Fastest RAID Config with Striping & Parity

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GreatestOne

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 15, 2005
Messages
488
Ok I started a thread earlier about something, and it kinda led to this, so let me post this separately.... this is what is desired in the system as far as real world needs:

- Ultimate speed for gaming and graphics/video applications
- Need redudancy as well for backup
- Use 6 hard drives or less
- No external drive can be used (for this example)

This is my idea then of the simplest config, so let me know what you guys think:

BOOT DRIVE:
2x2 (150GB) Velociraptors in RAID0
(Install XP, game, and a few applications)

STORAGE DRIVE:
1TB drives in RAID5 or RAID1 (whats faster or whats the difference?)
(Install all other files, programs, backups, etc....)
_________________________________

If I can attach an external drive, then I assume it will be the same BOOT system as above, but for the storage drives, I can have have the same 2 velociraptors in a non-RAID config for 300GB of space and send all extra files to the external. But I think this will make for one noisy and hot system, so...... with all this cash thats needed, might as well get water cooling then huh?
 
For your OS you could do RAID0 but I'd suggest RAID1. Your read speeds will likely stay the same but if you have a good controller it can help with access times as it can pull from multiple drives at the same time. On top of that the OS and apps don't tend to be writing a whole lot of data to disk and write speeds likely won't be very impressive. That being said you may even consider separate drives. Install the OS on one drive and games/apps on another etc. Put things on separate drives that are likely to be used at the same time. It'd be like RAID0 performance but much better with high IO loads.

As for storage I personally prefer RAID5. You can use RAID1 but you won't have a whole lot of space. RAID5 would give you substantial speed boosts on sequential transfers which are more typical for storage drives. On top of that you'd only lose the capacity of a single drive over RAID1. This implies more than 2 drives being used of course.
 
Absolutly the Fastest is Raid 10. But it wastes a lot of space.

Storage I'd go for Raid 5. Or 6 If you got the hardware.
 
At work, the enterprise monitoring solution software we deploy needs super fast disk access.

We only and only use RAID 10.

Which is Raid 1+0

If you can go for it, do RAID 10. Or else RAID 5.
 
Anarchist4000 said:
For your OS you could do RAID0 but I'd suggest RAID1. Your read speeds will likely stay the same but if you have a good controller it can help with access times as it can pull from multiple drives at the same time. On top of that the OS and apps don't tend to be writing a whole lot of data to disk and write speeds likely won't be very impressive. That being said you may even consider separate drives. Install the OS on one drive and games/apps on another etc. Put things on separate drives that are likely to be used at the same time. It'd be like RAID0 performance but much better with high IO loads.
Click to expand...

So you are saying install OS in RAID1, then install another 2 disks in RAID0 and run games off it? Then why not just install OS on RAID5 with all my other apps, and then a RAID0 for JUST games and my graphic/video work? Isnt that better? For some reason I thought it was important to have the OS running on a fast drive.
 
z00100 said:
At work, the enterprise monitoring solution software we deploy needs super fast disk access.
We only and only use RAID 10.
Which is Raid 1+0
If you can go for it, do RAID 10. Or else RAID 5.
Click to expand...

Ya but doesnt RAID10 need like at least 5 or 6 drives? Unless you are saying that RAID10 is near the speed of RAID0 and provides the same storage solutions as a RAID5....

Either way yes I would def use 5 for storage but the whole point is I want to know besides that do i use RAID0 with the OS and the games or separate?
 
GreatestOne said:
Ya but doesnt RAID10 need like at least 5 or 6 drives? Unless you are saying that RAID10 is near the speed of RAID0 and provides the same storage solutions as a RAID5....

Either way yes I would def use 5 for storage but the whole point is I want to know besides that do i use RAID0 with the OS and the games or separate?
Click to expand...
RAID 10 requires 4 hard drives. It is a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1. Unless you have a hardware RAID controller, RAID 10 will be faster than RAID 5 since you won't have to calculate parity data. However, with RAID 5, you don't lose as much space to redundancy. Usable space: RAID 10 = n/2, RAID 5 = n-1; n = number of drives.
 
GreatestOne said:
So you are saying install OS in RAID1, then install another 2 disks in RAID0 and run games off it? Then why not just install OS on RAID5 with all my other apps, and then a RAID0 for JUST games and my graphic/video work? Isnt that better? For some reason I thought it was important to have the OS running on a fast drive.
Click to expand...

I don't think that's what they were suggesting.

You don't need your game installs on some uber RAID 0 array of their own - if you have a fast OS drive like a VelociRaptor then just install all your games and apps there - it will be plenty fast enough.
If you want better gaming performance spend more on your graphics card and an appropriate CPU and RAM.

I would suggest a 300gig Veloci as your OS/apps drive and a 1TB drive for storage of all else, with a backup copy made to another 1TB periodically and taken elsewhere. That is a real backup.
 
It really depends on how many drives you plan on using. For anything storage related RAID5 is probably the best choice. As for your OS/games either put them on the same drive or two separate drives.
 
My 2 cents.

For your OS, go with at least 1 300 gig Vraptor. If you have the cash then go with 2 of the 300's and short stroke them. You could set them up for like 150 to 200 gig total, which is plenty big enough for OS and all your games and have amazing speed and access times.

For your storage, Raid anything is no replacement for at least 1 copy in an offline backup. If you get a virus, have a Raid controller failure, or even just accidentally delete a file, Raid gives you no backup. I personally have 2 external USB drives that I rotate for my backups. That way I aint overwriting my last good backup with my current backup.

RAID is not a backup. It only increases the online availability of your data.

Don
 
I agree with almost everything that Don said....but I would do it a lil differently

Now for me I dont play games, but if I did I would think that 150gb would suffice.So I would grab a 300gb vRaptor and short stroke it 50% to 150gb usable for OS, Games, Apps, VM's etc. Then for your storage depending on your needs get 1tb drives in RAID5 or RAID10 and grab a 1.5tb drive for offline backups.

RAID is not backup, it is only for uptime, and it will not protect your data from anything other than a drive failure.
 
Great stuff guys, it all makes sense, except then who uses RAID0 for increased read and write speeds? Isnt that what 0 was designed for? I heard so many gamers running 0 for increased performance, so maybe thats once upon a time?

I guess its the general consensus to run one 300GB VR drive for my OS, games, and I am thinking just my graphic/video software.... for all others software and files/storage, I'll prob do like a 3x750GB for 1.5TB of storage, and then later get a TB external or something....

The reason I would not just run an external is I would like to install my other 20-30 programs on the RAID5 so I keep the boot drive more free... I guess thats what short stroking is right, leave the boot drive in less than 50% usage for better access rates? I know when you fill up HD to like 80-90% capacity it does slow down... this way i can run just one VR and then in case a drive fails in the RAID I will still have my programs intact and not have to reinstall them... an external wont help me keep programs, so I dont look forward to putting all those back in.

Btw, with all this, I guess I am kinda screwed if the main drive goes out tho huh.... except for saving files into the external or into the RAID5 for now, when it goes, its redo time.... I guess thats why I used RAID5 overall now, because i thought it was supposed to be faster and provide redundancy over single 7200rpm drives.

And I guess the VR drives are just as reliable as any of the modern well made drives?

Thanks again.
 
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