• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

New AM2 system....Raid 5?

Nasty_Savage

Nasty_Savage

Extremely [H]
Joined
Mar 19, 2001
Messages
37,692
So I am settled on an AM2 system and I'm thinking of going with the Asus 590 SLI based board and 3 WD WD5000YS in Raid 5. Yay or nay? What say you?
 
I wouldn't boot from RAID5.... way too slow. You are better off booting from a single fast drive, say a 74 or 150gig raptor and using the RAID5 as file storage. This gives you the freedom to re-install windows as well as perform 100% better. In my home file server I boot from a 36 gig raptor (have a bunch lying around) and have 3 500gig drives in software RAID5. I used software so i can always upgrade the hardware and not worry about losing the array. You might want to look into that since if you go through the ICH you run the risk of losing the array if you upgrade to a different platform. Hardware performs better, but for a file server it really shouldn't matter much. Just my .02
 
I probably should clarify my too slow comment. Unless you are using a, generally expensive, hardware card then the performance generally leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the lower end cards and even RAID through the ICH is software based... so you will see little performance gains from that. Assuming you don't want to spend the cash on a good RAID5 card... I would go with my suggestion above.
 
Poncho said:
I wouldn't boot from RAID5.... way too slow. You are better off booting from a single fast drive, say a 74 or 150gig raptor and using the RAID5 as file storage.
Click to expand...

You are smarter than me, I had assumed that he already owned a fast boot drive. I need to learn to stop my assumptions!
 
drizzt81 said:
You are smarter than me, I had assumed that he already owned a fast boot drive. I need to learn to stop my assumptions!
Click to expand...


I wouldn't say I'm smarter, I'm assuming that he didn't own a fast boot drive. :D Assumptions all over the place. LOL
 
Well, this machine would be on 99% of the time, so booting won't be much of an issue. But interesting idea on keeping the array if say I upgrade to Vista down the road...hmmm...decisions decisions....so you don't think that the R5 would give much of a performance boost? I'll probably just play around with it in the beginning, I could always drop one 500 gigger and stripe the other two down the road for a storage array...damn. Now I'm thinking again, lol.
 
Nasty_Savage said:
Well, this machine would be on 99% of the time, so booting won't be much of an issue. But interesting idea on keeping the array if say I upgrade to Vista down the road...hmmm...decisions decisions....so you don't think that the R5 would give much of a performance boost? I'll probably just play around with it in the beginning, I could always drop one 500 gigger and stripe the other two down the road for a storage array...damn. Now I'm thinking again, lol.
Click to expand...


You don't want to stripe (RAID0) a storage array. You lose data redundency going that way. Also, booting slower isn't the point. It's doing everything else slower. You'd even be better off booting from just a basic, 80gig SATA drive, and having hte 3 500's in a RAID5. Really, small drives are so cheap that there is no reason to have to use one of the 500's as a boot drive.
 
Since you were looking at a three Drive Raid5 anyways, just do a 4 drive Raid0+1. Reliability and bulk transfer speed.
 
Poncho said:
I probably should clarify my too slow comment. Unless you are using a, generally expensive, hardware card then the performance generally leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the lower end cards and even RAID through the ICH is software based... so you will see little performance gains from that. Assuming you don't want to spend the cash on a good RAID5 card... I would go with my suggestion above.
Click to expand...

RAID-5 can actually be much faster than single disk, namely for reading. For small reads at random locations it can also be faster than raid-0 with the same number of disks.

All this requires a good software packages (which generally is not available for that onboard SATA raid stuff) and some processing power.

It is not true that you need an expensive hardware controller. I got very good results out of pure software RAID (not onboard sata raid) using an Opteron at 2.9 GHz and three disks.

http://forum.useless-microoptimizations.com/forum/raid.html

Since much of the boot process is small reads after semi-random seek it can speed up booting consierably.

However, a pure hardware raid-5 with the whole disks in the RAID also has disadvantages, namely that you paging/swapping space is now on RAID-5, which slows down swapouts by orders of magnitude, at a time where system stress is already high.
 
uOpt said:
It is not true that you need an expensive hardware controller. I got very good results out of pure software RAID (not onboard sata raid) using an Opteron at 2.9 GHz and three disks.
Click to expand...
... and BSD. Windows software raid, as I understand it, isn't nearly as fast.

The driver-based raid could be better, it could be worse, and maybe it'll let you actually recover from a disk failure and maybe not. I don't like integrated raid.

 
Also don't forget that it is not one expensive RAID controller.

It is two, one for use, one for the shelf. If you don't have that you are instant fucked soup chicken when your controller breaks, as you cannot read your data at all without the controller.

With pure software raid (not that onboard crap) you don't have that problem, as you can put anything into your array that is a block device and doesn't have delays, even your mp3 player via USB (I did that).
 
uOpt said:
It is two, one for use, one for the shelf. If you don't have that you are instant fucked soup chicken when your controller breaks, as you cannot read your data at all without the controller.
Click to expand...
Unless of course it's for home use, and the data is recoverable by other methods. For a business environment, sure, it makes sense to have a duplicate (or N+1 cards for N servers, at least), but for the home user data mostly isn't important enough to warrant twice the cost for controllers when that's not the most likely failure point. I can't say I've ever had an offboard disk controller fail other than in circumstances where the whole machine failed.

 
unhappy_mage said:
Unless of course it's for home use, and the data is recoverable by other methods. For a business environment, sure, it makes sense to have a duplicate (or N+1 cards for N servers, at least), but for the home user data mostly isn't important enough to warrant twice the cost for controllers when that's not the most likely failure point. I can't say I've ever had an offboard disk controller fail other than in circumstances where the whole machine failed.
Click to expand...

Well, I disagree. Even at home I can't wait a week for a new controller to show up. What if the new controller overnighted to you is first delayed in the mail and then turns out DOA?

Clearly, if you cannot afford two controllers it is better to run software RAID so that you can read you files on any computer.

Unless you have a full backup capability, of course, but that costs much more than a second controller.
 
Why not avoid the early adopter premium of AM2 (not really a performance advantage) and spend your money on a nice raid card instead. That way, you won't have to worry when you upgrade your motherboard again.
 
^^ This is a consideration I've been mulling over. I was looking at one of those Adaptec internal hot swap drive cages to put in an older case as a network storage unit. Or maybe I will upgrade my Mac server and put a controller card in it. If I am not going to get the boost i want from a raid-5, then its just pure storage I am looking at and I might as well plant it in my server. Of course, this is looking like a lot more money, hehe :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top