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Is 2 x 74GB Raptor 8MB in RAID 0 worth it?
- Thread starter bassman
- Start date
Depends.
Synthentic benchmarks will show huge gains
If you do linear file transfers, you may see gains in the neighborhood of 40-50%.
General desktop application performance/overall system response/"snap" & "feel" Maybe 10-20%
Game level loading and other localized seek heavy work? You might get a 10% improvement, you may also notice no change or even a slight decrease in throughput in some seek heavy scenarios because the spindles in a RAID-0 array aren't synced and you increase rotational latency.
There's a reason why the 8MB Raptors are on sale - WD is clearing the 8MB ones out to make way for the much better 16MB ones. How much better? Well, especially if you have one of the older FLA__ revision Raptors, about 20-30%, depending on the application. The FLC__ revision Raptors are a little closer to the 16MB units, but still vastly inferior.
http://www.storagereview.com/php/be...&devID_0=309&devID_1=306&devID_2=259&devCnt=3
Synthentic benchmarks will show huge gains
If you do linear file transfers, you may see gains in the neighborhood of 40-50%.
General desktop application performance/overall system response/"snap" & "feel" Maybe 10-20%
Game level loading and other localized seek heavy work? You might get a 10% improvement, you may also notice no change or even a slight decrease in throughput in some seek heavy scenarios because the spindles in a RAID-0 array aren't synced and you increase rotational latency.
There's a reason why the 8MB Raptors are on sale - WD is clearing the 8MB ones out to make way for the much better 16MB ones. How much better? Well, especially if you have one of the older FLA__ revision Raptors, about 20-30%, depending on the application. The FLC__ revision Raptors are a little closer to the 16MB units, but still vastly inferior.
http://www.storagereview.com/php/be...&devID_0=309&devID_1=306&devID_2=259&devCnt=3
If you're going to have "raid" 0 as your system disk, you should have some type of quick restore / rebuild procedure in place in the event you corrupt or lose one of the drives, which will destroy all data on both. Symantec Ghost, Acronis TrueImage are examples of something that would fit for this type of system restoration. I have considerable experience with the enterprise version of Ghost, it works very well for imaging and bare metal restores. They have a new product called Norton Save & Restore for personal use, heard that's good too.
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=2
fwiw
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=2
fwiw
Thanks for the responses. BF2 map load times are exactly what I'm looking to improve, so the info is appreciated.
As for a system disk backup, I have a .5 TB file server that I back up every week so no critical data is on my system disk. Additionally, I re-install the OS every 6 months or so from an image just to keep Windows clean.
As for a system disk backup, I have a .5 TB file server that I back up every week so no critical data is on my system disk. Additionally, I re-install the OS every 6 months or so from an image just to keep Windows clean.
I went from a 74GB Raptor to their 150GB ver and noticed a good increase in performance in BF2 map loads. The first time you load up the game and a map it wasn't a big improvement, but subsequent map loads there was about 30-40% better. Likely because a second map has less data to load after caching models, sounds from the first map.
Monkey_feces
Gawd
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2006
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- 702
You might actually see slower speeds in handling small files in a RAID 0 configuration. But those are small files. Eg, 50kb file will take 1 second instead of half a second to handle. I heard this is true for all RAID 0 configurations.
That's exactly what I found when testing; same or slower speed on striped os drive, which does a bunch of small transfers continuously.
It's just a bunch of hype when you see all the boutique computers running striped drives like that. Heard so many stories about how one drive went bad on a big buck system and the unlucky person who shelled out all that money was frantic, trying to find someone who could help em get back all their pics and cam videos. Sure, maybe see a second or three difference sometimes, but overall it just isn't worth it; drives are so cheap, just mirror em.
Tried a raid10 (0+1?) and lost a drive, couldn't restore array no matter what. Ended up using it as a simple stripe for a while until ghosting onto a mirrored array on same controller, worked fine for a long time after that.
It's just a bunch of hype when you see all the boutique computers running striped drives like that. Heard so many stories about how one drive went bad on a big buck system and the unlucky person who shelled out all that money was frantic, trying to find someone who could help em get back all their pics and cam videos. Sure, maybe see a second or three difference sometimes, but overall it just isn't worth it; drives are so cheap, just mirror em.
Tried a raid10 (0+1?) and lost a drive, couldn't restore array no matter what. Ended up using it as a simple stripe for a while until ghosting onto a mirrored array on same controller, worked fine for a long time after that.
USMC2Hard4U
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2003
- Messages
- 6,157
I enjoyed my raid array when I had it. It was fast. but I dont use raid now, and I dont really notice a difference.
when time is money, nothing beats a mirror for system drive and raid 5 or 6 for data. hate to even take the time to throw an image back onto a boot drive in a server that my users have to use all day. let that dead drive sit there til the evening, pop a replacement in, and kick off the rebuild.
Monkey_feces
Gawd
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2006
- Messages
- 702
You should have at least 2 partitions. Keep your important files on another HD and keep everything you want a performance increase in, apps such as games, dvd encrypting software, etc, on your raptors in RAID 0. That way, all you lose is 30 minutes reinstalling your OS and games. BTW, I heard that RAID 0 doesn't increase your chances of a drive dying. 2 raptors in Raid vs 1 raptor have the same chance of failing. If you have 2 mirrored raptors, you're wasting your hard earned (or begged) money on paranoia.ClintE said:
partitions? put in a small fast drive for paging and scratch files instead; maybe a solid state drive for that & the os if you really need that much speed. wouldn't believe how fast a system can be with a quick single- or dual-fiber channel ssd for the os to work on.
reinstall os? image it when it's first installed, never need to install on that hardware again. i've even thrown an image on a completely different mb & video, as long as the controller is the same. that's going from intel to amd or the other way. as long as the os is supported and efficiently runs the job, why would i reinstall it & the drivers & utils & apps? throw a new controller in a slot, install drivers for it, dump an image, build new system out of all new hardware with that controller, blast the image onto the new array, boot and let the os find or ask for the new hw drivers.
the "r" in raid stands for redundant, as in Redundant Array of Individual (or Inexpensive) Disks. where's the redundancy in simple striping? more accurate to call it aid0.
i haven't used wd products since they had their huge failure rates years ago, soured me on their stuff forever. the speed differences just aren't that great unless you're into pure benchies and not actually using a system for anything but that. < can feel the flames rising as i type >
nothing against partitioning, i do that at home & for other folks' setups for the paging file on the single drive systems. doesn't get fragmented that way, just make it 5 meg smaller than the partition. but for a quick db server, some type of solid state drive is good.
recently started using acronis disk director for moving the paging file partition to the end of the drive, works great. move the partition before assigning the page file to it, then expand the first partition to use the rest of the space; sometimes needs a reboot but usually works on the fly. nice for notebooks & the single drive systems.
and yes i put the important stuff on the raid6 arrays & tape/optical.
reinstall os? image it when it's first installed, never need to install on that hardware again. i've even thrown an image on a completely different mb & video, as long as the controller is the same. that's going from intel to amd or the other way. as long as the os is supported and efficiently runs the job, why would i reinstall it & the drivers & utils & apps? throw a new controller in a slot, install drivers for it, dump an image, build new system out of all new hardware with that controller, blast the image onto the new array, boot and let the os find or ask for the new hw drivers.
the "r" in raid stands for redundant, as in Redundant Array of Individual (or Inexpensive) Disks. where's the redundancy in simple striping? more accurate to call it aid0.
i haven't used wd products since they had their huge failure rates years ago, soured me on their stuff forever. the speed differences just aren't that great unless you're into pure benchies and not actually using a system for anything but that. < can feel the flames rising as i type
>nothing against partitioning, i do that at home & for other folks' setups for the paging file on the single drive systems. doesn't get fragmented that way, just make it 5 meg smaller than the partition. but for a quick db server, some type of solid state drive is good.
recently started using acronis disk director for moving the paging file partition to the end of the drive, works great. move the partition before assigning the page file to it, then expand the first partition to use the rest of the space; sometimes needs a reboot but usually works on the fly. nice for notebooks & the single drive systems.
and yes i put the important stuff on the raid6 arrays & tape/optical.
I already use a RAID 0 array for video editing, 3D animation, video capture, etc and I do see an improvement because those are all large, contiguous files. The benchmarks for RAID 0 don't give any useful information about the real-world benefit for small file accesses, so I appreciate the replies on the effects I would actually see.
It doesn't increase the probability of one drive dying; it increases the probability of the entire array dying and losing the data on it.
An array of 2 drives in RAID 0 has twice the chance of failing of a single drive. In RAID 0 you add the probabilities of each drive failing together because now every drive is a potential single fault.
The raptors have a 1.2 million MTBF, so you're talking about very small probabilities. In my home system, who cares. If this was a corporate system where downtime meant hundreds or thousands of people would be standing around while the drive is rebuilt, that would be a different story.
To me, RAID 1 is a waste on my home file server. RAID 1 only protects you against drive failure. It doesn't help with viruses or worms deleting files, bad memory modules, stupid users (me) deleting the wrong files, bugs in applications, RAID controller failures, etc. Instead of using two large drives in RAID 1, the second drive goes in a USB enclosure and I back up to that then store the drive in my fireproof safe.
It doesn't increase the probability of one drive dying; it increases the probability of the entire array dying and losing the data on it.
An array of 2 drives in RAID 0 has twice the chance of failing of a single drive. In RAID 0 you add the probabilities of each drive failing together because now every drive is a potential single fault.
The raptors have a 1.2 million MTBF, so you're talking about very small probabilities. In my home system, who cares. If this was a corporate system where downtime meant hundreds or thousands of people would be standing around while the drive is rebuilt, that would be a different story.
To me, RAID 1 is a waste on my home file server. RAID 1 only protects you against drive failure. It doesn't help with viruses or worms deleting files, bad memory modules, stupid users (me) deleting the wrong files, bugs in applications, RAID controller failures, etc. Instead of using two large drives in RAID 1, the second drive goes in a USB enclosure and I back up to that then store the drive in my fireproof safe.