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Thread ID: 68829 2006-05-12 04:18:00 RAID 0 Yes or No?? The_End_Of_Reality (334) Press F1
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454312 2006-05-12 04:18:00 Hey People :)

After reading another thread, this got me thinking about RAID 0 and I am considering getting 2 80GB Seagates (www.ascent.co.nz) and putting them in RAID 0.

Now what I want to know is will this give me more performance (I do a lot of gaming and video editing) I do know that RAID 0 is VERY touchy and will corrupt at the drop of a hat, but that is fine, I keep all importants off my main C: partition and have a small backup to ensure all stay off...

I want to know your experiences (good or bad)
Thanks :) 		The_End_Of_Reality (334)
454313 2006-05-12 05:10:00 its not THAT touchy.

its only as reliable as the drives you use.
the catchs are .........if one drive dies you lose the lot. you need to set the right stripe size thats best for the type of use and what performs the best for that controller. gettingthat wrong will can eaily make it slower than a single disk so do your homework before buying. when done correctly it will give a lot more hardrive performance. however there is a bit of cpu overhead (ie you gain HD performance but loose a bit of cpu performance), unless you use hardware raid cards (very expencive).

also with 2 HD's make sure your case has enough cooling and keep the drives apart to ensure good airflow.

edit: been running raid 0 for the last 4-5 years, still running the same drives and card on my new pc (tho as storage not OS drive). mind you i do have 2 80mm fans just for the HD's ;) 		tweak'e (69)
454314 2006-05-12 05:24:00 Yeah, that was why I was going to store all important data off of it, but the Seagates are good on reliability :thumbs:

I don't think I will notice the CPU drop unless it is big.

Only 2??? :p I have 4 in front :p

1 vote for RAID 0 :D 		The_End_Of_Reality (334)
454315 2006-05-12 05:28:00 RAID0 is like anything, as long as you know the risks, and use it appropriately it's not a problem.

It's probably worth mentioning it's a bit of an oxymoron:

From WIkipedia

"redundant array of independent disks, also known as redundant array of inexpensive disks"

"The use of the term redundant leads many to object to RAID 0 being called a RAID at all."

"A RAID 0 (also known as a striped set) splits data evenly across two or more disks with no parity information for redundancy. It is important to note that RAID 0 was not one of the original RAID levels, and is not redundant. RAID 0 is normally used to increase performance, although it can also be used as a way to create a small number of large virtual disks out of a large number of small physical ones."

en.wikipedia.org

You can't beat RAID0 for something like RAM page files, Adobe scratch space, or temp files. 		kingdragonfly (309)
454316 2006-05-12 06:10:00 I dumped my Raid Arrays (0+1) and converted them to JBOD's.

Running (now) eight 200gig HDDS as JBOD and one 40gig Ultra type HDD on an aux. card for my root drive....I like it a lot better...(and RAID is not really all that secure anyway).

As far as heating goes...I set them all inside the case, but I have 2, 4 inch intake fans running on 12 volt instead of the usual 5 volt power. I make sure the blow hole is dumping air, as that means the PSU gets it's fair share then too. 		SurferJoe46 (51)
454317 2006-05-12 06:16:00 I am considering getting 2 80GB Seagatesand putting them in RAID 0.

Now what I want to know is will this give me more performance
No. get a nice new sata NCQ 7200.9 instead which would give you more. Or a fast WD. 		pctek (84)
454318 2006-05-12 06:45:00 Thanks for the deffinitions kingdragonfly :)

Joe, can you tell me more about JBOD?

pctek, did you click the link? it says the model is the 7200.9 :p (2 of these in RAID 0)


The Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 with SATA 3Gb/s and Native Command Queuing(NCQ)adheres to the SATA 2.5 rev. specification 		The_End_Of_Reality (334)
454319 2006-05-15 01:47:00 JBOD: "Just A Bunch Of Disks"
en.wikipedia.org

"One advantage JBOD has over RAID 0 is in the case of drive failure. Whereas in RAID 0, failure of a single drive will usually result in the loss of all data in the array, in a JBOD array only the data on the affected drive is lost, and the data on surviving drives will remain readable. However, JBOD does not carry the performance benefits which are associated with RAID 0."

PCTek is referring to the Western Digital Raptor drives, the only 10,000 RPM SATA drives. Expensive, but cheaper than 15,000 RPM SCSI drives.

I'd be a bit more inclined for setting up a RAID0+1 array, since the price/MB wouldn't be much different than the Raptor drives. I think the performance would be similar, and you've have some redundancy. Many new nice motherboards support RAID0+1 without purchasing a controller.

$580 - Raptor 150GB, 10000rpm, 16384KB Cache
$468 - 4 X Western Digital Caviar 80GB, 7200rpm, 8192KB Cache (160GB usable)

Regarding the difference is cache size, I'd guess 4 X 8MB would be just as good as 1 x 16MB. Excluding the Raptor, the only internal PC drives that I can find with 16MB caches are 250GB or better.

Promise Technology is a popular manufacturer for "value oriented" RAID controllers, if your motherboard doesn't contain RAID chips, or you want to try RAID10/5/6.
www.promise.com

Of course, more drives = more heat, power and noise 		kingdragonfly (309)
454320 2006-05-15 02:47:00 I've been running RAID0 for a couple of years now (2x Seagate 120GB's) with no problems.

Be aware that RAID0 will only affect the load times of games and will not affect framerates in the game.

Video encoding is substantially faster.

I don't think the risks of data loss are as bad as everyone makes out. I haven't had a HDD crap out on me in a very long time. Of course I also back up the important data on my PC every night (in fact sometimes several times a day - depending on changes to data). Really if you have good, reliable (I mean actually tested so you know they work) backups then RAID0 becomes a no brainer. Why wouldn't you want the fastest data transfer you can get out of your machine?
:2cents:

My vote: yes! 		Sb0h (3744)
454321 2006-05-15 02:55:00 Editing or Encoding? Why would encoding be faster since single drives can supply data at a faster rate than your CPU can encode? PaulD (232)
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