RAID 0`

[Subcutaneous]

Is RAID 0 faster if you run it off the motherboard, or off of an added chip. I've had people tell me on-mobo is faster, and others tell me off a PCI chip is faster cause it doesn't use mobo resources. Who is right?

 

[DougLite]

The answer, for you, is probably neither.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=952998

Generally, motherboard integrated RAID hosts have more raw bandwdith available to them, allowing for more raw throughput in synthetic benchmarks and linear transfers. However, PCI RAID controllers are typically much more robust RAID implementations that deliver more consistent performance, as well as more features. PCI RAID controllers tend to be costly though, especially the good ones.

Think RAID-0 will make your desktop better? Think again.

 

[Subcutaneous]

Lol, I dont want an opinion on RAID 0, cause im gonna do it either way. If it boosts performance 2% it was worth it, cause its also adding the extra storage, which i could do without using raid, but also without the performance boost. I find it unlikely that either of my drives will fail, because I have never had a drive fail before, and if one does, it is not a terrible loss, because warrantees exist in this world.

 

[Farva]

Lol, I dont want an opinion on RAID 0, cause im gonna do it either way. If it boosts performance 2% it was worth it, cause its also adding the extra storage, which i could do without using raid, but also without the performance boost. I find it unlikely that either of my drives will fail, because I have never had a drive fail before, and if one does, it is not a terrible loss, because warrantees exist in this world.

ya, i have/do own 10 drives, i've had 1 failure and good thing i have the mentality of backing stuff up. never ever say "i'll never have a drive failure" because in all truth, if you are not prepared for it, then you are playing a dangerous game if you need that data.

just my 2 cents

 

[sprocket]

Lol, I dont want an opinion on RAID 0, cause im gonna do it either way. If it boosts performance 2% it was worth it, cause its also adding the extra storage, which i could do without using raid, but also without the performance boost. I find it unlikely that either of my drives will fail, because I have never had a drive fail before, and if one does, it is not a terrible loss, because warrantees exist in this world.

So do backups...and for good reason.
If the prospect (unlikely as it may be) of performing a fresh install does not daunt you, then by all means have at it.
Unlike those who claim that RAID 0 only displays benefits in "synthetic benchmarks", I found it to be snappier and more responsive in daily use.
You can play with stripe sizes to see what best suits your usage.
I've never felt like splashing out for a good PCI card, relying instead on whatever my mobo offered.
The current nvidia nF4 controllers have worked very well for me.

 

[general]

"Lol, I dont want an opinion on RAID 0, cause im gonna do it either way. If it boosts performance 2% it was worth it, cause its also adding the extra storage, which i could do without using raid, but also without the performance boost. I find it unlikely that either of my drives will fail, because I have never had a drive fail before, and if one does, it is not a terrible loss, because warrantees exist in this world."

RAID-0 does not provide extra storage. It just doesn't consume any storage. It might boost your disc performance, but it eats up CPU cycles, so please don't ignorantly proceed on the thought that your system will necessarily be faster. The biggest risk for data loss, though you didn't mention it, is not drive failure but data corruption.

Go ahead with the RAID-0, but unless you do professional video editing or the like it will be waste. To people who don't know anything your sig will look cool and to those who do know you'll look silly.

 

[m1abram]

How does a HD warrenty protect you from data loss?

And here is another thing to keep in mind. Once you do a RAID0 you have married your hardrives and data to whatever controller chipset you use. So if you use a motherboards RAID controller and the motherboard fails you will need to get another board that uses the same RAID controller to retrieve your data.

Oh and if you have never had a hard drive fail on you it is because you have not used one for long enough period of time. ALL harddrives will fail, it is just a matter of time. The more drives you have the higher the chance that you will experience a drive failure, which is why RAID0 is considered risky because you are increasing your risk of failure and tieing it to now 2+ drives worth of data versus 1.

 

[sprocket]

How does a HD warrenty protect you from data loss?

And here is another thing to keep in mind. Once you do a RAID0 you have married your hardrives and data to whatever controller chipset you use. So if you use a motherboards RAID controller and the motherboard fails you will need to get another board that uses the same RAID controller to retrieve your data.
A valid point but one easily evaded.
An image is not tied to any particular drive much less a RAID controller.
Less elegant but equally effective is a simple backup of data and apps to disk.
No argument that RAID 0 is riskier than a single drive but even a catastrophic failure doesn't have to be that big a deal.

Oh and if you have never had a hard drive fail on you it is because you have not used one for long enough period of time. ALL harddrives will fail, it is just a matter of time. The more drives you have the higher the chance that you will experience a drive failure, which is why RAID0 is considered risky because you are increasing your risk of failure and tieing it to now 2+ drives worth of data versus 1.

I wonder what the average use-span of hardware is on a forum like this.
In my home PC, the only part older than 6 months is a Raptor used for the page file and Program Files.
Probably that will be gone in another 6 months or so.
Clearly, RAID0 is inappropriate for the typical user who is still flogging a Win98 POS but then again, how many of them are here asking about it?
At work we have six tech machines, the main server and the recovery machine and have not had a single drive failure in over four years of 24/7 operation.
Maybe we're just lucky or maybe we fit the statistical norm, I don't know.
It just seems to me that the "dangers" of RAID are overemphasized here, especially given the type of user we see.

 

[unhappy_mage]

I wonder what the average use-span of hardware is on a forum like this.
In my home PC, the only part older than 6 months is a Raptor used for the page file and Program Files.
Probably that will be gone in another 6 months or so.
Clearly, RAID0 is inappropriate for the typical user who is still flogging a Win98 POS but then again, how many of them are here asking about it?
At work we have six tech machines, the main server and the recovery machine and have not had a single drive failure in over four years of 24/7 operation.
Maybe we're just lucky or maybe we fit the statistical norm, I don't know.
It just seems to me that the "dangers" of RAID are overemphasized here, especially given the type of user we see.

So, your argument is that since you have a new machine, most people have a new machine, and thus we should ignore the reliability problems raid 0 entails? Even if that made sense, look up the "bathtub curve" and tell me why trusting brand new equipment to be reliable is a bad idea.

 

[m1abram]

A valid point but one easily evaded.
An image is not tied to any particular drive much less a RAID controller.
Less elegant but equally effective is a simple backup of data and apps to disk.
No argument that RAID 0 is riskier than a single drive but even a catastrophic failure doesn't have to be that big a deal.

But if you do not image the drives before the controller failure you can not read the data on the drives to image without the controller even if the drives are working. Controller could be a dedicated controller or one on a motherboard.

Note the above is NOT true for RAID1, with RAID1 you can read the data from a single drive with any old SATA, IDE, or SCSI controller depending on the drive.

 

[Falls Included]

trusting brand new equipment to be reliable is a bad idea.

it is a bad idea... my work will vouch for that, lol *glances at $XXmil new plant thats always broken down*

 

[Madwand]

Is RAID 0 faster if you run it off the motherboard, or off of an added chip. I've had people tell me on-mobo is faster, and others tell me off a PCI chip is faster cause it doesn't use mobo resources. Who is right?

If you have a RAID 0 setup that cannot exceed the practical (standard) PCI bandwidth limit in STR, then it's probably an under-performing RAID 0 setup -- often even with 2 drives; almost certainly (if done right) with 3 or more drives.

There are valid arguments for add-on controller-based RAID beyond basic performance. The obvious solution to exceeding the PCI bandwidth limits are PCIe and PCI-X.

If I wanted RAID 0, I'd probably do this: Single big drive for OS. Even PATA. Partition into small pure OS and another big partition. 2 or more RAID 0 drives with onboard NVRaid or whatever (for cost). Backup anything interesting in the RAID 0 array into the 2nd partition in the 1st drive. Hide that partition at other times if possible. Is this a "real" backup? Nope. Does it do you some good? Yep -- it improves performance by separating the OS and data/programs/etc. drive. It simplifies RAID management and setup. It gives you backup capability. You can even break up the RAID array, try different stripe parameters, etc., with such a setup, to see what works best for you.

 

[sprocket]

So, your argument is that since you have a new machine, most people have a new machine,

No, that is not what I said.
I work in a computer repair shop and am well aware of the type of PC "most people" have.
I would be stunned if "most people" even asked about RAID.

What I do assume is that the typical poster on this forum has a better/newer PC than average and is better equipped to manage it. The likelihood of hardware failure is therefore less than the statistical norm and the user's ability to recover from such a failure should be better.
If this, my "average" [H] poster, asks about RAID, my response is/has been "sure, take it for a spin and see what you think" not, "you're hardware is gonna fail and RAID is stupid".

But if you do not image the drives before the controller failure you can not read the data on the drives to image without the controller even if the drives are working. Controller could be a dedicated controller or one on a motherboard.

Well, doh.
I would have thought that it was obvious that any effective backup strategy must be implemented before a failure, not after. Waiting till the controller or a drive fails puts you in the "shoulda, coulda, woulda" class standing in line for data recovery, not the "prepared" class, busy restoring the PC.

Hell, just to be contentious I'll posit the theory that no one who stores data on a PC or any electronic device has a valid backup stratagy.
One glitch in the power grid, electricity goes bye-bye and all your precious data is unrecoverable.
That would mean that the ancient Egyptians are the only ones who got it right...their stone tablets are still around and 5000 year old Pharonic porn is still readable.
Think you can say the same about your CD/DVD/tape drives?

 

[Yashu]

I am setting up a RAID0 volume as I type...

However, I keep external backups of everything, and I need the increased bandwidth of raid0 for video editing.

Not everyone will benefit from raid0... I think the folks using it for their boot volumes are kindof silly. Raid0 is not meant for that application. If you want to use RAID on your boot volume, I suggest mirroring. This will get you the increased read bandwidth along with data redundandcy... at the cost of space... but who needs 100s of gigs on their boot volumes anyway?

In video editing apps, though, raid0 is pretty neat-o.

I also suggest using seagate drives. Their 5 year warrenty is evidence that they have lower failure rates. Everyone has stories about failures of all brands, but seagate backs their reliability claims up with a 5 year warrenty period. They put their money where their mouth is, so to speak.

All drives can fail... this is something you can't forget. Don't wait to backup tomorrow or next week... your drive will fail out of the blue usually... and then you are stuck with an old, incomplete backup... or none at all.

I learned this the hard way. I am a musician... I had one complete album and one that I had almost finished. The one I was working on was going to be picked up by a label... then my drive crashed and I lost everything. My backups were on CDroms and either wouldn't read, or they were too old.

I took my drive to a data recovery company... After working on the drive for weeks they could not recover any data.

After losing several years of work... all working files, all samples, everything... my music career was basically over... I never completed another album after that... I work in the oil & gas buisness now.

So back up yo shit!

 

[general]

See yashu is the kind of guy that gets RAID-0 recommended to him. Those people who just want something cool for their sigs don't. It slows down your CPU. Not many people realize this. The whole loss of data thing, even if you have your raid backed up, is just a pain. It really is silly for the average desktop user. The people who advocate it for that use generally do so out of ignorance. Your money would be much better spent on other hardware instead of a second or third main system drive.

"Hell, just to be contentious I'll posit the theory that no one who stores data on a PC or any electronic device has a valid backup stratagy.
One glitch in the power grid, electricity goes bye-bye and all your precious data is unrecoverable."

Yeah, sorry, that's just completely incorrect.

 

[sprocket]

"Hell, just to be contentious I'll posit the theory that no one who stores data on a PC or any electronic device has a valid backup stratagy.
One glitch in the power grid, electricity goes bye-bye and all your precious data is unrecoverable."

Yeah, sorry, that's just completely incorrect.

How so?
You can do data recovery with no power?

It slows down your CPU. Not many people realize this. The whole loss of data thing, even if you have your raid backed up, is just a pain.

Yowzers!
A whole 7% CPU utilization.

I'll live with it.

BYW...this "whole loss of data thing" is equally distressing whether you're RAIDed or not.
Is it more likely to happen if R0'ed?...Sure.
What is the likelihood....IMO, within acceptable risk limits.
For you, maybe not so much, so we disagree.

 

[general]

"Yowzers" Are you 10? 7% CPU utilization is quite a bit to employ a technology that is really giving you no benefit. People who go ahead and implement it when knowing all of this just prove their own ignorance.

 

[eastvillager]

I have a 4 spindle RAID 0 volume for two reasons, speeding up load times and scratch space for photoshop. It works great for both of those.

The important stuff sits on a two spindle RAID 1.

Map loads in stuff like BF2, game saves/loads, etc., all are noticeably improved by being on a RAID 0 stripe.

Sacrificing a bit of CPU overhead to improve disk throughput is an easy choice for me, as disk throughput is a bottleneck and the CPU isn't in most of my tasks.

The current bandwagon is to tell everybody that RAID 0 does nothing for them, even without knowing the details of their work environment. That behaviour isn't any brighter than assuming RAID 0 is going to make everything better, imho.

 

[morpheus6d9]

how about raid 0 + 1

 

[Farva]

I am setting up a RAID0 volume as I type...

However, I keep external backups of everything, and I need the increased bandwidth of raid0 for video editing.

Not everyone will benefit from raid0... I think the folks using it for their boot volumes are kindof silly. Raid0 is not meant for that application. If you want to use RAID on your boot volume, I suggest mirroring. This will get you the increased read bandwidth along with data redundandcy... at the cost of space... but who needs 100s of gigs on their boot volumes anyway?

In video editing apps, though, raid0 is pretty neat-o.

I also suggest using seagate drives. Their 5 year warrenty is evidence that they have lower failure rates. Everyone has stories about failures of all brands, but seagate backs their reliability claims up with a 5 year warrenty period. They put their money where their mouth is, so to speak.

All drives can fail... this is something you can't forget. Don't wait to backup tomorrow or next week... your drive will fail out of the blue usually... and then you are stuck with an old, incomplete backup... or none at all.

I learned this the hard way. I am a musician... I had one complete album and one that I had almost finished. The one I was working on was going to be picked up by a label... then my drive crashed and I lost everything. My backups were on CDroms and either wouldn't read, or they were too old.

I took my drive to a data recovery company... After working on the drive for weeks they could not recover any data.

After losing several years of work... all working files, all samples, everything... my music career was basically over... I never completed another album after that... I work in the oil & gas buisness now.

So back up yo shit!

actually maxtor was the first company to use the 5 year warranty and WD now has that warranty on their drives too, so your post on seagate being "better" is kinda moot.

but u are 100% right, back up the stuff u consider "in desperate need" otherwise things could happen the way they did to u. sorry to hear that you lost all that man.

 

[DougLite]

Hard drive warranty periods are a very poor measure of reliability.

Due to the intricicies of the industry and accounting, offering shorter warranties actually may make drives more reliable, as doing so allows the maker to free up capital by reducing warranty replacement inventory committments and use that capital to design and manufacture more reliable drives.

Also, a dead drive that takes data with it is worthless, warrantied or not.

 

[Madwand]

Due to the intricicies of the industry and accounting, offering shorter warranties actually may make drives more reliable, as doing so allows the maker to free up capital by reducing warranty replacement inventory committments and use that capital to design and manufacture more reliable drives.

Interesting theory, but worthless to me. I'll take the warranty as one, backed-up-with-dollars indication of what a manufacturer thinks they can commit to. I'm not going to accept a short warranty period as a favour to the manufacturers for perhaps coming up with such products some time in the future. The only motivation is money, and having to cough that up for failures is a tool that's useful to consumers for increasing the manufactures efforts in this direction.

 

[sprocket]

"Yowzers" Are you 10? 7% CPU utilization is quite a bit to employ a technology that is really giving you no benefit. People who go ahead and implement it when knowing all of this just prove their own ignorance.

Actually a bit older than ten although not old enough to decide for myself what the best use of my CPU might be, apparently.
At what age does that occur?

What do you consider an acceptable number?

 

[djnes]

I'll try and avoid the RAID0 debate, because, well, it's not really a debate anymore. The only debateable part is how long it will take the fan boys to understand the truth and accept it. But I digress...

Assuming you are talking about a recent computer, you will get better results from using the on-mobo controller. The PCI bus isn't able to keep up with the more "central" buses such as the onboard controllers.

And for the love of all things holy, can we stop the nonsense of saying a drive's warranty is directly proportional to it's reliability? Any amount of actual thought to that concept will show it's ridiculousness. As mentioned, if you bought a drive from any manufacturer, and it dies a month later, taking your data with it, does it really matter about the warranty? Can you push the magic "longer warranty button" and restore your data? Warranties refer to the ability to replace the drive (hardware) if it were to fail...not the data (software) that was stored on the drive. Common sense.

 

[Chernobyl1]

RAID 0 is risky as there is no redundancy (if a drive fails there is no recovery).
(Being risky assumes that you you want your PC to be reliable and are using the array for a boot partition or the array contains other info that isnt backed up)

RAID 1 (mirroring) needs twice the number of hard drives to give the same space and is about the same speed as a single drive.

RAID 0+1 will work but is expensive due to needing 2x the number of drives. The CPU hit will likely be worse than 7%

A good alternative is using an external controller to get RAID 5.
This requires one extra drive no matter how many drives you use. The extra drive is used to allow parity (error correction bits) to be striped across the RAID array.
RAID 5 is effectively the same as RAID 0 but can sustain a single drive failure and either keep running and/or allow you to replace the faulty drive which it can rebuild.

There arent many motherboards capable of RAID 5 so you are likely to need a PCI controller card.
This has a few more advantages of not bogging the CPU down, 1 drive failure wont lose your data and the whole array can be moved to another PC.

 

[Lazn_Work]

RAID 0 is risky as there is no redundancy (if a drive fails there is no recovery).
(Being risky assumes that you you want your PC to be reliable and are using the array for a boot partition or the array contains other info that isnt backed up)

RAID 1 (mirroring) needs twice the number of hard drives to give the same space and is about the same speed as a single drive.

RAID 0+1 will work but is expensive due to needing 2x the number of drives. The CPU hit will likely be worse than 7%

A good alternative is using an external controller to get RAID 5.
This requires one extra drive no matter how many drives you use. The extra drive is used to allow parity (error correction bits) to be striped across the RAID array.
RAID 5 is effectively the same as RAID 0 but can sustain a single drive failure and either keep running and/or allow you to replace the faulty drive which it can rebuild.

There arent many motherboards capable of RAID 5 so you are likely to need a PCI controller card.
This has a few more advantages of not bogging the CPU down, 1 drive failure wont lose your data and the whole array can be moved to another PC.

Actually RAID 5 has horrible write performance. An external controller that runs RAID 0+1 is far faster than RAID 5 in writes.

In fact if you are running a database (SQL or Exchange or Oracle) the recommended RAID level is 0+1.

==>Lazn

 

[Chernobyl1]

I found it depends on the controller used and if the write cache is turned on.
Write caching 'can' lose you data in a crash.
Write cache is enabled for all my desktop drives by default.

A multi user SQL server database etc is more mission critcal than a single user machine so should have write caching disabled for max integrity.

Many RAID controllers can take memory dimms to perform their own caching.
This can help performance tremendously but the amount of unwritten data increases if you crash while using write caching.

 

[Yashu]

See yashu is the kind of guy that gets RAID-0 recommended to him. blather, blah, ect...

Yes except I work with video editing all the time and raid0 makes a big difference. See, when you are working with large uncompressed video, just to even play the video, you need a good amount of bandwidth... to edit and recompile... you want to have all the bandwidth you can get... it's ok if you lose a couple % of CPU... it doesn't bother me so much with dual core.

In this application... and also audio work, bandwidth is king... so raid0 is not always useless.

I am also NOT using software raid... it doesn't use much recources at all when you use hardware raid. And even software raid is good if you are running a server.

 

[Lazn_Work]

Yes except I work with video editing all the time and raid0 makes a big difference. See, when you are working with large uncompressed video, just to even play the video, you need a good amount of bandwidth... to edit and recompile... you want to have all the bandwidth you can get... it's ok if you lose a couple % of CPU... it doesn't bother me so much with dual core.

In this application... and also audio work, bandwidth is king... so raid0 is not always useless.

I am also NOT using software raid... it doesn't use much recources at all when you use hardware raid. And even software raid is good if you are running a server.

Video editing and Audo editing do get huge benifits from RAID 0. Don't let anyone tell you differently. Any kind of streaming of large files do.

But normal desktop use (gaming, word processing, internet surfing etc.) don't see much if any benifit from it, and do still get all the downsides.

==>Lazn

 

[PrkChpXprss]

Everyone should run RAID 0 (and only RAID 0) at least once in their life. Then when everyone has done it, it won't be so magical and special. Then we 'elders' can say "ah, here comes yet one more unitiated performance junkie... let him experience the ways of RAID 0, and the pitfalls that may cometh. Then and only then may he gain wisdom..."

<edit> no offense to the OP -- I had sushi and perhaps too much sake at lunch

 

[drizzt81]

Is RAID 0 faster if you run it off the motherboard, or off of an added chip. I've had people tell me on-mobo is faster, and others tell me off a PCI chip is faster cause it doesn't use mobo resources. Who is right?

Both. Since it certainly depends on a lot of other variables as well.

If you have a really nice, PCI add-in card controller that uses its onboard cache, then there is a good chance that it is faster for a lot of applications. Motherboard controllers that are not attached through the PCI bus offer more potential bandwidth, but whether that improved performance depends a lot on the drives used. If the software implementation stinks...

 

[sprocket]

Everyone should run RAID 0 (and only RAID 0) at least once in their life. Then when everyone has done it, it won't be so magical and special. Then we 'elders' can say "ah, here comes yet one more unitiated performance junkie... let him experience the ways of RAID 0, and the pitfalls that may cometh. Then and only then may he gain wisdom..."

"May cometh" being the operative phrase here.
What (if any) wisdom does one gain if RAID doesn't inexplicably screw up, drives don't go up in smoke, controllers actually control and a good time is had by all?