raid 0 is it worth it?

[wesleys_dad]

i currently run an asus a8n-e board with a 3200 venice o/clocked to 2450 mhz.im thinking about setting up a raid 0 set up with 2 wd 80 gig sata 1 drives.the current set up runs great and i was wondering if i set up a raid 0 config what would i see as far as a speed increase.ive never set up a raid config and have read extensively on doing it .i feel confident i can but would it be worth it ,would i gain any real world speed.do programs open faster,i understand programs open faster,are there any noticeable speed increases just using it in every day use.if its not going to give me anything visible i wonder if it would be worth it,but i like the experience i would gain setting it up.im very in tune to my computer and run benches alot so i would notice speed differences where as another person mite not.what do you think,will it be noticeable.currently im running a wd 7200 sata 1 hdrive and im ordering a second one exactly the same and want to run a raid array.any set up tips would be welcome as far as setting it up for speed,the size of the stripes and any other reccomendations for speed.also if its a waste of time tell me that if in your opinion thats what you think......thanks to all.......

[Axman]

I've got two Barracudas (with native command queuing) in RAID with 16k (if I recall correctly) stripes. It makes Windows boot fast and is good for managing many small files. It takes noticeably less time to run the defragmenter and installing and uninstalling programs goes much faster. As far as performance goes, it benches at peak around 95-100mb/s in Sandra's benchmark utility, but in practice, there's not much difference running applications. Seek time has not gone up, but it has not dropped, either. Using the nVidia controller, I have not noticed my CPU get pegged by the RAID in operation. Will I continue to run striped RAIDs? Yeah, probably. Knowing that I'm technically keeping my data in a state of risk, I back it up to another disk every couple of months, or more frequently if I'm doing something screwy with my computer.

It may all be useless. But you know what? It's cool. Why not do it?

Well, there are reasons. Yep, it's not stable. . .kind of. With nForce 4, don't run a disk on the first SATA port. It has been known to be error-prone when overclocking. That's the case with single drives as well. But the 50% increased rate of failure statistic is a result of a logical disconect from the field of statistics. It's only a 50% increased rate under the circumstance where the rate of failure of one disk is 100%. That doesn't make sense, right? Well, it doesn't. Also, a 16k stripe means good things with the little files, but a single 5+ gigabyte file is a monsterous task that really craps on the performance. Is it worse than on a standard disk? Actually, a little bit. But because I'm not in the habit of moving files greater than even 10mb from one disk to another, except DVDs, the bottleneck isn't on the RAID side, it's on the DVD side, and therefore never factors into practicality.

Also, I want my drives to wear equally. Wouldn't want to have a single drive that's outlived the other. But I still have my first ATA 66 hard drive, it works fine, and it's about ready to get it's learner's permit.

I guess all I really have to say is this: you want to do it? Do it. If you're in the habit of moving massive files off your disk onto another equally fast disk, consider bigger stripes. But 16k is great for running Windows on.

[TheDoucheMan]

It is a 100% increase in the chance of loss of data. The MTBF if half that of a single drive. There is *NO* increase in desktop performance. RAID0 is faster for *large* file transfers where the write speed is most important. It is no faster (and in come cases slower) for processes that require many small writes, because the seek time is increased. Search for other threads about raid 0, read them and you will see that there isn't any advantage for standard desktop use, and there are many many disadvantages related to Raid-0.

And please try to capitalize the first letter of your sentences and put spaces after the periods, I almost died reading your OP ;)

edit: Software raid like the first responder talked about has even more disadvantages. With software raid, your CPU has to do all the work of splitting up the files and feeding the bits to the two drives. Thats why the cpu usage on his computer shot up when performing a big operation.

[PaHick]

Everyones got opinions on RAID0, and in here they're not positive. If you want a fairly recent review to look over(not necessarily concerning RAID0, but RAID0 was tested) check out the Seagate 7200.9 160G article at Anandtech. (http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2682&p=1) Those drives show promise.