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| Thread ID: 47087 | 2004-07-15 12:04:00 | Raid Arrays - home computer... ups/downs? | willie_M (5608) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 252589 | 2004-07-15 12:04:00 | Hi guys, I got raid in my mobo... I guess just the 0+1 but i'm a little confused. Although I hear of great speed increases in loading times of games, multimedia etc, it sounds dodgy with people losing data and i mite have picked up that it caused their drive to die... ANyway i've got two pata drives: A 40GB 7200rpm Seagate and a 120GB 7200rpm Westford fosgate... no; Western Digital (?) Both 2mb cache... So can, RAID kill or wipe drives? And I take it 0+1 is just the order in wwhich the drives are setup... ?:| Cheers Willie |
willie_M (5608) | ||
| 252590 | 2004-07-15 13:01:00 | assumeing you have a pair of 120GB drives . . . . . . . ok so raid 0 is a system where a small part of a file is stored on each disk and will speed up load time by a small amount . if the file is "abcdef" then disk 1 will have "ace" on it and disk 2 will have "bdf" on it . total storage is 240GB if either disk faults then all data is lost . raid 1 is a mirror system . both disks have "abcdef" on them, this can give a very small speed up in load time . total storage is 120GB and either disk can fautl and do data is lost, if both diska fault then all data is lost . raid 0+1 is a mix of both and gives the speed of raid 0 and the safty of raid 1 . have a read of this info . . pcguide . com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/singleLevel0-c . html" target="_blank">www . pcguide . com . pcguide . com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/mult . htm" target="_blank">www . pcguide . com |
robsonde (120) | ||
| 252591 | 2004-07-15 22:17:00 | However, if the RAID controller writes faulty data to the array then both drives will contain the faulty data. RAID 0+1 should not be considered a fail safe system by any means. From what I understand RAID 1 actually decreases performance as there is a slight delay caused by the mirroring to the second drive. RAID 0 is fast but not fault tolerant at all. As mentioned above if one drive fails you lose all your data, so do not use RAID 0 for any crucial data. Load times for RAID 0 are considerably faster than using a standard setup. To use RAID arrays you really should have two (or more) drives of the same size (preferably the same manufacterer). If you set up a RAID 0 with two different sized drives you will only be limited by the size of the smaller drive so the extra space on the bigger drive is wasted. |
Sb0h (3744) | ||
| 252592 | 2004-07-15 23:08:00 | > RAID 0 is fast but not fault tolerant at all. As > mentioned above if one drive fails you lose all your > data, so do not use RAID 0 for any crucial data. > Load times for RAID 0 are considerably faster than > using a standard setup. RAID0 is a huge speed increase and no worse than running a single drive by itself. You should always back up important data you want to keep because as said even on a RAID1 it is vunerable. Someone could come and delete it, you could have a fire, both drives could fail at the same time, etc, etc. Always back up. |
Big John (551) | ||
| 252593 | 2004-07-15 23:35:00 | Yes, RAID 0 is very very fast - but you are increasing your chances of losing data . Instead of waiting for one to fail, you are waiting for either to fail - and the chance of losing data in that situation is higher than in a normal two drive, no raid setup . However, this is very minimal . . . unless you are unlucky and have a faulty hard drive, this raid 0 problem should not be of concern - but it is something to be mindful of . But to achieve RAID, you need the same sized drive - preferably identical drives . SATA and SCSI are ideal for RAID as they have fast bandwidth per channel . PATA, however, shares each channel with Two drives, and unless you only use one HDD per channel, then RAID is somewhat slower . In your case, however, with a 40GB and a 120GB Hard Drive, you will be unable to use RAID, unless you allow for your 120 GB to be cut down to 40 - losing you 80GB - by controller . The other important issue is of the RAID controller . Integrated ones like I have are not all to reliable, and I have in the past had bad drivers which saw the controller corrupting both my drives . This should probably be of more concern that the individual hard drives failing . |
Growly (6) | ||
| 252594 | 2004-07-16 02:56:00 | > The other important issue is of the RAID controller. > Integrated ones like I have are not all to reliable, > and I have in the past had bad drivers which saw the > controller corrupting both my drives. This should > probably be of more concern that the individual hard > drives failing. Umm could you please provide some proof of that? Seeing as the majority of onboard RAID controllers are exactly the same as the PCI variaty then you also saying PCI raid controllers are unreliable? I think one of the ASUS boards had a problem with its RAID chip burning out but that doesnt mean all chips will burn out. Be careful with RAID as alot of motherboards with onboard RAID use a third party chipset which is limited by the bandwidth the PCI bus can supply. A RAID controller will easily use all the bandwidth the PCI bus can provide meaning if you have any other PCI cards that require alot of bandwidth such as Gigabit ethernet or Firewire cards your preformance wont be very good. Some of the new AMD64 & Intel boards have hardware RAID that doesnt use the PCI bus. Its a waste of time considering RAID with your current selection of hard drives, buy another WD 120Gb and give it ago. Just remember to back up anything really important. |
Pete O'Neil (250) | ||
| 252595 | 2004-07-16 04:55:00 | > Yes, RAID 0 is very very fast - but you are > increasing your chances of losing data. > > Instead of waiting for one to fail, you are waiting > for either to fail - and the chance of losing data in > that situation is higher than in a normal two drive, > no raid setup. As I already said, The chance of that happening is no worse than having just a standard drive with no RAID on it at all. In all my time that I have been computing (when a 1GB drive was a huge amount of drive space) I have only had 1 drive fail. But I did not lose anything because it was backed up to tape. These days I back up to DVD. |
Big John (551) | ||
| 252596 | 2004-07-16 05:21:00 | Absolutely, if you are not backing up your critical data to an external device or off-site storage then you really risk losing it RAID or no RAID. | Sb0h (3744) | ||
| 252597 | 2004-07-16 08:52:00 | as far as speed goes its not so cut and dried. speed varys depending on the settings used, brand/model of the controller, bios ver and the program in use. different types of programs access data diffently. the raid settings can make one program run far quicker than a single disk and another program slower t han a single disk so try to match your settings to the type of useage the pc will be used for. | tweak'e (174) | ||
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