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Quick question about RAID setup

H

havuk88

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 23, 2005
Messages
476
If I have a raptor at the moment setup with just my games and I want to add a second and run them in RAID do I have to format the one I have at the moment or just the new drive? Thanks
 
Striping them would really be a waste of money. Why do you want to RAID Raptors? Are you a professional video editor?
 
general said:
Striping them would really be a waste of money. Why do you want to RAID Raptors? Are you a professional video editor?
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Don't listen to people like this...they nitpick and scorn just to make their opinions seem important. Do with your money as you see fit and see your ideas through for whatever reason you want to do them... Don't let other narrow minded people dictate what you do with your hard earned funds... RAIDing Raptors are an excellent way to increase desktop performance. Some applications gain in performance while some others stay the same..simply depends on what and how you task...

and to answer your question.. yes, you need to format both drives upon initalization of your RAID array...its quite simple and speedy process... :)
 
Dark Prodigy said:
Don't listen to people like this...they nitpick and scorn just to make their opinions seem important. Do with your money as you see fit
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Ignore everyone's advice, waste your money wherever you like.

Using raptors in raid 0 is generally a waste of money. At $300 each for the 150s, you'd almost certainly be better off (with a gaming machine) putting the extra money into more ram or a better video card.

 
Dark Prodigy,

Will you be able to go over to his house to console him when RAID-0 becomes corrupt or one of his drives dies or will you be too busy either being pompous or hitting the period key? There is no real reason for the guy to stripe these. None at all. You far more than double your change of something going completely wrong, with no recovery ability and you get a little performance in some cases. Most of the performance gains are in terms of moving around very large files. Hence my question.

Getting the guy to do RAID-0 without talking about any sort of backup strategy is just plain irresponsible. You probably thought that you were being helpful. :rolleyes:
 
general said:
Dark Prodigy,

Will you be able to go over to his house to console him when RAID-0 becomes corrupt or one of his drives dies or will you be too busy either being pompous or hitting the period key? There is no real reason for the guy to stripe these. None at all. You far more than double your change of something going completely wrong, with no recovery ability and you get a little performance in some cases. Most of the performance gains are in terms of moving around very large files. Hence my question.

Getting the guy to do RAID-0 without talking about any sort of backup strategy is just plain irresponsible. You probably thought that you were being helpful. :rolleyes:
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I feel sorry for you man...
 
If you want real speed, you want RAID1. Which also gives you reliability. Depending on controller, they can do a bitcopy without formatting your first drive, or may require a format. This is very controller dependant.

RAID0 is a bad choice in all situations where you don't have a daily backup running, period. I don't care what the little kiddies say. Unless you can afford to lose every byte of data on your drives, RAID0 is for fools. The single digit percentage performance improvement it offers in some very limited situations is wiped out by increased controller or CPU load anyways, and leaves you in the hole.
 
video editor? NAH... no need to feud fellas it was just a question, and i am still learning alot about different setups from Raid to watercooling to doing volt mods :D

no worries and i appreciate everyone's input either way, FYI i didn't know the risks of losing data easily with raid0 i was under the impression that it was the preffered method.

keep the opinions coming, thanks
 
I have run RAID0 on several of my systems for the past few years and have yet to lose any arrays/data.
Maybe I'm just unnaturally lucky and yes, everything critical is backed up, but IMO the "danger factor" is overhyped.
I think it's odd that on forums like this, where an overclocked CPU/GPU warrants no comment, maxxing out storage capabilities/performance seems to bring out the nannies.

I say try it out...if you like the responsiveness and speed then live with the risk.
 
sprocket said:
I think it's odd that on forums like this, where an overclocked CPU/GPU warrants no comment, maxxing out storage capabilities/performance seems to bring out the nannies.
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let me join in on the RAID bashing....

While this forum is all about overclocking and maxing out the performance, you have certainly noticed that there are many, many real-world benchmarks that people use to show that overclocking one's CPU/GPU has a lot of merit. Since most real-world benchmarks show little/none/less than zero improvement in performance from a RAID-0 (R0) setup, some people in this subforum are opposed to R0.

It appears that a smartly configured multi-disk non-R0 setup will improve real-world performance moreso than R0. Unfortunately, I do not have real-world benchmarks to prove this, as it is a rather difficult setup to test, however theory predicts better results over R0. Even if the two setups were exactly the same w.r.t. performance, the multi-spindle, independent setup makes it easier to reinstall windows, since I don't have to bomb my whole filesystem, reduces the likelihood that all my data goes bye-bye from a single HDD failure and reduces the average seek time by utilizing multiple independent actuators.

Yes, the big drawback to a multi-disk setup that does not utilize R0 is the requirement for people to think, which appears to be a deal-killer for a lot of people, who'd rather have a solution requiring no mental involvement. I can understand that comepletely, since I am a rather lazy person myself, unfortuantely in the case of disk-setups, the simple solution (R0) is not be best and may be worse than running a single disk setup.
 
"I feel sorry for you man..."

People who lose disagreements due to being ill informed always say things like that ;).
 
Level 0 arrays have their place. If you want to combine multiple smaller drives into one larger one, casting aside performance questions, there is really no other choice. Also if you need high sustained transfer rate of large files at the cost of smaller files.

The latter scenario encompasses a fairly narrow range of apps which is why video editing was mentioned (not to be confused with backing up or copying dvds in which cpu bound re-encoding is the main performance factor).

No hate for any array(s) here :D , just do your homework so you have realistic expectations and know the pros/cons of the levels being considered before going for the gusto. If you are wondering about/expecting your games to load 2x as fast with a level 0 array it will not happen.
 
dirtydr said:
Level 0 arrays have their place. If you want to combine multiple smaller drives into one larger one, casting aside performance questions, there is really no other choice.
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JBOD is an alternative. While it does not offer the performance increase, it also should not suffer from the reliability drawbacks.

But yes, there are applications where R0 is a great tool.
 
In my experience, RAID is quite wonderful and each and every level has it's place, though as far as performance goes, it's pretty controller dependent. If you intend to run any RAID level aside from 0 or 1, you need a controller with a decent sized cache on it. Also, I recommend you avoid integrated controllers like the plague -- if I had to guess the folks who have had the worst experiences with RAID were using the fifty cent controller built into their motherboard. If all you want is a pure perfomance gain, RAID0 rocks. I've run the same system with my drives in a RAID set and out because I was sceptical at first as well, and I can tell you that I found that the RAID0 config was noticably faster, which was the only benchmark I've ever needed. And while I'm sure other people have found ways to see similar responsiveness by creating more convoluted independent drive configurations (one raptor for the OS and apps, another raptor for the swap file, one drive for movies and music, another drive for ..., then boot while hopping on one foot and singing yankee doodle dandy) such configurations never appealed to me when I could be lazy and have such speed by simply slapping the drives into a RAID0. The only main caveat to RAID0 is that you are introducing more points of failure. As soon as you lose a drive, you lose the RAID. But if you treat the RAID set as just one big hard drive and backup your data appropriately, you should be fine.

As far as the other RAID levels go, RAID1 is fantastic if you need to ensure no downtime for your machine, but just realize that you're going to take a performance hit on your write times. This isn't a big deal for drives that you just play movies and music and whatnot, but for your OS/app drive and especially the drive that your swap lives on, you're going to take a noticable performance hit if you use RAID1. RAID1 is great for server OS drives, but not so much for workstations. RAID 10 and RAID 0+1 are cute, but as near as I can tell, only useful so that really cheap RAID controllers can have a "speed plus redundancy" solution. If you want speed and redundancy, you should do it right and go RAID5. It offers a speed boost comparable to RAID0 (though of course not quite as good) while allowing you to be able to lose a drive without completely hosing yourself. The downside of with it is of course the cost. It requires at least three drives in any RAID set and a controller that handles it well is going to be more expensive than a simple RAID0/1 controller by at least a factor of ten. As for RAID 50 and 0+5, they can safely be ignored unless you're going to be building a SAN in the near future. :p

If you're going to be building a gaming machine I'd recommend RAID0 hands down. A striped set of the 72 Raptors should keep you rocking and rolling for your OS, apps, and swap if you don't want to go all the way up to the 150s. From there just find the price point you like for storage and slap however many you need onto your controller. If you're going to go over three drives in any RAID set, though, I'd highly recommend looking into a RAID5 solution so that you have some redundancy.
 
XmagusX said:
If you're going to be building a gaming machine I'd recommend RAID0 hands down. A striped set of the 72 Raptors should keep you rocking and rolling for your OS, apps, and swap if you don't want to go all the way up to the 150s.
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Even though a single 150 costs the same as two 74s, and is more reliable and faster?

Raid 5 is a *lot* slower than raid 0. Under no circumstances (that I can think of, anyways) should you use a raid 5 array for something that has to perform well. Raid 0+1 and 10 are for fast, large, redundant things like audio or video editing.

 
i play battlefield2 and when i switched to raid 0 i saw a remarkable differnce. i have used it for 3 years with no loss of data. my 2 cents worth.
 
raid 0 has very few benefits on the desktop and double your chances of losing data. I recommend against it. If you need more space or speed sell the drive you have now on ebay and buy a newer, faster, larger drive. Say, the Raptor 150 if you don't already have it. Or the 750g monster drives.
 
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