Raid 0+1

[kubalaTF]

I'm puting together a new system and I see that Office Depot has 60MB MAXTORs for $30 after rebates. I was thinking of going RAID 0 but didn't want to rebuild. Then I thought a SATA drive to boot from and have a RAID 0 for the other spots. But I have just discovered that if I go RAID 0+1 and the primary array goes out, I can replace it easy with the other half. Sounds good to me, RAID 0+1 for $120. What do you think.

[insanarchist]

heck, with hdd's being that cheap, I'd just use the money I saved to buy a decent controller and then go raid 5.

[kubalaTF]

What is RAID 5 exactly? I've heard very little about how it really works. If it involves 5 HDs, I only have 4 spots in my case. But there is that empty CD burner spot. . . A controler would cost money though. I'm already blowing right past my max, with no signs of slowing down.

[insanarchist]

Raid 5 uses 3 + hdd's, using the amount of hard drives - 1 for space. It uses a parity bit, but separates it among the drives, so it is kind of like raid 0 + parity, so if 1 drive fails, you can put a spare in and it will keep going. I have 4 scsi drives in raid 5 right now and its pretty darn snappy! :D

P.S. THERE IS NO MAX!! MUWHAHAHA!!! (welcome to hardware addiction, meetings at 5, free coffee/doughnuts)

[kubalaTF]

I found an awsome site that shows all sorts of RAID formats in an easy to understand. . .way.

www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html

Without buying a separate controller, It looks like I'll have to stick to 0+1 if I decide to go that route. I just have to find more adresses because the rebate says 1 per household. And I can't run 0+1 on just 1 drive. Would it be faster and easier if I just droped the whole raid thing and just go for 1 SATA drive (please say no, please say no, please say no).

[MrDigital]

RAID-5 is crap compared to RAID0+1. The only advantage it is has is lower cost. RAID5 can be done with 3 drives and you only lose 1. RAID0+1 takes at least 4 drives and you always lose HALF your drives, instead of 1. RAID5 with 6 drives, you lose 1. RAID0+1 with 6 drives, you lose 3.

RAID0+1 has killer read AND write times. RAID5 has CRAP write times and RAID0+1 speed read times.

People think RAID-5 is all that and a bag of chips, but it's a serious downgrade from RAID0+1.

-MrD

[insanarchist]

I dunno, I think it depends on what you want. Raid 5 = faster than no raid, and is also more stable/able to withstand drive failures than 0+1. If you don't really care that much about losing drives (as the ones you are using are cheap anyway), then 0+1 is a fine choice. Personally, I do important work on my computer, and I also don't have many drives to throw around if one fails, so I'll stick to 5 personally.

[defakto]

raid 0+1 with 6 drives you don't lose three drives, you lose half the array if a drive goes down. so you'd be rebuilding three drives whorth of data, also raid 0+1 can have two hardrives fail and keep running, 1 on each side of the raid 1 array. Raid 5 can only sustain one loss. For price/gigabyte for drive space raid 5 is cheaper as it won't "lose" 1/2 the total drive space for the array.

[MrDigital]

I dunno, I think it depends on what you want. Raid 5 = faster than no raid, and is also more stable/able to withstand drive failures than 0+1. If you don't really care that much about losing drives (as the ones you are using are cheap anyway), then 0+1 is a fine choice. Personally, I do important work on my computer, and I also don't have many drives to throw around if one fails, so I'll stick to 5 personally.

I don't understand what you're saying. How does RAID-5 withstand drive failures better? If a drive is going to fail, it's going to fail no matter what you're doing on it.

RAID-5 is also SLOWER than a single drive during writing, but faster during reading. You need to have a killer RAID card with at least 128MB of cache on it to keep the RAID-5 writing from bogging your system down.

As for the redundancy, defakto already said it best above. RAID-5 is good for people who don't want to pay double (2 hard drives per 1 usuable) for their storage needs.

-MrD

[jen4950]

RAID-5 is crap compared to RAID0+1. The only advantage it is has is lower cost. RAID5 can be done with 3 drives and you only lose 1. RAID0+1 takes at least 4 drives and you always lose HALF your drives, instead of 1. RAID5 with 6 drives, you lose 1. RAID0+1 with 6 drives, you lose 3.

RAID0+1 has killer read AND write times. RAID5 has CRAP write times and RAID0+1 speed read times.

People think RAID-5 is all that and a bag of chips, but it's a serious downgrade from RAID0+1.

-MrD

I agree.

My best experience thus far has been 7 Seagate X-15's (15000rpm U320 SCSI drives) in RAID 10 with a hotspare. Unfortunately my controller card crapped out. Oh well.

I'm running 4 x Seagate SATA 160GB drives in RAID 10 right now for my documents drive off my Gigabyte GA-8KNXP Ultra-64 (http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-8KNXP%20Ultra-64.htm) And it's ROCK solid. Fast as hell. Anything that is important goes on that 'drive'. And I'm running a 73GB U320 Seagate 15k rpm drive for my system drive- can't complain.

And it's not Losing 3; it's using them for another purpose.

[insanarchist]

Hmmm, I guess my sources for information must have been mistaken.