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raid-0 questions

omz

Gawd
Joined
Jun 28, 2005
Messages
805
hey guys, my dad just picked up another wd 2500ks (250gb, sata2, 16mb cache) and i have 1 atm
now, i was considering raid-0 to see how much of a performance increase i could get, however i have heard that there is a greater risk of losing your data (compared to a normal two disk setup not in raid)
what im asking for is the pros and cons
i havent really started my research (will look into it more over the weekend) but i want to know your comments such as how much of a perofrmance increase it is and such
thanks :)
 
Depends a lot on what you're doing as well...

Really, if you go to the top of the forum and click "search this forum" and enter "raid", you'll get a huge number of results. No point in rehashing the same points over and over, is there? ;)

..and yes, you basically get a increased chance of losing data. Instead of one point of failure, you have two. There was a thread here where mage was doing math about it.. :p
 
RAID-0 is opening a can of worms

You will find some people here who will argue to the death that RAID-0 offers no or little preformance increase, and then there are those who will argue to the death that RAID-0 offers tangible and moderate preformance increase.

I personally plan on RAID-0 four 150GB Raptors for my next build just because I can.
 
omz said:
what im asking for is the pros and cons
Here they are.
Pros:
  • Higher sequential transfer rate - good for uncompressed video capturing/editing
Cons:
  • Potentially increased seek times due to non-synchronized spindles
  • Increased risk of catastrophic drive failure necessitating restoral from backup
  • Destroys the drives' buffer strategy - they're not designed for raid 0
  • Consumer WD drives can drop out of redundant raid arrays (which raid 0 isn't, but just throwing it out there) causing major problems.
  • Twice the cost on disks, when compared to a single disk :p

In case you couldn't tell, I'd strongly suggest you leave the drives seperate. If you want more speed (the 2500KSes are considered pretty dang fast), buy a WD 740ADFD or 1500ADFD.

 
unhappy_mage said:
[*]Destroys the drives' buffer strategy - they're not designed for raid 0

Intersting, and I agree with all your points.

 
omz said:
hey guys, my dad just picked up another wd 2500ks (250gb, sata2, 16mb cache) and i have 1 atm
now, i was considering raid-0 to see how much of a performance increase i could get, however i have heard that there is a greater risk of losing your data (compared to a normal two disk setup not in raid)
what im asking for is the pros and cons

Here's a link from the sticky thread labelled ANSWERS:
What RAID can and cannot do (straight talk on RAID's limitations/pitfalls)
 
woot, thanks for all the info guys :D
as of right now, im leaning way towards NOT raiding them and keeping em as separate but i will do a bit of other research :)
thanks for all the help!
 
update:
so as of now, i have 4 hard drives, 2 2500ks wd drives (250gb, 16mb cache, sata2) 1 hitachi deskstar (250gb, sata 1, 8mb cache) and 1 1200jd wd drive (120gb, sata 1, 8mb cache)
could i raid-0 the 120gb WD and 250 gb hitachi? or wud they have to be the same size?
 
omz said:
update:
so as of now, i have 4 hard drives, 2 2500ks wd drives (250gb, 16mb cache, sata2) 1 hitachi deskstar (250gb, sata 1, 8mb cache) and 1 1200jd wd drive (120gb, sata 1, 8mb cache)
could i raid-0 the 120gb WD and 250 gb hitachi? or wud they have to be the same size?
Since you said in your other post that you'd like to do research:
http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/index.html

have fun :)

oh and the answer to your question is here:

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/singleLevel0.html
 
woot, i was looking for something like that on storage review, thanks drizz :D
 
well i took a quick look at it and read that the actual reliability of raid-0 is much worse than a single drive...however, does this mean that if the raid array did fail, i wouldnt be able to recover my data at all? or would it be extremely hard?
 
does this mean that if the raid array did fail, i wouldnt be able to recover my data at all? or would it be extremely hard?

Well, depends on how bad the drive failed. I'd say usually you wouldn't be able to recover it at all.
 
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