Since people are discouraging me from RAID...

[Guitarrasdeamor]

Well, a lot of people have been scaring and discouraging me from RAID0 because of the failures...I only have a 500gb external, and that wouldn't be enough to backup two 500gb internal drives...plus, I don't have cash to just replace drives...

So, I come to you. Is there a way (Without reformatting would be awesome) to combine both of my drives into 1 IN VISTA ULTIMATE x64? I read something about dynamic discs, but don't know what it is.

ANY HELP APPRECIATED! Thanks!

[ALL4AMD]

well here is the idea. store your important stuff on a non raid drive and put replaceable data like games or OS on the raid 0. i have been running on raid0 almost 5 years now without a problem.

and for people that say ur failure rate is doubled are wrong. its like a chain and we know a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

[Guitarrasdeamor]

See, that is the thing....I can store torrents and such on my external drive...it is just when that gets too much (I doubt it soon), I gotta get another one.

[thrawn86]

and that wouldn't be enough to backup two 500gb internal drives...

you might check out flex raid or unraid. I back up my parity to external devices using flexraid.



and for people that say ur failure rate is doubled are wrong

you know, statistically they're exactly right.

[blackedge]

RAID-0 is like keeping everything on a single drive. The only difference is when you lose a single drive in a single drive setup, it's a single drive that's gone and whatever the data was. In a RAID-0, if you lose a single drive, it's the same thing, but you still have the other good drive (generally speaking).

If you're paranoid about losing data, you don't increase or decrease your chances using RAID-0 versus a single drive setup.

[ALL4AMD]

you know, statistically they're exactly right.


um no, just because i have a million drives in raid 0 doesn't mean its a million times more likely to fail. its only as good as the weakest drive.

note: i really don't have a million drives, only an example.

[Volkum]

um no, just because i have a million drives in raid 0 doesn't mean its a million times more likely to fail. its only as good as the weakest drive.

note: i really don't have a million drives, only an example.

But you have more chances of a failure since you have mulitple points of failure.

[Fryguy8]

The failure rate is the sum of failure rates of all of the drives. If you lose any 1 drive, you lose the data on every drive.

[ALL4AMD]

The failure rate is the sum of failure rates of all of the drives. If you lose any 1 drive, you lose the data on every drive.


same as a chain. if your pulling something and the chain breaks @ its weakest link then u loose your pulling abillity.

[ALL4AMD]

But you have more chances of a failure since you have mulitple points of failure.


true just like the longer the chain the less u can pull

[Guitarrasdeamor]

So RAID0 or not?

What are the chances of two WD drives failing?

[Guitarrasdeamor]

Well, in about 15 minutes I am going to re-format and go RAID0...reformatting anyways, but if you want to tell me NOT to RAID, now would be the chance.

[marley1]

i dont see the point in loosing 1/2 the storage for not 2x the speed.

[thrawn86]

um no, just because i have a million drives in raid 0 doesn't mean its a million times more likely to fail. its only as good as the weakest drive.


this is incorrect.

define the probability of 1 drive failing as P(A).

The failure criteria for a RAID0 array is any ONE drive failing. thus the total probability of failure would be the union (or sum) of all sets P(Ai) for i=1... ... ...1e6.

sum [N drives * P(Ai)] for all i = total prob of ANY drive failing. If you were looking for the probability of any set of drives failing (not the case with raid0), the probability would be the intersection of those sets since they're independent events. (prob X * Prob Y * Prob Z etc etc etc). in this case if you had a million drives the probability for any two failing would remain the same no matter how many drives you had.

to answer your question: RAID 0 is suicide. there is NO fault tolerance as the data is striped. remember, you're not looking at the probability of TWO drives failing; if you lose one drive, the array is completely nuked.

[Guitarrasdeamor]

i dont see the point in loosing 1/2 the storage for not 2x the speed.

Hold on....if I put the drives in RAID0, I can only use 500gb of space?!?!?! They are both 500gb Drives.

I just want freaking information spread over a virtual terabyte drive instead of 2 500gb ones.

[marley1]

sorry i spaced out was thinking you were doing raid 1. too much drinking on the boat.

[Guitarrasdeamor]

So I can do RAID0 and I will have a virtual terabyte drive correct?

[marley1]

yes u will have a 1TB drive after format and after raid.

however if this is motherboard raid, then if your mobo dies you will loose the array and cant transfer it to another machine.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/EFDFA6AA-4077-45C7-A24C-894DF9102B6A1033.mspx

maybe that will help you as all you seem to want is 1 drive letter.

[Guitarrasdeamor]

Wow....so, will this lessen my performance? Also, this will be RAID0, without the failure part basically right? I am not worried about anything failing really, but would this be better (and NOT make my performance drop)?

Thanks MARLEY!!!

[marley1]

raid 0 SHOULD be faster then a single drive, but has higher chance of failure.

what are you trying to get out of this?

in another thread you want to move My Docs folder. Move My Docs folder to the 2nd drive, and keep drive1 for os/programs and temp downloads.

[Guitarrasdeamor]

Well, i wanted basically to just do that at first, but I figured it would be easier to make a drive...


This is what I want.

A 1 Terabyte virtual drive out of my 2 500gb WD hard drives (same model).

[Guitarrasdeamor]

Ahh w/e, can't wait any longer.

Going RAID!

Will post when I get Windows done and everything!

[Guitarrasdeamor]

Alright (posting from another PC)

I enabled RAID mode in the BIOS, went and set it up, named it Raid0, then it did it and was done. I exited, re-booted, inserted Vista DVD, and it will NOT load from the DVD drive...even if it is the ONLY thing in the boot menu...also, I don't see it in the BIOS...I one HDD in the 1st SATA port, 1 in the 3 or 4th (forget), but I don't see my DVD drive in there (my board has 6 ports and it is only showing 4 or so also...WTF?)

Halp quick please!!!!

[Guitarrasdeamor]

All I gotta say is I can't figure it out, but reformatted anyways, and am either going to do the thing marley suggested or just use 1 file for drive space and the other for installations

[ALL4AMD]

this is incorrect.

define the probability of 1 drive failing as P(A).

The failure criteria for a RAID0 array is any ONE drive failing. thus the total probability of failure would be the union (or sum) of all sets P(Ai) for i=1... ... ...1e6.

sum [N drives * P(Ai)] for all i = total prob of ANY drive failing. If you were looking for the probability of any set of drives failing (not the case with raid0), the probability would be the intersection of those sets since they're independent events. (prob X * Prob Y * Prob Z etc etc etc). in this case if you had a million drives the probability for any two failing would remain the same no matter how many drives you had.

to answer your question: RAID 0 is suicide. there is NO fault tolerance as the data is striped. remember, you're not looking at the probability of TWO drives failing; if you lose one drive, the array is completely nuked.


how am i incorrect? you just put it in statistical form.

how is R0 suicide? use it for its purpose. thats why i said for OS and games only. :rolleyes: also you should be backing up your important data.

oh and he was talking about running 1 drive standalone or 2 in raid 0 he still will losing data from a failure on either option.

Guitarrasdeamor. vista is a bitch getting raid to work. make sure your dvd drive is not on the same controller as the r0 array

[Guitarrasdeamor]

I don't even know....I just set it up with 2 drives. Needed to reformat anyways.

Got Vista installed, and can't fucking connect wirelessly. I cannot freaking connect. I have manually reset the modem and the router. WTF do I freaking do?

[Cyrilix]

how am i incorrect? you just put it in statistical form.

how is R0 suicide? use it for its purpose. thats why i said for OS and games only. :rolleyes: also you should be backing up your important data.

oh and he was talking about running 1 drive standalone or 2 in raid 0 he still will losing data from a failure on either option.

Guitarrasdeamor. vista is a bitch getting raid to work. make sure your dvd drive is not on the same controller as the r0 array

Well, it's essentially exponential failure. I think your stance was P(failure) * number of drives is false. From what thrawn86 says, that is correct, since it's actually P(failure) ^ number of drives. thrawn86 may have mistaken what you said. And by suicide, the idea is that if failure increases exponentially, then data integrity suicide is implied. You can say "well, that data doesn't matter", but the important point to make is that the cost of failure (no matter what that cost may be), increases exponentially.

[Joe Average]

Geez, you kids will argue about anything. Let's make it simple:

Consider a piece of chain with two links. If either link fails, the connection they were maintaining fails. That's the gist of the one side of the argument/debate, done, kaput, finito.

The other side is saying the same example but with two hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration (or more, just using two as the basis to keep it relatively comparitive with the example above). If either drive fails, the array fails (the connection comparitive here), the data is lost. That's the other side of it, done, kaput, finito.

As for statistics and probability coming into it, both sides are right from both perspectives:

In the chain with two links, you have two components so yes, the possibility of failure is twice as great.

In the RAID 0 with two hard drives, you have two components so yes, the possibility of failure is twice as great.

What's so hard to understand?

[dbwillis]

"Got Vista installed, and can't fucking connect wirelessly. I cannot freaking connect. I have manually reset the modem and the router. WTF do I freaking do?"

Did you install all the drivers for everything?
'cannot freaking connect'.....do you get an IP address? do you see the SSID of the wireless network?

You need to give details here....cannot freaking connect could be anything

[Guitarrasdeamor]

I got it configured thanks to Techiesupport (or w/e)...he was really helpful.

I am just going the path of documents on one drive, programs on another I guess. or what Marley suggested.

I will leave you guys to argue :)

[Joe Average]

I'm still trying to figure out when the English language got so fucked up that people keep saying "loose" when they should be saying "lose" myself. :) It's just getting worse every day...

[EnderW]

RAID 0 is suicide.
that's like saying if you buy more than one lottery ticket, you're guaranteed to win

[thrawn86]

um no, just because i have a million drives in raid 0 doesn't mean its a million times more likely to fail. its only as good as the weakest drive.

how am i incorrect? you just put it in statistical form.


the probaility for an array to fail is the probability of ANY drive failing, not just one. read up on total probability and do the math.


that's like saying if you buy more than one lottery ticket, you're guaranteed to win


what? Its a poor choice because it hardly sounds like he's a MB/s junkie who won't MS Word to load faster and he doesn't have enough backup space ".I only have a 500gb external, and that wouldn't be enough to backup two 500gb internal drives" It also introduces more than one place failure can occur, as mentioned. (motherboard, controller, etc)

I was going to suggest spanning (easier to do anyway), but thats not really fault tolerant either. Spanned volumes do not provide fault tolerance. If one of the disks containing a spanned volume fails, the entire volume fails, and all data on the spanned volume becomes inaccessible. The reliability for a spanned volume is less than the least reliable disk in the set.

[evandena]

I'm still trying to figure out when the English language got so fucked up that people keep saying "loose" when they should be saying "lose" myself. :) It's just getting worse every day...

That made me cringe too.... almost as bad as people using "u" in this thread.

[fugu]

you know, statistically they're exactly right.

It's not quite doubled. P(at least one drive dies) = 1 - P(no drive dies) = 1 - (1 - P(one drive dies)^2)

So if your drive has a 10% chance of failure, you have a 19% (1 - 0.81) chance that at least one will fail when you put them in an array.

[yacoub35]

The bottom line is ALL4AMD is under a misconception. ;)