you called me crazy for it. Now I am thinking in the opposite direction, trying to be econimical, and I am not logical? Oh, please, give me a break. And the video card is, in my opinion, much more important than either buying an SSD or a normal hard drive in terms of performance of the PC.

I was actually wrong about the cost per GB being "4 or 5 times more."
1 Terabyte Hard drive: $100
Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2MH080G2C1 2.5" 80GB SATA II SSD: $252.77

Like I said in an earlier post, I am not too great at math, but 80GB @ $252.77 Vs. 1,000GB @ $100 is a much bigger ratio than 4 or 5 times more cost per GB.

I know that I could run my OS on the SSD and have all my games, savegames, videos, photos, and more on the normal 1 Terabyte hard drive. But that misses the key point: I want to back up the games, savegames, videos, and photos, not the OS! I can easily re-install the OS. Putting all my things on the drive that it prone to failiure (normal hard drive) is a bad move. SSDs are a luxury, since they are far too small to use as my main hard drive. They can only be used for basic things, like the OS. The key issue is backup for a large amout of files, and all the files will not fit into 80 GB.
 
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Just answer me this:
In what way does me buying an 80 GB SSD back-up my roughly 300 GB worth of data?

Anyways, I made a mistake in the title of this thread. I unknowingly put the wrong Raid mode. I should have used Raid 1 in the title rather than Raid 0. All i was thinking to do was to put a second 1 Terabyte hard drive in Raid 1 as a backup to the one I already bought in case of hardware failiure, which I had the unpleasant opportunity to experience just recently.

I think 2 1 terabyte hard drives in Raid 1 could work well for me as my backup. However, I am seriously low on money because of my recent purchase of my ATI Radeon 5870 and my ANTEC 1200W Power supply. I will not make any more computer hardware purchaces this month. I hope, when I buy another Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB hard drive, it will be perfectly compatible with the one I already bought to work in Raid 1. If not, I might get an external backup hard drive instead, perhaps using one of the software programs mentioned in earlier posts. Thanks, great software suggestions! :eek: :)

MOD, please close this thread, my questions were answered! :cool:
 
forest4 said:
Just answer me this:
In what way does me buying an 80 GB SSD back-up my roughly 300 GB worth of data?

Anyways, I made a mistake in the title of this thread. I unknowingly put the wrong Raid mode. I should have used Raid 1 in the title rather than Raid 0. All i was thinking to do was to put a second 1 Terabyte hard drive in Raid 1 as a backup to the one I already bought in case of hardware failiure, which I had the unpleasant opportunity to experience just recently.

I think 2 1 terabyte hard drives in Raid 1 could work well for me as my backup. However, I am seriously low on money because of my recent purchase of my ATI Radeon 5870 and my ANTEC 1200W Power supply. I will not make any more computer hardware purchaces this month. I hope, when I buy another Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB hard drive, it will be perfectly compatible with the one I already bought to work in Raid 1. If not, I might get an external backup hard drive instead, perhaps using one of the software programs mentioned in earlier posts. Thanks, great software suggestions! :eek: :)

MOD, please close this thread, my questions were answered! :cool:
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If your running low on cash then fair enough that's all you had to say.
Before the thread get's closed I will try explain, should you have plenty of cash next month.

80gb SSD can be used for windows Apps and a few games.
It should be used in conjunction with 2x HDD's in raid 1.

Backup Images of you OS Apps & Games can be stored on your HDD's so in the event of a SSD failure or a virus or maybe you just installed something you wish you hadn't, you can simply copy the image back over in 5 minutes rather then wasting all day installing everything again.
The above method of keeping your data and OS completely separate will probably save you days of you F'ing around.

The other benefits are of course the system is faster all-round and games smoother and load much faster and you can multi-task better.

If you don't do the above, then fine........... but you'l kick yourself in a year or two when the penny drops...
 
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OK. Maybe in a year I will buy a solid state drive. Next month, I am going to hopefully complete building my PC. First I have to buy the one last component for it that I need, the computer case. Probably a CoolerMaster Sniper Black Edition, which is long enough to house my XFX Radeon 5870. Once my PC is completed and has all of the latest and greatest drivers installed, I want to concentrate my money spending on buying lots and lots of new games! :eek: :D Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition will be first, I think.

By the way, I checked the bill I got when I bought my Radeon 5870 and my ANTEC 1200W power supply. The bill (for the 2 products) came out to just over $795 Canadian. Damn markup. Using this online tool http://currate.com/basic.php , I found it was 542.02862 Euros

OK, MOD, please close this thread, my questions were answered! :cool:
 
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