Raid 0 Question

[35thss]

If I have 4 SATA connections on my mobo; can I have 4 hard drives in 2 Raid 0 Configs

example: 2 Raptor drives in Raid 0

and 2 Seagate 400GB drives in Raid 0 for data storage

can I do this on the motherboard or will I need a PCI card for the Seagate drives?

[DougLite]

To answer your question, Yes, it's possible to have two independent RAID arrays on the same NF4 controller.

However, if you have followed the debate in this forum of late, you will discover that RAID-0 does not boost performance in your tasks, and those blazing fast Raptors in RAID-0 will not load game levels any faster than a single Raptor, but will be twice as likely to fail (and cost twice as much).

Buy only one Raptor. The second one doubles the cost, and does _not_ add any additional performance for a gamer. Spend the money that would have gone to a second Raptor on a better video card, water cooling, faster proc, etc. All of these will get you a performance boost, unlike the second Raptor for RAID-0.

As for your data drives, RAID-0 is absolutely ludicrous there. Double the chance of data loss from hard drive failure, and once again, no performance gain. Stick with single drives. It requires a little more effort to keep your data together, but is much more secure, particularly against non hard drive failure losses such as viruses, user error, power supply blow-ups, etc.

[35thss]

Thanks for the reply

[mikeblas]

As for your data drives, RAID-0 is absolutely ludicrous there. Double the chance of data loss from hard drive failure, and once again, no performance gain. Stick with single drives.

RAID-0 provides no performance gain at all?

[ashmedai]

RAID-0 provides no performance gain at all?

If the person has to ask about how to do RAID 0, then 98% of the time they're going off hearsay that it's a good idea and have absolutely no idea what it's actually for.

[mikeblas]

If the person has to ask about how to do RAID 0, then 98% of the time they're going off hearsay that it's a good idea and have absolutely no idea what it's actually for.

So why send them off with the hearsay that RAID 0 is never any good?

[ashmedai]

So why send them off with the hearsay that RAID 0 is never any good?

Maybe I'm missing something but it sounded like DougLite was just talking about this guy's desktop specifically, not every computing scenario possible.

It's good, but it's scary thinking someone putting together a system that actually CAN get something out of RAID 0 wouldn't bother to read even basic information about it first.

[DougLite]

Maybe I'm missing something but it sounded like DougLite was just talking about this guy's desktop specifically, not every computing scenario possible.
Correct. "you will discover that RAID-0 does not boost performance in your tasks, and those blazing fast Raptors in RAID-0 will not load game levels any faster than a single Raptor" - I point to RAID-0's lack of scaling in _HIS_ tasks. I have defended RAID-0 as a great choice for nearline to backup storage, workstation use, etc in previous posts, often in the same posts that I condemn it for not boosting game performance. I have steadily maintained this position, throughout the "Truth about RAID" debate to the present, and will continue to do so. As for his storage drives, the main thing there is, unless I miss my guess, reliability. 35thss probably does not want to have to rebuild from backup very often, may not want to backup at all, and will have a spacious 400GB with either single drive or RAID-1, making RAID-0 a very poor choice there, even worse than it would be for his Raptors, as RAID-0 does at least extend the meager capacity of the Raptors. He may be doing content creation, nearline backup, or another task that actually does benefit from RAID-0 from a performance standpoint on his 'storage' drives, but I doubt it, and it is definitely not worth the loss in reliability.

[mikeblas]

I point to RAID-0's lack of scaling in _HIS_ tasks.

Then maybe it's me who's missing something. What are _HIS_ tasks?