RAID 0 question

[spooky]

I am trying to find out if having a RAID 0 on a SATA controller & doing video capturing would be find or should I keep the IDE RAID 0 that I have now ( which is seperate from the OS HD ).
Simply I am trying to see if I could get away with having only 2 HDs in the case build for RAID 0 on SATA as opposed to having 4 HDs 2 for SATA RAID 0 where the OS is on & any other apps, and another RAID 0 which would be IDE RAID 0.
The whole thing has to do with cooling.
Thank you

[corrax]

Is speed a factor in your decision? SATA would be much faster than your current IDE setup.

[spooky]

speed is a factor, but at the same time want to make sure that my frames are not dropped when capturing videos.

[corrax]

Well, you would probably be less likely to drop frames if you increased your RAM. That way Windows would have plenty of space to run in without paging. With your processor speed and a SATA RAID 0 array, I see no reason why you should have problems capturing.

Although, if you wanted to have 2 RAID arrays, I doubt cooling would be much of an issue. I've had a machine before with 4 drives in it, and it wasn't a problem at all.

[toronto098]

Before anything else, are you running a "server" class system? That is to say, a server based MoBo, dual Xeon (assuming Wintel) with minimum 512K each, etc., etc. Memory at least 512MB. If not, at least you should have a Ultra3/128 type of controller.

[redwudz]

I wouldn't recommend putting your OS or programs on a RAID0 setup. If you lose 1 drive, you lose all your info and won't be able to boot to fix it. I have went through 2 failed RAID0 drives in the last 3 years. Besides failure, RAID0 can occasionaly have one drive fault, and although it repairs the configuration through BIOS, it can be a problem. I have my OS on my boot drive and the RAID0 is for video/temp files. I have 4 HD's total (#4 is a backup drive) and with the proper cooling, heat is not a problem.

[Leoslocks]

I am running a slightly older system but much like yours spooky, with out any cooling problems. I have two Raid 0 setups and 2 more hard drives. I have to clean the front filter occasionally but no problems running 6 drives and 2 optical drives.

[lordsmurf]

I've seen RAID-0 ... it's a mistake. Don't do it.

I run all IDE with UltraATA cards. Works fine. Have 8 devices in one system, no problems yet.

[Will Hay]

Personally I don't think RAID 0 is a mistake, but I'm with smurfoid insofar before I upgraded to an ADVC-100 from my superb ATI Radeon I catured perfectly to a single IDE drive, formatted before each capture and used purely for capture, nothing else.
Will Hay

[arcorob]

Please don't take this as a slam , but if ANYONE has an issue with RAID 0 , then turn in your computer because you have just as much chance of data loss running IDE ATA as you do RAID 0. To say one is BETTER or safer is a falacy.

There is a very specific reason for RAID 0 and that is the speed to write (or read) large blocks of data quickly. However, it is NOT a replacement for a slow system

Its all about balance. If you have a low memory, older speed machine and try to use RAID 0 to speeed things up, you are OUT OF BALANCE.

When asking about RAID , etc. it would always be more helpful to give is an idea of what the rest of your system is like. It might save you a bit of money. SATA will most likely not give ytou what you need (very mixed results on current SATA drives)

My Config
P4 3.0 running 800 MHZ
ASUS P4P800 Delux
Pc3200 512 meg X 2 = 1 GIG

C: Drive IDE Prime MAster 40 Gig
D Drive IDE Prime SLAVE 80 gig (clone of C: for backup)
(extra 40 as extra storage)

RAID 0 - 2 arrays
J: drive - 2 120 Gig MAXTORS RAID 0 ARRAY 1 = 240 Gig RAID 0
K: drive - 2 120 Gig MAXTORS RAID 0 ARRAY 1 = 240 Gig RAID 0


I use the K Drive to capture
I then edit. I write out the output to J drive as AVI.
I then feed to TMPGenc to render as MPEG and write to K drive.

I am ALWAYS reading from one drive and writing to another.
Never both on same drive.
Never fighting system C: drive.
Backup of C: ensures I dont lose the system.

The capture drives are no issue as storage is always temporary (tape to disk, edit, render, disk, gone)

Never had a drive failure (fingers crossed) But if I do, all is replaceable and all in one box....

[lordsmurf]

RAID-0 tends to destroy drives in all the cases I've seen, and most that I've even heard about. Otherwise perfect drives (Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate) all turned into paperweights.

The systems were fine, powerful G4 or P4 systems. The drives as IDE worked great. Make it RAID-0 ... ppphhhtttt .... gone. Lost data, fragged drive.

In some cases, fragmentation inherent to the format eliminated it's usefulness. If you really want faster drives, grab some SCSI 15K drives. Don't mess with RAID-0.

For video 7200 IDE is fine.

[boolala]

RAID 0 doubles your chance of a failed drive. Nevertheless even with a single drive you need to back up your important data anyways so I just don't don't see the what the drawback of RAID 0 is. Its not as if you can forgo backup with single drives.

[arcorob]

Lord Smurf, no slam intended but I think your experience with failed raid 0 is more urban legend than true experience. Do you know how rare failures are on properly maintained home systems ? (cooling, voltage, etc all stable) Your not using GENERIC drives are you ??? LOL ..Just teasing

If you work in IT ( as I do ) than you know that RAID solutions are an intergral part of many shops. RAID 0 not as common but still there.

Fragmentation is NO DIFFERENT than IDE and in my case LESS because my drives are consistantly wiped clean.

But I will agree with this, RAID is not needed for most movie capture systems. I have a specific need thus the system I have. I am even looking to swap the 4 120 gig drives for 4 200 gig drives because I really do use that much storage if I have 3 weddings going at once. But then, like always, they get wiped clean.

[lordsmurf]

Lord Smurf, no slam intended but I think your experience with failed raid 0 is more urban legend than true experience. .

No, not at all. I and others were sold on the magic of RAID-0 some years back. If anything, I think I was told an "urban legend" about how it was supposed to perform and cure all that could ail me. I and others I know were building the best PC's possible, sparing no expense (within reason). I opted for all IDE, and added drives slowly. I'm still glad that I went this way. The others went for RAID-0 ... and today, none of them use it. A few use the RAID card as a fancy expansion card, but no more. These are people I know and trust, not random strangers from a chatroom or forum. The RAID drives would crash or otherwise lose data. Reformatting to plain old IDE connections made them fine again in most cases. We can run around all day disagreeing with each other, but to date, I've never heard an explanation for why this happened. Please spare me the lame attempts to blame the user or hardware, as neither of those are the case. I think it's a poorly written standard, or rather a LACK of a standard, so no cards are really able to do a good job with the "0" configuration. Few people ever seem to like "0", so it may be you got lucky with your card/drive combo and nothing more.

Getting to the original post, better cases and better fans would do most for the cooling situation. I have 8 devices and 5 fans in a nice sized case with plenty of airflow. It is never really that hot in the case. I use those slim cables for better circulation and all kinds of fans. Wherever there was room, there was a fan put in.

[THE RIPPER]

Raid definitely helps moving large video files and capture. I run my os on a 15 gig partition,ideally you want your os and apps running off the array.I use a 64k stripe.

[arcorob]

Lord smurf...Glad no offense was taken , none was meant. I have had great success but as I pointed out, I have a very specific use that lets the drive basically start from scratch all the time. I THINK what killed some raid-0 (more so then , than now) and also alot of IDE (but more fixable)
is the rampant Directory damage bug that has been around for some time relating to clearing drive cache...KNOWN ms bug where cache would not be clear on a shutdown down and shudtdown would actually occur before all data written.

You get free space pointiung to data, free marked as data, etc.

Corruption so bad ...I experienced ONCE with am ATA attached (card) MAXTOR, early XP and just helped someone who had it on 98 (its an old bug)

Anyway, take care.....

[Leoslocks]

I THINK what killed some raid-0 (more so then , than now) and also alot of IDE (but more fixable)
is the rampant Directory damage bug that has been around for some time relating to clearing drive cache...KNOWN ms bug where cache would not be clear on a shutdown down and shudtdown would actually occur before all data written.

That sounds a lot like the problem Rover was having on the way to Mars.
"The irony of it was that the operating system was doing exactly what we'd told it to do,"

[spooky]

Thank you to everyone that replied to my question.
I now have figured out why I had heat problems, well that is taken care of
Also my PC config on this board was old, I have changed the system.
I have set up RAID 0 long time ago because I did have frames dropped using WinTV card 401 model, however since I have changed to Leadtek Expert card, installed RAID 0 where I can capture onto MJpeg codec 640x480 with out any frames dropped. I do believe that capturing video, editing video, using RAID 0 for scratch file for Photoshop does help very much so.

Once again Thank you very much for replies

[lordsmurf]

Lord smurf...Glad no offense was taken , none was meant. ......KNOWN ms bug .

None taken.

But the problem I saw/heard was on one LINUX system, one MAC G4 system, and then a WINDOWS 2000 system and a WINDOWS NT system. I'll buy the MS bug for Windows, but what on earth happened to the Mac and Linux systems?

The problem was always fragmentation on a enormous scale. Recalling data was terrible. Writing was normally fine, but it seemed to overwrite other files at times. This was on the G4.

[pyscrow]

I am currently finding Raid 0 a bit baffling, I have a system at home which is almost identical to my system at work, in fact the only difference is that the system at work has a primary drive and two Seta drives in a raid 0 array., while my home system has two 120gig Maxtor 8meg cache drives as standard setup.

P4 3.oGig
1024mb


My issue is that the home system seems to be much faster, and the raid system seems to chew a lot of CPU cycles, ie copying a 1 gig file from the primary drive to the raid array has the cpu usage pretty constant at 50%, much higher than if I go from one drive to another in my home system (non raid setup) which shows about a 10% CPU usage?

Something is certainly screwy somewhere....

[toronto098]

If you read my post, that might answer your "screwy" thoughts.

[andkiich]

This RAID-0 being a mistake is really news to me. I've set up over a hundred machines all running RAID-0 and they are all still running. I've personally ben running a RAID-0 for the last 2 years on my main machine, no issues, and the machine I do all my capturing on has been RAID-0 for more than a year.

Maybe I'm lucky.

[Nelson37]

There is nothing wrong with RAID-0 as a spec. There ARE a lot of controllers which do NOT implement it correctly. Also, you need a good power supply with plenty of wattage and good cooling. Important to use identical drives.

SCSI is great but not worth the money unless in a server. Also lower capacity. SATA also good but too new. In PC's never be the first kid on the block with the new toys, unless you really enjoy troubleshooting.

[lordsmurf]

good power supply with plenty of wattage and good cooling.

This could have been the killer on the systems I saw. While I use 500W + supplies, those guys went with 300-400 range supplies. Also skimped some on the fans, though at least one guy had his case wide open with a AC near it (but not blowing IN it).

I'm now wondering what controllers are being used by those that have good success stories, as well as overall PC specs (cooling, PSUs, etc).

[indolikaa]

speed is a factor, but at the same time want to make sure that my frames are not dropped when capturing videos.

Spooky,

I capture DV.avi on an Athlon 1200 running a 7200 IDE drive. I capture realtime MPEG using the same computer. Once in a great while I capture huffyuv.avi using the same computer.

I don't drop frames. With my MSI K7T (KT133A), or last year when I was using an ASUS A7V133 (also the dreaded KT133A) with RAID 0.

Just my 2¢

[Spence]

I'm now wondering what controllers are being used by those that have good success stories, as well as overall PC specs (cooling, PSUs, etc).

Im currently running XP on two maxtor SATA drives (raid 0) on an asus a7V600 board with onboard SATA and Via raid controller. I boot off this array (obviously!) and have had no serious problems for well over a year. I also have an IDE maxtor hd which I use only for ghost backups (always better to play safe ). I have one case fan blowing directly onto all 3 hd's, and i only use a 300w PSU. Nice stable system

[pyscrow]

If you read my post, that might answer your "screwy" thoughts.

Ta, I was afraid that my issue might be along those lines!

Looks like I'll kiss the raid setup goodbye and see if performance improves!

[sterno]

My issue is that the home system seems to be much faster, and the raid system seems to chew a lot of CPU cycles, ie copying a 1 gig file from the primary drive to the raid array has the cpu usage pretty constant at 50%, much higher than if I go from one drive to another in my home system (non raid setup) which shows about a 10% CPU usage?

The overwhelming majority of IDE-RAID controllers are not hardware RAID. They just put software RAID in the driver and have a BIOS that can boot an OS from the array. IDE drives in general put some load on the processor, and the software RAID adds more overhead (especially if the driver isn't written very well).