raid 0 compromised by addition of hard drives?

[mr-scarface]

I have a raid 0 setup with 2 SATA hard drives (WD raptor 10k) on winxp. Now I’ve added 2 additional hard drives on the same machine just for extra storage space. One of them is a SATA 640GB and the other is an IDE 80GB.

My motherboard is an Asus A8V socket 939 with via chipset.

In order to install windows xp on the SATA 640gb, I had to load the raid floppy driver by using the f6 command during winxp setup. I’m not sure why it needed a raid driver. It’s not like i’m putting this 640gb hdd into a raid setup. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to mess with the current raid 0 setup at all, since I use it mostly for heavy duty tasks like copying large files.

So it installed windows on the 640gb. I then went into windows explorer, and I noticed that I can see and access the other two hard drive setups (the raid 0 setup, and the IDE hard drive). I rebooted and logged into the old raid 0 setup in winxp, and even from there I could still access the other two hard drive setups (the new 640gb and the IDE hard drive). C: drive is the raid 0 setup, F: is the IDE hdd, and G: is the 640gb.

My main concern is that I don’t want the raid 0 setup’s performance to be compromised due to these 2 new hard drives. I thought that you wouldn’t be able to see and access the other hard drives from windows because they are on different channels.

The VIA RAID TOOL in windows xp (in the raid 0 setup) shows that there are 2 items – Array 0 (RAID 0) and WDC 640AAKS (which is the 640gb). Array type for Array0 looks normal as it says “Striping”.

Looking under stripe disk 0 it shows – Controller 0, Channel 0, Master
Looking under stripe disk 1 it shows – Controller 0, Channel 1, Master
And under the WDC 640AAKS it shows Controller 0, Channel 2, Master

Now when I enter the RAID BIOS utility, it shows that both stripe disks are on controller 0 and channel 0. The via raid tool shows differently as you can see. Also, it shows THE WDC 640g under Channel 1 instead of Channel 2 like the via raid tool shows.


When I boot up the computer, it shows the two WD raptor hard drives under the RAID section, and the WDC 640gb under the “No raid” section.

So can someone please tell me if I’ve done anything wrong, or more importantly - anything that is compromising the raid 0 setup’s performance.

Thanks in advance

[lordsmurf]

RAID 0 is pure compromise. Disks were never really meant to be used in this fashion, and there is zero redundancy. You're stressing drives and have no safety net for WHEN it quits working.

[rallynavvie]

Though I'm normally one of the first to tell people the dangers and the fallacies with RAID 0 in this case I see that you aren't using it for anything critical. Like lordsmurf said RAID 0 has no fault tolerance and if one sector goes then the entire volume is gone.

A couple things to note about your setup:
Onboard RAID controllers are notorious for causing troubles, even on server/workstation boards, so you may very well run into troubles running that third SATA drive next to your array. Are you just worried about it causing issues or have you noticed something to make you think there are performance issues with it now?

Secondly your choice of the largest drive as your OS drive is a bit baffling. Granted it isn't completely uncalled for but usually when multiple drives are present we run the OS and apps on the smaller drive. The reason for this is to make sure all of your documents and media are on a separate drive and not cluttering up your OS and applications. Most of us have more documents, pictures, music, and videos than we do applications. However if you have loads of applications installed that just won't fit on 75% of your smaller drive (good practice not to fill drives over a certain limit to aid swapspace and defragging) then obviously you wouldn't use the smaller drive. Whatever you do don't store anything you can't readily replace on that RAID 0 volume.

How big are those Raptors? If I had that system I'd probably arrange the drives a bit differently. If those are 36GB Raptors I'd set them up singly, one for OS and the other for applications. I'd use the 80GB IDE for pagefile and temporary scratch space, and the large drive for all my documents and such. If they're 74GB or 150GB Raptors then you may just be able to use one for the OS and apps and use the second for file transfer space. I use Raptors as OS/app drives on my workstations singly rather than in an array. I've been running a 74GB Raptor on one machine for 4 years with not a single fault so I've been impressed by their reliability, almost to the point of SCSI (I have some 15krpm SCSI drives that are going on 6 years old that are still working hard).

[Nelson37]

Shouldn't be a problem there, but...

One rule I have when installing OS is ALWAYS disconnect all other drives. Install OS, test and boot, then re-connect additional drives.

Also, most motherboard RAID controllers are nearly worthless. Minimal performance increase and unreliable, as well. A small investment in a seperate controller card would be well worth it.

[mr-scarface]

Are you just worried about it causing issues or have you noticed something to make you think there are performance issues with it now?

Nah I haven't really noticed any performance issues, but I figured it may be a bit slower in copying large files but it's probably just my imagination.

How big are those Raptors?

They are 74GB each.

Also, most motherboard RAID controllers are nearly worthless. Minimal performance increase and unreliable, as well. A small investment in a seperate controller card would be well worth it.

I'm glad you mentioned this. I've been trying to copy files from the 640gb HDD onto itself but the copy dialog box freezes and stutters and takes a long time to complete the operation. A simple 300mb file will say it's gonna take 60 seconds but it takes much longer because the copy dialog box's animation thingy freezes for a good 5-10 seconds every 20 seconds or so. It does complete the copy process each time, but it takes long and has those freezes. Note that this ONLY happens on thte 640gb drive, not the other drives. Do you think this is the result of the raid controller?

If I do get a raid controller card, what are the benefits? And more importantly, will it be complicated to setup, given my current situation with the hard drives.

[mr-scarface]

Well I've upgraded to the latest via raid chipset drivers and the problem persists.

[lordsmurf]

I have more software installed than most people here, and my 120GB drive is only half full of software installs (legally owned, too -- at one hell of a price). The biggest pig is the Adobe CS3 Master Collection, with an incredible 18GB footprint. Most OS drives are in the 40GB-120GB range. One of my systems (no CS3) operates from a 20GB master drive, and about 1TB of secondary drives for the video data. It's all SATA or IDE/ATA/PATA, there is no need for RAID. I don't work with SDI or fully uncompressed HD, and odds are neither will you or even 99%+ of people visiting this website.

Read the wikipedia entry on RAID 0. The only people to really gain from RAID 0 are gamers with games that need to load lots of crap non-stop. It doesn't do much for video. If you need RAID, then get a real RAID setup intended for video editing. They cost a bundle, however -- then again, the people who really needed will be getting paid a bundle for the work.