To RAID or not to RAID...and some other questions too...

[Seufari]

Hey guys, I recently purchased two 74gb raptors with the plan to set up a RAID setup (the one that makes it write half to one drive and half to the other drive and speeds things up) . I am starting to think that one 74gb raptor would be faster than anything ive ever had and therefore fast enough. So I have a few questions...

What do you think I should do?
1)RAID the drives
2) not RAID and sell one of the drives
3)sell them both...

Are the performance benefits really all that great when looking at:
1)RAIDed raptor setup vs. just the raptor
2)raptor vs. regular sata drives

Would the games I play benefit by the new raptor hd, or should I just get a 36gb and use it only for the OS?

I have nethier the time nor the capacity (no mobo as of this moment) to test this out for myself and would like to hear what you guys's experiences are...

[piako]

Dear Seufari,

I think raid is a good way to go. :) I'd sell the raptors and get a few 250 GB sata disks and put them in raid 0. I think 3-4 disks is about enough making a 700-900 GB drive.

I've done some extensive speed testing of raid 0 setups and the benefits are very noticeable. The fastest I've been able to get is about 160 MiB/s over 4 disks on a sata 150 controller.

I bet it would be faster if I had a sata 300 controller.

imo the raptors are just too expensive and raid 0 is super nice

if you wanted to raid 0 the raptors that would be cool too but it would cost lots of money to invest in a setup like that.

i'm sure some people here raid 0/5 u320 setups and thus giving them insane speed :)

[defakto]

Just a note, a raid array on a sata150 won't be faster than a raid array on a sata300 because the 150/300 is the transfer rates in MB on each channel. At one drive per channel, no current sata drive even saturates the sata150 channels yet. Burst speed being the only thing that would only help with small files, something raid 0 doesn't benifit.

[Seufari]

Dear Seufari,

I think raid is a good way to go. :) I'd sell the raptors and get a few 250 GB sata disks and put them in raid 0. I think 3-4 disks is about enough making a 700-900 GB drive.

I've done some extensive speed testing of raid 0 setups and the benefits are very noticeable. The fastest I've been able to get is about 160 MiB/s over 4 disks on a sata 150 controller.


Thanks for the input piako...

My new question is which would be faster? Two regular sata drives in RAID 0, or one of the raptors?

[gwai lo]

Actually, other than synthetic benchmarks, RAID 0 doesn't do much to performance for normal desktop users, it's even been detrimental in certain situations.

As for your last question, depends on the situation and environment. If you're in a single user environment, probably the Raptor (gogog low seek times).

Unless you like playing HDTach.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/1465.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=1465)

[Seufari]

Actually, other than synthetic benchmarks, RAID 0 doesn't do much to performance for normal desktop users, it's even been detrimental in certain situations.



Hm... have one guys sayin one thing and another guy saying the opposite...

Here is my situation, I have the following drives:
160gb seagate sata
60gb seagate ide
2x74gb raptors

I really only have two available bays to use for hd's so I have a limited number of choices...

1) sell the two raptors and be happy with my two current drives
2) sell one of the raptors and use the other 74gb raptor for my OS and games, all other stuff will be on the 160gb seagate
3) sell one of the raptors and trade the other for a 36gb raptor for the OS only, games and all other stuff will be on the 160gb seagate
4) Sell the two raptors and the 60gb ide and buy another 160gb sata drive to setup raid 0

Money is a factor. But i did just throw some down for the two raptors...
Space is not a factor. My current setup of 160gb + 60gb is enough space for me. I could probably get by with 150gb of the two raided raptors but am not really wanting to do that anymore because of the cost..

so which solution would you pick...???

[piako]

if u really want to minimize hastle just raid 0 the raptors, use the ide as backup and sell the 160

the only problem u might run into is filling up the raptors

i started out with a raptor, paid full price, brought it home, smiled like i was the bomb, but after four months i found i could get faster performance over a raid setup for less money

thus i sold the raptor to some guy in alaska off ebay and now run 4 wd2500ks in raid0

it was about 400 bucks for all the drives. the raptors being about $144 a peice now is kinda pricey imo for only 74 gigs :rolleyes:

i perfer raid for the speed :) load times are nothing and the computer boots soooo fast :)

the people here talking about detrimental effects may be talking about parity and how raid 0 has no redundancy

if you want speed raid the raptors, if you want lots of space sell the 3 disks and setup two 160s in raid.

raid 0 might not be your only option depending on your software and controller

check out the raid schemes with parity such as raid 5 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID0#RAID_5)

raid i guess is kinda risky business if anything was to fail but if you were running a single disk it wouldn't be any different really. nothing is really permanent when it comes to magnetic storage systems or anything in life for that matter

remember ozymandias?

ok i'm done :)

[Jason711]

raid 0 isnt going to do much at all for you. that is the bottom line. and you also increase your chances of data loss by 2. it just isnt worth the risk, even if you back up your data constantly... your still going to have to fix it WHEN it does fail. ive been through it, its a waste of time in my opinion.

if its a single partition you want just mount the drive to a directory within your main partition.

[tdg]

RAID0 is nice if synthetic benchmarks are your primary objective, but in the real world RAID0 helps very little. The RAID0 was always way overhyped, use one Raptor for your OS and apps, the 160 for data files, and the 60 for backup or whatever else. If you really want to use both Raptors for something, you can put the OS and apps on one, and stick the page file on the other for a little boost, but still not really worth it IMO.

[unhappy_mage]

Oh god. Putting 4 drives in raid 0 (apparently with no backup!!!) is not a good idea. The raptors will be faster than other drives for a good while, I imagine. Raid 0 increases STR, but that's already the strong point of many drives. It hurts seek times and buffer strategies, which is where modern drives really have the problems.

Stick with the 2 raptors. If you want to raid them to get a single volume, go ahead, but back up onto another disk regularly (the 160 is just right for this purpose). Otherwise, put your OS and programs on one and games on the other.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag.php/mem/1392.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=1392)

[Seufari]

ok so I have decided to not keep both raptors. I will be selling at least one.

What I gather from the info above is that the following is the way to go:

OS and programs on the raptor,
Games and junk on the 160gb sata

If this is true then I may get a 36gb raptor to keep the cost down and use it only for the OS.
Just one last time to clarify...

True or false
1) a single raptor is better/faster than two regular sata drives in RAID 0
2) Putting the games on the extra disk (not the raptor) is the best way to do it when using the 74gb raptor with the 160gb sata

[unhappy_mage]

OS and games on the raptor, programs and junk on the sata. The Raptor is significantly faster, so you want the games on it to get maximum performance.

1) True. If you were doing video editing or something like that, it'd be worth having the extra STR, but the Raptor has seek times so much faster that it's no contest.
2) False, see above.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag.php/mem/1392.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=1392)

[Seufari]

great!

Thanks everybody for all of your help...

[gwai lo]

Well, if it helps any now...if you search this forum for RAID 0 discussion, there have been links for tests and things. Not just us making statements. ;)

After a while, you just get tired of reposting the links and stuff...

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/1465.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=1465)