Does this AT article about Raid-0 still hold true?

[aphex]

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=11

Final Words
If you haven't gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place, and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. The real world performance increases are negligible at best and the reduction in reliability, thanks to a halving of the mean time between failure, makes RAID-0 far from worth it on the desktop.

There are some exceptions, especially if you are running a particular application that itself benefits considerably from a striped array, and obviously, our comments do not apply to server-class IO of any sort. But for the vast majority of desktop users and gamers alike, save your money and stay away from RAID-0.

If you do insist on getting two drives, you are much better off putting them into a RAID-1 array to have a live backup of your data. The performance hit of RAID-1 is just as negligible as the performance gains of RAID-0, but the improvement in reliability is worthwhile...unless you're extremely unlucky and both of your drives die at the exact same time.

When Intel introduced ICH5, and now with ICH6, they effectively brought RAID to the mainstream, pushing many users finally to bite the bullet and buy two hard drives for "added performance". While we applaud Intel for bringing the technology to the mainstream, we'd caution users out there to think twice before buying two expensive Raptors or any other drive for performance reasons. Your system will most likely run just as fast with only one drive, but if you have the spare cash, a bit more reliability and peace of mind may be worth setting up a RAID-1 array.

Bottom line: RAID-0 arrays will win you just about any benchmark, but they'll deliver virtually nothing more than that for real world desktop performance. That's just the cold hard truth.

I was researching possibly doing a raid-0 array on a new computer im speculating on at the moment..

My primary reasons for the build will be Photoshop (eventually Lightroom) performance, gaming here and there, general office and home applications (dvd encoding, word processing) - i.e. Quite the gamut

Does the article still hold water?

 

[Bobthelost]

Yes, for gaming it's a waste of time. For some proffesional stuff like hardcore photoshop then it does start to become useful.

 

[phantom404]

Well I've noticed a difference in loading times for sure while loading up a game. Ive tried using my 2-500GB as both raid 0 and seperate drives and I personally notice a different in loading times in all areas.

 

[dartworth]

just remember to backup your data...

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: phantom404
Well I've noticed a difference in loading times for sure while loading up a game. Ive tried using my 2-500GB as both raid 0 and seperate drives and I personally notice a different in loading times in all areas.

But there are no benchmarks that back these examples up. Which implies that it's mostly down to your imagination and/or other factors.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: dartworth
just remember to backup your data...

Having loss data on multiple RAID 5 arrays, I can't stress two things enough:
1) Back up your sh!t.
2) Have a good PSU.

 

[phantom404]

Originally posted by: dartworth
just remember to backup your data...

Yes, that is the only draw back to raid 0. However I've never had a Hard drive fail on me so that is one reason why i went ahead and went raid 0. Also IMO i have the same chance of a hard drive failing if i didnt have it in raid 0 then if i did. Depends on what you store on your second drive also.

 

[aphex]

Should have clarified in the OP;

I was thinking about possibly doing two 74gb Raptors in a Raid-0, followed by a 300-500gb HD for storage.

All those NEF's really add up quickly following a shoot.

 

[Bobthelost]

If you're buying from scratch then you're probably better off with a single raptor 150.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: aphex
Should have clarified in the OP;

I was thinking about possibly doing two 74gb Raptors in a Raid-0, followed by a 300-500gb HD for storage.

All those NEF's really add up quickly following a shoot.

That's not a bad way to do it at all...

 

[Painman]

I would only do it if the price of the drives you're gonna stripe together is the same or less than the price of a single drive with the same total capacity. And then, only if you're willing to accept the greater risk of losing your partition(s). I wouldn't pay more $ per gig for my storage just to be able to set it up.

 

[the Chase]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
If you're buying from scratch then you're probably better off with a single raptor 150.

:thumbsup: here is a "review" of 2 74GB raptors in raid- doesn't compare them to a single 150GB version though. Sounds like Raid 0 does speed stuff up though. http://www.overclockers.com/articles1297/

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: the Chase

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
If you're buying from scratch then you're probably better off with a single raptor 150.

:thumbsup: here is a "review" of 2 74GB raptors in raid- doesn't compare them to a single 150GB version though. Sounds like Raid 0 does speed stuff up though. http://www.overclockers.com/articles1297/

That review is worth sweet FA other than to say that RAID0 improves boot times (oddly i only get the XP logo flashing up for a second with one Raptor 74, wierd) and for benchmarking utilities. Niether of which i care much about.

 

[TheRyuu]

I'm running RAID0 and I've noticed a performance increase over my Single drive.
WinXP Installes faster, Boots up faster, noticably faster load times in games, and double the storage of my single 200gb driver.

I'm running 2x200gb WD SATA drives right now. I like having the extra space. Out of 400gb, I only have about 150gb left.

 

[the Chase]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost

Originally posted by: the Chase

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
If you're buying from scratch then you're probably better off with a single raptor 150.

:thumbsup: here is a "review" of 2 74GB raptors in raid- doesn't compare them to a single 150GB version though. Sounds like Raid 0 does speed stuff up though. http://www.overclockers.com/articles1297/

That review is worth sweet FA other than to say that RAID0 improves boot times (oddly i only get the XP logo flashing up for a second with one Raptor 74, wierd) and for benchmarking utilities. Niether of which i care much about.

Yeah whether it's worth it for a few seconds shaved off game load times or not is highly debatable. As you said- if you are going to spend that kind of money should just get the 150GB version.

Also have to credit Zebo on the scoop that a new 74GB model is coming very soon that only has 1 platter(better density) and 16MB cache. Should be a great drive if priced the same(maybe less?) as the "old" 74GB version.

 

[fire400]

I just want to say that if you RAID two raptor drives in a RAID 0, you go from "super fast speedy clickiness" to the extremes of insanity with hard drive speeds. If you're more sensitive to every second of speed, then it's definetly worth going RAID 0. but it would be a waste if you don't have a fast CPU and RAM setup. Keeping your software environment healthy is another important part of RAID 0, otherwise the lag will make the RAID 0 setup pointless.
I'd personally store more critical information in a secondary drive outside your RAID 0, there is just no safety in saving your only reports on the RAID 0's, it's suicide.

 

[alimoalem]

Originally posted by: phantom404
Well I've noticed a difference in loading times for sure while loading up a game. Ive tried using my 2-500GB as both raid 0 and seperate drives and I personally notice a different in loading times in all areas.

it could be since you know it's running in RAID, you psychologically think it's faster...

 

[aphex]

Originally posted by: fire400
I just want to say that if you RAID two raptor drives in a RAID 0, you go from "super fast speedy clickiness" to the extremes of insanity with hard drive speeds. If you're more sensitive to every second of speed, then it's definetly worth going RAID 0. but it would be a waste if you don't have a fast CPU and RAM setup. Keeping your software environment healthy is another important part of RAID 0, otherwise the lag will make the RAID 0 setup pointless.
I'd personally store more critical information in a secondary drive outside your RAID 0, there is just no safety in saving your only reports on the RAID 0's, it's suicide.

Right now im planning getting an watercooled Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (or Opteron 165, depending on the price) w/ 2gb ram (1gb x 2)

Rather than spend my time processing each NEF individually, i would prefer to set up a workflow to get the basic steps down on batches of images, then individually tweak where needed.

 

[aphex]

thanks for all the help so far, its greatly appreciated

 

[everman]

You're better off spending the money on larger drives. But if you really do need more speed, then look at scsi.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: everman
You're better off spending the money on larger drives. But if you really do need more speed, then look at scsi.

RAID 0 should only be perfomed on SCSI drives because of the inherant error checking abilities imbeded in to the SCSI protocol.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: alimoalem

Originally posted by: phantom404
Well I've noticed a difference in loading times for sure while loading up a game. Ive tried using my 2-500GB as both raid 0 and seperate drives and I personally notice a different in loading times in all areas.

it could be since you know it's running in RAID, you psychologically think it's faster...

the good 'ol placebo effect FTW!!!!!

 

[fire400]

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: alimoalem

Originally posted by: phantom404
Well I've noticed a difference in loading times for sure while loading up a game. Ive tried using my 2-500GB as both raid 0 and seperate drives and I personally notice a different in loading times in all areas.

it could be since you know it's running in RAID, you psychologically think it's faster...

the good 'ol placebo effect FTW!!!!!

In more advanced 3D games where maps need to cache ahead to provide sufficient rendering for the next set of environmental artifacts and landscaping, you will notice glitches sometimes even on high end hardware upon entering new sectors of the game. Whether this is poor programming with the particular software, RAIDs increase the smoothness thereof.
For anyone with a tight budget, I still think RAID 0 is a rip off.

 

[Alexstarfire]

Well, I don't know what the people at Anandtech were thinking when they wrote the article, perhaps just thinking about desktop usage. On the desktop you definitely wouldn't notice any improvement, but when playing games, F.E.A.R and BF2 at least, you should notice a pretty big difference. I say in those two games, because most people only have 1GB of RAM and those games almost always require more. Loading times should be significantly decreased in all games, but I'm not sure if it'd affect loading times in internet games. Now, in F.E.A.R. and BF2 when you run out of physical RAM you go into virtual RAM, in other words your HDD. Using a RAID 0 configuration should help dramtically when this happens, but I'm not sure if it's really worth it. I wish I could run my HDDs in RAID 0 to figure it out, but I can't.