defragging IDE RAID 0

[AluminumStudios]

I have two WD40bb IDE drives in a RAID0 on the HPT controller built into my Epox 8K3A+ motherboard.

I use it HARD. I am constantly rendering video, generating still image sequences, deleting individual small files, large files, etc. etc. It's enough to frag. a drive to China and back.

My question is do IDE RAID 0's suffer from fragmentation woes? Is it in the nature of the striping to not be affected by fragmentation or is it still an issue (I understand how striping works well enough, but does it counter the performance hit of fragmentation?)

Will a defrag utility such as the one that comes with Windows 2000 (which is my OS btw) destroy the RAID, help it, or do nothing?

 

[reicherb]

I promise you. It won't destroy your data.

 

[Deeko]

Umm yes you can still have fragmentation, and no, it won't mess up your drive to defrag. According to Windows, you have one drive, and it will treat it accordingly.

 

[John]

Originally posted by: AluminumStudios
Will a defrag utility such as the one that comes with Windows 2000 (which is my OS btw) destroy the RAID, help it, or do nothing?

Win 2K/XP uses a lite version of Diskeeper. I recommend the full version by all means.


There is a free trial at the bottom.

 

[thomsbrain]

it won't sort the data between the disks, but it will sort data within the logical drive, so it's better than nothing. run it.

 

[NOX]

I agree with John. I've been using Diskeeper 7 for a while. I have an IDE RAID0 on an HPT 374 controller. I defrag once a week, and it only takes me about 3-4mins to defrag a 80gb drive (or two 40gb drives).

 

[AluminumStudios]

Thanks for the input. I'll have to try defragging it.

I'm sure my RAID is fragged pretty bad ... I was just helping a friend output some 3D animations to tape, we were working with a bunch of Targa sequences of thousands of images each (copy, deleting, rendering, etc)