For those who own RAID arrays

[mrtristan]

I've been pricing out a new computer system and debating whether RAID is really worth it. I don't have any projects lined up, but if I can anticipate the future at all, I should be doing more video editing in the future.

1. Is a RAID0 that much faster?

1a. Is RAID0 realistically any less stable than a single hard drive?

2. What about RAID0-1? In your opinion, is it worth the price of three/four drives?

I've read some articles about RAID arrays, but it would be nice to hear from people who have actual experience.

[Spicuzza]

mrtristan,

I have a Biostar M7MIA-R motherboard with a High Point HPT370A Raid controler, cpu 1.33 ghz Athlon and 512 DDR ram. Windows XP.

Yes, a RAID-0 is that much faster.

No, RAID-0 is not any less stable than a single drive, however, should one the drives fail in RAID-0 array you will lose ALL files. There is no recovery from this. Therefore, you never do mission critical computing with a RAID-0. RAID-0 is for performance and not truly RAID since there isn't any redundency. A dedicated RAID-0 for your video capturing will make life much easier for you.

RAID 0-1 is for redundancy, all drives are mirror images of each other, great for mission critical computing. I can't comment on video capturing with mirrored drives since I've never done it but logic would dictate that if you are writing the same information across multiple drives that performance is not going to be enhanced and I would guess this would be worse than a single drive.

You'll find that there are great benefits to having multiple drives in your machine. In my box I have the RAID-0 which are two 20 gig 7200 rpm Western Digital HDD 40 gig total, on the primary HDD channel another 40 gig with a 20 gig slave, 100 gig total HDD space. All HDD's are Western Digital 7200 rpm, ATA 100.

Hope this help.

Gary Spicuzza
cic7@juno.com

[mrtristan]

Thanks for the reply.

This is what I understand about RAID0-1.

Two drives are set up as a RAID0 configuration. A third or two more drives are set up to mirror the RAID0 configuration, in case of a failure. From what I can remember, it's supposed to be faster than a single drive, but not as fast as RAID0. Pretty much a compromise between the speed of RAID0 and the security of RAID1. The only thing is that you need to buy at least three hard drives.

I'll probably just go ahead and set up a RAID0 system. I can always expand to something different, in the future.

Right now, I'm running two 30gig Maxtors. Both drives are 7,200RPM. One drive is partitioned to my Windows OS and a partition for whatever else. The second drive is dedicated to capturing.

[Spicuzza]

mrtristan,

Not exactly, you choose the type of array such as RAID-0, RAID 0+1 and so on. If you go to the link below this site does a great job of explaining Redundant Array of Independent Disks.

http://raid.com/04_00.html

Gary Spicuzza

[Digifreak]

In my opinion, the only benefit I got from my raid 0 was 2 extra EIDE channels for extra hard drive storage. I don't think it was a good idea setting up the operating system on the same channel as the raid 0. While the write speed was significantly faster, I later found out that the raid 0 is slower for reading than a single hard drive of the same speed. If I had to do it again I would have gone SCSI for my captures and used the raid 0 for additonal storage space. I do love having up to 8 devices on 4 EIDE channels with the raid(I have 320G of storage, a DVD rom and 3 channels still open!). I do think that individual cooling fans on 7200 rpm hdds significantly reduces hdd failure and 2 drives in raid 0 is only twice as likely to fail as 1 drive. The most I can capture on my raid 0, (again same as OS) with my ATI AIW radeon is 480 x 480 with no dropped frames. 640x480 starts to drop frames, but the only optimization i have done is a defrag, I coud probably do better disabling devices and capture to a separate partition.

[FUNIL99]

mrtristan :

1 - Yes, is much faster than one 7200 drive, my RAID have 2 Western Digital 40 GB 5400 Rpm and my score in Sandra is above 42000, and when I choose the Raid stripe size I choose 64k, that is the best for video editing, but is the worst performance too... imagine the 8k stripe size....
Only for records, my capture card is a Asus V7700 Deluxe, and in my tests I recorded in 720 x 480, with and whithout Huffy codec, with 48Khz audio, for 10 minutes, with only 6 dropped frames ( Virtuadub capture ). Before my Raid, this was only a distant dream, even with Athlon 1.4 Ghz and Quantum Fireball A/S Plus drive.

2 - I have used my Raid with 2 operating systems, Win98 SE and Windows XP Pro, for 2 months, without any problem, and always with high performance. I have an Gigabyte 7DXR motherboard, stable as a rock, with 512 Mb DDR and Atlhon XP1800+, and for the first time I'm really happy with my computer !
Only for record, my older motherboard was an Asus A7V-133, with the same Promise raid chip, but never have an stable machine; sometimes the Raid have broken, sometimes blue screen, but after 4 reinstalls I give up and change the motherboard.
But be warnned : To install the Raid with Win9x is very easy, and all works like the manual sad, but to install Windows XP, you must use an old Promise driver that is really recognized correctly.
If you want to know more about Raid IDE, see the link :
www.braziliantech.com

I think that the chances are 2 times more to fail than only one drive, but if you ask for your friends about how much their own's drives has failed, you can make the decision.

But for sure, my next hard disk systems will be Raid-0 too!!!

3 - I tested the Raid 0+1, with my old Asus A7V-133, with 2 40GB Western Digital in one Array, and one 80 Gb Western Digital as the other Array, and the Bios controller seems an Raid 0+1.
The performance has cut by 15 - 20% in the Sandra Benchmark, but for be honest, I can't feel the diference in using the machine.
My choice was maintain the Raid 0 , and sell my CDRW and the other hard disk, and I will buy an Pionner DVD Recorder when their price will be less than US$ 550 in Brasil

There are an interesting article about Raid in the glorious Tom's Hardware site , look for the test he made with 2 notebook's drives in Raid 0 and see the power for this Raid hardware chip.

www.tomshardware.com

And for last, my English is very poor, sorry !

Funil99

[mrtristan]

Spicuzza - Thanks for the link. I initially read about how RAID works, somewhere else. The link you provided was more informative.

Digifreak - Thanks for the feedback.

FUNIL99 - Your english is fine. I wish I could speak another language as well as you.

Everyone - I've been able to capture at 640X480, with no dropped frames, in my system.

AMD 1.1ghz
1024MB RAM
ATI AIW Radeon

I usually use VirtualDub. The longest single clip that I've captured was over 40 minutes and I didn't drop a single frame. I've been tweaking my system since I bought it, so maybe I should just stick with this, instead of a new RAID equipped machine.

[mbbecker]

If you capture with the HuffYUV codec you WILL NOT need a RAID setup with any modern hard drive. Anyone telling you otherwise is using older equipment or does not have something setup right.

Don't belive me? Do a sample capture at full D1 res in Virtualdub with Huffyuv. You will see that the datarate hovers around 10MB/sec. Any modern hard drive can handle this SUSTAINED datarate. Just because you i the potential bandwidth by using RAID 1, 5 etc. does not mean you are using it.

Sure your benchmarks are going to go up, but that doesn't mean you NEED that speed for captuing if you are using a LOSSLESS codec. Just because your car can go 160MPH does not mean that you need to travel that fast to get across the street.

[zorinsmarket]

Quote from:
mbbecker

__________________________________________________ __________
Sure your benchmarks are going to go up, but that doesn't mean you NEED that speed for captuing if you are using a LOSSLESS codec. Just because your car can go 160MPH does not mean that you need to travel that fast to get across the street.
__________________________________________________ __________






I have Abit KT7A-Raid, the reason I got it was for the extra hdd space and Its works pretty good for that, I'm currently running 1 WD80gig on its only Highpoint IDE at 7200 for my capturing. I have captured for hours on end and have experienced no dropped frames with my Dazzle DVC 2, so I see no need for the Raid, unless your looking for more IDE connections.


Good Luck,
Zorin

[mrtristan]

Zorin - That's what I was thinking. You have the same motherboard as me, plus RAID. I'm probably going to get the KR7A-RAID, next. Whether I decide to set up RAID or not, I can definitely use the extra four IDE channels.

[Craig Tucker]

I have just bought an epox ep-8k7a+ raid motherboard. And like many others the main reason was for the extra IDE connectors for hard drive storage. I have 1 question though, If you want to set up a raid 0 array for striping do the drives have to be identical.

Craig

[Spicuzza]

craigtucker,

No, the drives do not have to be identical.

However, if you set up a 10 gig with a 20 gig you won't have 30 gig, you will have 20 gig only!

Also, I believe anybody who is seriously considering settting up any type of RAID would be foolish to not have ALL HDD's be identical in all aspects.

Just my opinion.

Gary Spicuzza
cic7@juno.com