Combining single SSD with 2x 1TB WD Caviar Blacks in Raid

[michiganave]

I'm trying to understand if this set-up will work:

OS drive:
OCZ 120gb Vertex SSD

Data drives:
WD Caviar Black 1TB x2 in Raid

I'm trying to pick a P55 or X58 motherboard that will run this setup and am wondering if there are any particular specs I need to look for to make this work?

I've never tried to combine RAID drives with a non-RAID drive on the same computer! I'm thinking RAID 1 for data redundancy and faster read speeds on the Caviars.

 

[Ayah]

Any modern motherboard will support it.

 

[michiganave]

Reassuring to know! I'm a bit behind. Thanks!

 

[pjkenned]

Raid 1 won't give you faster read speeds than a single drive.

But, the SSD + Raid 1 spindle drives will work well!

 

[zuffy]

It should provide a faster read since the data can be read from any of the 2 drives. It's the write speed that will be identical to a single drive.

 

[AdamK47]

I thought about doing the same thing recently. Using an SSD for the Operating System and swap file and using a RAID setup for games. It should work fine. The problem I have with having everything on one partition is that MBR only goes up to 2TB. GUID fixes this limitation.

 

[rolodomo]

Data drives:
WD Caviar Black 1TB x2 in Raid

There might be an issue (relatively poor performance) with Back 1TB(s) in RAID.

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...tid=83&threadid=230099

Edit: link doesn't work? Anandtech thread title is "WD1001FALS 1TB in RAID 0" Here's a link to an extremtech article: http://www.extremetech.com/art.../0,2845,2328723,00.asp

 

[pjkenned]

Originally posted by: zuffy
It should provide a faster read since the data can be read from any of the 2 drives. It's the write speed that will be identical to a single drive.

If only that's how it worked! Example 1.5TB 7200.11 Raid 1 ICH10R That example is basically what you get from single drives.

I see the same thing on the Adaptec 3 series, 5 series, Perc 5/i's and etc. Raid 1 is basically single drive performance. Then again, that's not a bad thing with the 1TB + drives doing sequential reads.

 

[Nothinman]

Originally posted by: pjkenned

Originally posted by: zuffy
It should provide a faster read since the data can be read from any of the 2 drives. It's the write speed that will be identical to a single drive.

If only that's how it worked! Example 1.5TB 7200.11 Raid 1 ICH10R That example is basically what you get from single drives.

I see the same thing on the Adaptec 3 series, 5 series, Perc 5/i's and etc. Raid 1 is basically single drive performance. Then again, that's not a bad thing with the 1TB + drives doing sequential reads.

Then those RAID1 implementation's suck, the Linux software RAID1 driver does read balancing.

 

[michiganave]

These links discuss troubles in Raid 0. Should I assume the story is the same in Raid 1? I already bought the drives.

 

[themusgrat]

No, no problems with RAID 1.

edit: It's prolly just the stripe size that the reviewer is having a problem with tbh, if he left it at a default of a really small/large stripe size, and the drive is, understandably, optimized to do better with smaller/larger random read/write sizes, then that would make sense. No RAID 0 stripe should be actually slower then a single drive, if it is, something is terribly wrong with something. It could also be an early compatability issue though with the internal workings of WD high capacity drives and RAID controllers, so I wouldn't buy them thinking you can just mess around with stripe sizes and be fine. I'm just saying that the reviewer tried 1 thing, it was shit, and he didn't bother to try anything different before he went to bash it on the internets.

edit2: I forgot to say, there's 1 more thing that would explain it. Traditionally, RAIDed drives read fast, but write slow, and even moreso in random little chunks. So it may be that high capacity drives have gotten to the point, because of very high densities and low real world seek times, that a single drive simply out-performs the average RAID controller, because the RAID controller has to split up an already small file into 2 or more parts, then concurrently write those. Reviews of high capacity drives would confirm this, they're outperforming 10k Raptors and stuff, they're simply getting really good performance at high capacities, at least with 3 platters. The higher the density, the better the drive will perform.

So ya, I wouldn't necessarily blame the drive, it may be the RAID controller's fault, or the stripe size. But that's no excuse to get the drives and RAID0 them, doesn't matter whose fault it is.