To RAID0 or not to RAID0... that is the question

spleenharvester · 17 Feb 2011 at 17:52

Is it worth me getting another Sammy F3 to RAID? I have an NForce 630 though, guessing performance would be poor?

Don't need the space, just looking for pure speed.

And no, I will not buy an SSD!

.:SAmSuNG:. · 17 Feb 2011 at 17:59

You want pure speed and not the extra space? Even though u said u wont buy an SSD its the way to go.

spleenharvester · 17 Feb 2011 at 18:02

.:SAmSuNG:. said:
You want pure speed and not the extra space? Even though u said u wont buy an SSD its the way to go.

I use like 160 gig of space, the lowest price SSD I find is 40Gb and it's £80. Considering I'm a poor kid, I'd much rather prefer buying an F3 for ~£21inc off of MM, hence no SSDs.

Bradmax57 · 17 Feb 2011 at 19:30

Im just about to raid two f3's again whats the best setup for the sizes of stripes etc, or should i just let it do its own thing?

danceforfreedom · 17 Feb 2011 at 20:40

I couldn't afford a SSD right now so I bought two harddrives off MM for £25 and set them up in raid 0. Is faster, you cant tell when installing something off CD or memory stick.

I would if you can set yourself up with it for around £20 like you said, just consider twice the space as a bonus!

alexdrans · 17 Feb 2011 at 21:35

Just make sure that you're willing to take the risk of losing your data. Other than the increased chance of losing data, there're no other reasons not to go for RAID0 if you're looking for performance.

Keep things that you really wouldn't like to lose on an external HDD, and take regular backups incase anything does go wrong.

Bradmax57 · 17 Feb 2011 at 22:04

alexdrans said:
Just make sure that you're willing to take the risk of losing your data. Other than the increased chance of losing data, there're no other reasons not to go for RAID0 if you're looking for performance.

Keep things that you really wouldn't like to lose on an external HDD, and take regular backups incase anything does go wrong.

in 15 years or so ive been building pc's ive never once lost any data using raid 0

bhavv · 17 Feb 2011 at 22:24

Crucial C300 vs Sammy F3 Raid 0:

The F3 in Raid 0 is a very good way to get quicker loading times in every game you play.

trentlad · 18 Feb 2011 at 00:28

I've actually just bought a 2TB F4 yesterday. I'm hoping it's a good purchase.

You know... there's always a Matrix RAID!

I'm using two Samsung F3 500GB HDDs in Matrix RAID, which give me RAID 0 for speed and a RAID 1 for data security.

trentlad · 18 Feb 2011 at 00:34

The nice part is that my RAID 0 array is actually faster than if I used the entire two drives in RAID 0.

See!

bhavv · 18 Feb 2011 at 10:09

trentlad said:
The nice part is that my RAID 0 array is actually faster than if I used the entire two drives in RAID 0.

Mine is half full though, so its gonna be slower. I should start backing up some stuff and deleting it off the Raid 0, but theres still plenty of space left so dont need to yet.

For your matrix raid though, you only have 107 Gb allocated and then the rest of the drives are in Raid 1?

How does that work? I wanted the raid 0 for my games though.

Pandobear · 18 Feb 2011 at 19:22

I've actually just bought a 2TB F4 yesterday. I'm hoping it's a good purchase.

Don't forget to update to the new firmware unless your drive has a Jan 2011 build date or newer. Silent data corruption is the possibility if you do not update the firmware.

I find RAID 0 of any modern hard drive much more usable then any single ssd, and of course 'bang for buck' is far better on mechanical drives.

spleenharvester · 18 Feb 2011 at 22:02

convinced me it's probably best saving for an OCZ Onyx since they're ~£44.99, reckon I could get 7 on 30Gb? I'd use the F3 as a storage drive. I barely hit 36Gb with the programs installed atm so

An Exception · 19 Feb 2011 at 01:07

spleenharvester said:
Is it worth me getting another Sammy F3 to RAID? I have an NForce 630 though, guessing performance would be poor?

Don't need the space, just looking for pure speed.

And no, I will not buy an SSD!

Hang around MM, and pickup a used ssd (x25-m or similar).
Much better than any HDD raid 0.

trentlad · 19 Feb 2011 at 04:22

bhavv said:
For your matrix raid though, you only have 107 Gb allocated and then the rest of the drives are in Raid 1?

How does that work? I wanted the raid 0 for my games though.

Yep that's right., since the RAID 0 is striping, the space allocated will add up. So I've allocated 50GB on both drives and hence have 100GB. The remainder is 450GB on both drives, but since I'm using that for RAID 1, it's mirroring and hence I have 450GB to store my important data.

I also chose this configuration recently after pondering if SSD was worth the cash. After heavily researching it, my opinion is that there really is no benefit to SSD for the way I use my PC. It's a pain in the ass trying to buy a decent SSD with a good controller, which doesn't degrade in performance after you fill it over 60%, then you have to disable junk and align crap... all because you didn't want to wait the 3.5 seconds it takes firefox to load.

I think the only benefit is being able to load multiple programs instantly... which I do all the time... oh wait. It's not even like Windows will boot faster.

No thanks.

trentlad · 19 Feb 2011 at 04:23

Pandobear said:
Don't forget to update to the new firmware unless your drive has a Jan 2011 build date or newer. Silent data corruption is the possibility if you do not update the firmware.

Thanks a lot Pandobear. I didn't know about this, I'll have to check.

413x · 19 Feb 2011 at 23:30

I went raid for exactly the same reasons , plus not ever using an ssd I don't know what I'm missing

Besides opinions are split on what it actually speeds up, for me I would actually loose any tone saved in increased load times trying to figure out what programs I would be putting on the ssd and what would go on another drive