Suggestions for my first RAID Setup

J

jsilva

Guest
First of all, thanks for letting me join your community.

I would like to build my first pc -with- a raid array. I'm gonna be using this pc in my home studio and I will be working with many virtual instruments (vst's), sequencers and opening, editing and saving big WAV files and other projects all at the same time (I have dual 22" monitors), so I would like to achieve the best performance possible.

I will be combining some current hardware with new items. Specs will be:

OS: Vista Ultimate 64 or XP 64 (haven't decided yet)
Board: MSI 975X V2 Platinum Power Up w/Bios 7.9 (latest) kind of an old board but I'm gonna ride this baby until the end.
CPU: C2D E6400 w/Artic Cooling Freezer Pro 7
Ram: 8GB A-Data DDR2 800mhz
Video: Midrange card for dual 22" display (no gaming)
PSU: Antec 550w
Case: NZXT Tempest w/fan controller

My viable options:
a) Single WD Velociraptor
b) 2 WD6401AALS in RAID 0 (mobo raid)
c) 2 WD6401AALS in RAID 0 (hardware)

So here's the big dilema...

WHICH option will be the best for my goal? If it is w/hardware raid, I need the cheapest best performer possible, is this a good choice? Highpoint RocketRAID 1810A 4-Channel PCI-X Serial ATA RAID Host Adapter. Any other alternatives in a tight budget?

Is mobo raid a decent option at all? I've read so many negative things regarding cpu hog...

Or woul I have to finally settle for the velociraptor and forget about my RAID building agenda?

Any RAID issues I should know regarding Vista64 or XP64?

Sorry for all the questions but despite my long experience building pc's I've never dealt with building a RAID array so please bare with me.

:D THANKS :D
 
personally id use the cheaper drives and onboard raid and shortstroke it

you'll get better than velociraptor performance and if you're going to buy a decent hardware raid card you'll probably be spending 400 dollars
 
If your gonna stick with RAID0 only then sticking with onboard raid will be ok, there isnt much difference in tests I have seen until you get either into raid5 or super high end cards with raid0.

I run 2x velociraptors in raid0 and 3x WD blacks in raid5, only had the setup now for 5 or so hours (waiting on shipments after my seagates blew up) but so far its great.

Pull 170/140 MB/sec transfer rate on the veli raid0 array 140/110 MB/sec on the WD black raid5 array with HDtune with onboard raid.


I have seen upwards of 300 MB/sec on raid0 veloci setups but those were with $4-500+ cards :)


Hope your also going to have somewhere to back up since your only considering single drives or raid0 :)
 
thanks for answering guys!

How can I "shortstroke" this drives? do you mean just make a partition to half of their capacity?
is that good enough or should be less? From past experience I'm not gonna get to even 100gig after I install everything so....

I already have a 750gig spare drive for backing up the raid drives. What software do you recommend to back up Acronis, Ghost? Any other method you recommend?
 
hmmm....I just read this other post here:

Originally Posted by ans136
The following steps will get you the best price/performance ratio:

1. Purchase - 2x WD 640GB CAVIAR BLACK (WD6401AALS) ($84.99 Each on Newegg)
2. Using a motherboard with an Intel raid controller matrix raid them
3. Allocate 300gb to RAID 0
4. Allocate 980gb to Raid 1
5. Observe an example test by JJ:
 
For the cost of a single 300GB Velociraptor you can get 3 WD6400AAKS. I've got 3 in matrix RAID0 on my ICH10R. The ICH7DH chipset on your mobo supports Matrix RAID I believe. To short-stroke: create a RAID0 array with the drives, then make your first partition an OS partition (however large you think you need), then use the rest as temp working space. This is what I'm doing and I average 300MB/s on the OS partition. I haven't done a HD Tune on the other partition lately, but it's still damn fast compared to any single drive. Of course you'll want to keep your important storage off the RAID array.

[Edit - Yeah pretty much what the above post describes. Except I didn't do the RAID1 portion since I don't need storage on the local machine, I have WHS for storage.]
 
1. Purchase - 2x WD 640GB CAVIAR BLACK (WD6401AALS) ($84.99 Each on Newegg)
2. Using a motherboard with an Intel raid controller matrix raid them
3. Allocate 300gb to RAID 0
4. Allocate 980gb to Raid 1
Click to expand...

This is great for a small and fast boot drive and some mirrored storage you don't want to be accessing often as it defeats the purpose of the short-stroke.
Keep in mind your real drive sizes would be more like 279gb RAID0 and 455gb RAID1.

However you mentioned working with large WAV files and multiple sequencing projects.
For this type of work load you would be better off with a large RAID0 array on separate drives from your boot drive/array.
This would work well with large files and as a scratch disk for your projects. Accessing it wouldn't degrage your boot/os drive as it would with a single short-stroked array.

I would recomend something like this:

2x 640gb AALS
- 128gb short-stroked RAID0 for boot/os
- 530gb RAID1 for infrequent storage and backup

2x 640gb AALS in full RAID0 for working files, projects, temp space etc..


Thats 4 drives, if cost is an issue go with a single boot drive. The RAID0 for a working drive would most likely show the most improvement vs an OS RAID0 array.
3x 640gb is around the same cost as a 300gb Velociraptor, 4x a little more.
Mobo RAID is fine for RAID0/1, its hard to justify the cost of hardware for simple stipe/mirror. (others can i'm sure;))
It's the parity calculations that are required with RAID5/6 that are heavy on the CPU.

Don't forget to maintain frequent backups of your RAID0 boot/os array and if you actually store files/projects on the working array backup them up too.. obviously.
oops.. missed you're post about the 750gb drive for backups.
I use True Image for backing up my arrays, haven't used ghost in years but it should be ok too.
 
THANKS to everybody for their 2 cents...I know many people asks the same type of questions and it can get annoying, so I really appreciate your time.

For now, the best I can go with my budget is for 2 AALS drives. From all your input I conclude this are my options:

a) Shortstroked RAID0 and forget about the remaining of drive (don't care about that)
b) Shortstroked RAID0 and use the remmaining on RAID1. That seems very nice, but if I use the RAID1 to store my projects and work with them, will I see a big decrease in performance?

And THE MOST important thing, how can I make an exact mirror of EITHER a -or- b setups on another drive that I can recover "easily" with the Intel Recovery Utility or Acronis, etc? Note: maybe I'll buy another AALS later just for this.

RECOVERY in my system is very important since everytime I have to reinstall is a pain, Audio Software + VST's and do all the damn updates, reinstall and map all sounds and samples, believe me, is a lot of shhh. Being able to recover without having to install everything will be a HUGE BLESSING!!!

So please let me know guys. thanks again.
 
a) Shortstroked RAID0 and forget about the remaining of drive (don't care about that)
Click to expand...
This would give you the fastest access times and highest read/write at the expense of space.
As long as you have enough space for your needs this would be the best option. The benefits of short-stroke are moot if you run out of disk space.

Remember, You don't have to short stroke.. a full 2x 640gb RAID0 is just as fast (almost) if you can keep all your files at the beginning of the drives. This means defrag at every possible opportunity.
Short-stroke just makes things easier and arguably better because files never get written anywhere but the fastest part of the drive to begin with.


b) Shortstroked RAID0 and use the remmaining on RAID1. That seems very nice, but if I use the RAID1 to store my projects and work with them, will I see a big decrease in performance?
Click to expand...
This is less than ideal. The purpose of short-stroke is to keep the drive heads confined to the fastest portion of the drives.
If they are having to leave that portion to read/write in the RAID1 portion it defeats the purpose.
Furthermore, if you use the RAID1 portion to store your projects they won't benefit from the striping of RAID0 and would likely be slower than a single drive.


And THE MOST important thing, how can I make an exact mirror of EITHER a -or- b setups on another drive that I can recover "easily" with the Intel Recovery Utility or Acronis, etc?
Click to expand...
I would recommend Acronis for this, although similar apps would also work. True Image is simple and easy to use.
With Acronis you can make a full image (exact snapshot) of the array and restore it to not just your existing or repaired array but also to any other drive you have lying around.
This can get you up and running again quickly while you fix whatever went wrong. It does automated incremental backups too, as most/all similar solutions would.


In your position I would probably just go full RAID0 for balanced speed, storage space, and simplicity.

You can still create regular partitions on the array to keep the OS at the beginning.
No need for the fancy matrix array if your're not using RAID1 for the 2nd part.
 
paxious said:
Short-stroke just makes things easier and arguably better because files never get written anywhere but the fastest part of the drive to begin with.
I would recommend Acronis for this, although similar apps would also work. True Image is simple and easy to use.

With Acronis you can make a full image (exact snapshot) of the array and restore it to not just your existing or repaired array but also to any other drive you have lying around.
This can get you up and running again quickly while you fix whatever went wrong. It does automated incremental backups too, as most/all similar solutions would.

In your position I would probably just go full RAID0 for balanced speed, storage space, and simplicity.

You can still create regular partitions on the array to keep the OS at the beginning.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Im gonna go with the full RAID0 array, but I'm gonna short-stroke the AALS's to half (300gb) or maybe (200gb). That is plenty enough for my setup. I will go with just one partition because making separate parititions for os, programs, swap, etc has always cause some kind of problems for me at some point. Nah, forget that shhh....:mad:

I have a new 400gb USB 2.0 external drive that I'm going to use JUST to backup the RAID cause I just read that Acronis can backup -and- rebuilt from external drives. I already have Acronis...:D

The only thing for me now will be to put my raid drivers on a usb thumb drive since I don't have a floppy drive at this time. I hope Windows will behave on this.

One last thing (yeah right :D), if one of the drives on the RAID fails, how will I know which is the dead hard drive?
 
Welcome

Vista x64

b) 2 WD6401AALS in RAID 0 (mobo raid)

win
jsilva said:
The only thing for me now will be to put my raid drivers on a usb thumb drive since I don't have a floppy drive at this time. I hope Windows will behave on this.
Click to expand...
Vista x64 has built in raid drivers, that are good. Matter of fact, all of the drivers that ship with Vista x64 are good. Only update drivers for devices that are not installed in the device manager. Don't use XP x64, you'll regret it if you do a wide variety of PC activity, Vista x64 is much better supported and compatible. XP x64 is a headache but is very good at the few things it does well at, ie, specific rendering software that runs well on it, etc.
 
bigdogchris said:
Welcome

Vista x64

b) 2 WD6401AALS in RAID 0 (mobo raid)

win
Vista x64 has built in raid drivers, that are good. Matter of fact, all of the drivers that ship with Vista x64 are good. Only update drivers for devices that are not installed in the device manager. Don't use XP x64, you'll regret it if you do a wide variety of PC activity, Vista x64 is much better supported and compatible. XP x64 is a headache but is very good at the few things it does well at, ie, specific rendering software that runs well on it, etc.
Click to expand...

Thanks big dog, you guys rock!!! :D

:( I feel kind of ashamed for not knowing more about this matter (raid) since I've been working with computers for so many years...but hey, i had to learn someday. :rolleyes:
 
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