I have a couple old 40gb IDE HDDs and was wondering if a software raid would improve performance or is it just a waste of time? The software RAID I'm talking about is the one that come with windows unless someone can show me toward a better one. These old 40gb are slow but I could use the extra storage and if software RAID0 works good then I'd have the extra storage and probably decent speed.
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Software Raid?
- Thread starter Mermalion
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unhappy_mage
[H]ard|DCer of the Month - October 2005
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Skip it. 40GB drives are unlikely to have performance better than a single new disk... unless you have a thousand of them and want to run an SQL database. Desktop performance is often best served with a single drive.
DeaconFrost
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Software RAID isn't going to improve performance no matter what drives you are using.
R
ring.of.steel
Guest
Unless its raid-z.
OP if your after speed software raid is a big no no, especially in windows, thats the ultimate POS for raid.
I found the time today to run some benchmarks. I first tested my 160gb Maxtor SATA 2 drive and got 134mb/s burst and average of like 60mb/s. I then tested an 80gb IDE drive and got 112mb/s burst and ~30mb/s average. Last I tested my raid which consisted of 2x 40gb Maxtor IDE drives and scored a massive 34mb/s burst and 20mb/s average. I didn't test the raid drives separately but either way it wasn't worth it. Maybe I'll throw these 40gb drive into a pc and sell the pc and buy another 160gb sata2 maxtor and run hardware raid. One of them is decently quick so 2 should be good.