To Raid ... or Not to Raid? ... That is the Question.

[rkr1958]

Relevant Specs:
120-GB IDE ATA Internal WD HD (O/S, Applications, Data, Restore Points)
250-GB IDE ATA Internal WD HD (Video Projects, Data Backups)
160-GB SATA Internal Segage HD (Video Projects, Virtual CDs)
60-GB External Firewire HD
Total HD ==> 590-GB

Believe or not I need more harddrive space.
My Case (Antec) will support another internal 3.5 harddrive.

My Motherboard, (Intel D875PBZ) will support another SATA drive. Currently all my drives (harddrives & 2 optical drives) are own their own channel. (I have a PCI controller card installed).

So, my install options for my new Seagate 160-GB SATA drives, which I just ordered today and matches exactly the SATA drive I alreay have are:

1) Install it and run it as another harddrive
2) Install it and configure it for Raid 0 (I'm not considering Raid 1) with its sister drive.

Everything I read seems to indicate that I really won't see any improvement of a Raid 0 versus two independent drives ... Is this true?

I'm seeking opinions on whether I should run them as two drives or in a Raid 0 configuration..

I just hate having a capability (such as my MB supporting raid) that I don't use. But, if there is no payoff and the pain & risk for configuring to run raid 0 is significant ... what's the point ... run them separately.

[stiltman]

2 drives

IMO, RAID0 is completely useless
RAID1 is great for your OS drive
Also IMO, (hardware)RAID5 is the only way to go

[redwudz]

You will likely see some speed increase with RAID 0. The real problem with RAID 0 is that if one drive fails, you loose everything. Although I have only had one failure with IDE RAID 0 array.

Most modern drives, especially SATA drives are probably fast enough for most anything you do without RAID 0. I use RAID for combining drives to one larger drive more than trying to get a speed increase.

If you are just interested in speed and not data lose, they work fine. Two 160s should give you a 320GB drive with faster access times and possibly faster throughput, although that depends on your controller.

You can do a speed test with SiSandra to check it.

[rallynavvie]

I don't really see a need for RAID 0 by itself. You really only start to see some great effects of striping when you're doing it across four or more drives. What is it you're planning on doing with it that you would need to set up an array? For the size of those drives I'd just leave them seperate, that's a lot of data that could go to waste if something were to go wrong.

[rkr1958]

Thanks for the opinions.

What is it you're planning on doing with it that you would need to set up an array?

My plans for these two drives is for Video work ... capture, edit, encoding, authoring, ripping. So they won't contain any data that couldn't be replaced.

Also IMO, (hardware)RAID5 is the only way to go

What in the heck is RAID5?

You can do a speed test with SiSandra to check it.

Good idea ... I rountinely check my system using this utility. A typical benchmark result for my SATA drive is:
Index: 31848 kB/s
Buffer Read: 89MB/s | Sequential Read: 46MB/s | Random Read: 8MB/s
Buffer Write: 97MB/s | Sequential Write: 46MB/s | Random Write: 11MB/s
Access Time: 6 msec

[ViRaL1]

RAID 5 = striping with parity. It requires 3 or more drives. One of the drives is not used as available storage, it is used to keep the parity data. It is fault tolerant. If one of your storage drives fails, you can replace the drive and rebuild the array using the parity data. It's faster than Mirroring and safer than striping, but you lose one drive's worth of space. For examples, a RAID5 array with 3 120GB drives will yield 240GB of storage.

[stiltman]

Also hardware based RAID is faster than Software (OS) based RAID

[Pop's]

You can also run RAID 5 in SoftRaid, on my ASUS AN8-SLI Deluxe I run my 2 Raptors on Nvidia Raid 0, and my Plextor PX-712SA on Silicon SoftRaid 5...

[ViRaL1]

You can also run RAID 5 in SoftRaid, on my ASUS AN8-SLI Deluxe I run my 2 Raptors on Nvidia Raid 0, and my Plextor PX-712SA on Silicon SoftRaid 5...

More details on that one please. What does your Plextor burner have to do with your RAID array?

[rkr1958]

tgpo famous MAC commercial, You be the judge?

That was the first time that I've seen this. I thought it was hilarious. Was this for real, who was the actor and was it used commerically?

[Pop's]

My Plextor is a SATA drive, not IDE...

[stiltman]

tgpo famous MAC commercial, You be the judge?

That was the first time that I've seen this. I thought it was hilarious. Was this for real, who was the actor and was it used commerically?

http://www.videohelp.com/forum/profi...rofile&u=25733
You be the judge

[ViRaL1]

You can also run RAID 5 in SoftRaid, on my ASUS AN8-SLI Deluxe I run my 2 Raptors on Nvidia Raid 0, and my Plextor PX-712SA on Silicon SoftRaid 5...

More details on that one please. What does your Plextor burner have to do with your RAID array?

My Plextor is a SATA drive, not IDE...

I get the SATA part, where does RAID figure in?

[ViRaL1]

If anyone's interested in an inexpensive RAID setup, it looks like CompUSA has 80GB 8MB cache drives 1 for $50, or 2 for $80.

They're labeled 'Generic' but judging from the ATA133 speed and the MFG part number of L06P080 I'd say it's a safe bet they're Maxtor. I personally haven't had problems with my Maxtor drives, but everyone's experience is different.

The price that it links to doesn't seem to jibe with the ad as of yet, so you might want to call your local store of the 800 number before buying.

EDIT: The direct link doesn't seem to work. Go to CompUSA's site, click on Store Ad under the Departments section on the left side. Then click 'View Interactive Version.' It's on the 1st page, top right hand corner.

[JSB]

hmmmm

linky no worky for me......

JSB

[rkr1958]

You can do a speed test with SiSandra to check it.

Good idea ... I rountinely check my system using this utility. A typical benchmark result for my SATA drive is:
Index: 31848 kB/s
Buffer Read: 89MB/s | Sequential Read: 46MB/s | Random Read: 8MB/s
Buffer Write: 97MB/s | Sequential Write: 46MB/s | Random Write: 11MB/s
Access Time: 6 msec

I ordered my second SATA drive from Newegg.com on Saturday, got it and installed it yesterday (Tuesday) and configured it for RAID0 today (Wednesday). What the heck I thought ... I paid for a high-end Intel Motherboard with RAID capability and I might as well use it. Boy does it smoke ... SiSandra benchmark was:
Index: 72713 kB/s
Buffer Read: 119MB/s | Sequential Read: 111MB/s | Random Read: 11MB/s
Buffer Write: 119MB/s | Sequential Write: 106MB/s | Random Write: 17MB/s
Access Time: 5 msec

I like the fact that both drives are treated as one big drive ... I was surprised that PartitionMagic saw it and treated it like any other drive.

I don't know if the above faster speeds will really mean anything from a practical sense ... but (so far) I get great benchmarks.

[redwudz]

Sounds pretty good. I'm going to switch to SATA for my next computer.

I really had few problems with my IDE RAID 0 setup. Once in a while the RAID would fault, but it repaired itself easily with no lose of data. I never kept anything on it but temporary video files, so I really wasn't worried about losing one drive.

Now you will have to try capturing with it and see if it lives up to the read/write speeds.

One thing, if you don't like it, not that hard to separate the drives and use them independently.