*EDIT* Which hard drive arangement should I use?

[t3h l337 n3wb]

I'm planning on setting up a 3 hard drive RAID 5 array on the comp I'm building this summer. I'm gonna be using the onboard RAID on MSI's K8N Neo-4 Platinum with the nForce 4 Ultra chipset, here. I heard that using a seperate RAID controller card is better, because RAID 5 supposedly requires a lot of procssor power. I was wondering if I could set up a succesful RAID 5 with 3 80GB hard drives with an Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester and 1GB value ram.

 

[ND40oz]

If you're only using 80 gig drives, it would probably be cheaper to buy 2 160 gig drives and go raid 1, is there a reason you want to use raid 5 with 80 gig drives?

 

[Vegito]

true.. 2 160 gives you better read/write and less overhead than 3-80 @ raid 5..

parity calcualation will kill you

 

[AristoV300]

Agreed, just go with RAID 1. For desktop use I personally don't see the need RAID.

 

[Vegito]

raid 1 makes perfect sense for desktop, if its your ONLY computer and you have data on it and can't afford to lose it due to drive failure. Raid 1 is so cheap now compared to sending drive away for recovery..

raid + backup = wise choice

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

wait, so RAID 5 isnt faster than RAID 1?! -_-; But if I get RAID 1, it will restrict capacity. 2x120GB is about the same price as 3x80GB, but its 120GB vs 160GB. I could always use that extra 40GB...

 

[lansalot]

Raid5 can give you faster reads in the right config. Slower writes. But write speed isn't always everything depending on your use.

Up to you depending on your budget/requirements. The pitfalls are outline above

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the "huge cpu cost" theory - reason being your PC tends to have processing to spare while waiting on disk IO. This is why stuff like Solaris DiskSuite and Veritas Volume Manager are used in 'big iron' situations - the overhead tends to be only maybe a couple of percent on those systems, but then the desktop motherboard tests at the likes of Tomshardware/anandtech make a big deal of the CPU cost. But remember this is on major disk IO thrashing tests - not everyday use.

Your mileage may vary etc - I'm sure this post hasn't helped one bit

If you have the resources, try a test. For what it's worth, practically EVERY PowerEdge at work (and we have over 200) use hardware RAID5.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Okay, lemme explain my problem in more detail... I'm going to be building a "budget gaming" comp and I have a $1000 limit. I'm considering these four options for hard drives:

2x120GB, no RAID
2x120GB, RAID 0
2x129GB, RAID 1
3x80GB, RAID 5

I'm also planning on converting my old 800mhz PIII comp into a NAS/file server for backup and a bit of web hosting. Probably gonna put a 250GB hard drive in there. Which one of the 4 options is best for my situation, and why? Thanks!

 

[biostud]

1x160Gb + regular backup up of important stuff?

 

[Arcanedeath]

I'd suggest 2 x 120GB no raid and use the 2nd drive as a complete weekly backup of the first drive in a removable frame. This way if your main drive fails you've at most lost a week of data and you still have a completely working system while waiting for the RMA'd replacment to come in.

 

[tfinch2]

If you can't justify what type of RAID you need, you don't need RAID at all.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

I'm already going to have a seperate 250GB backup drive on my NAS/web server comp, so I dont need another backup.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: t3h l337 n3wb
I'm already going to have a seperate 250GB backup drive on my NAS/web server comp, so I dont need another backup.

Then forget RAID, and just get some hard drives.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

But if I get RAID 0, I can get faster performance and still do like weekly backups on my NAS/web server comp.

 

[imported_Kensai]

I like RAID 5 or 0+1.

 

[batmanuel]

With the NF4 chipset, I think you can use the nVRAID app to actually RAID partitions, and not just drives. That way you could split each of your drives up into two partitions, one for data and one for your apps and OS. You could go RAID 0 on the apps and OS partition to get better performance, while running the data partition at level 1 for data security.

And lansalot, I agree with you about the CPU usage thing. With the huge processing power available nowadays (and with mutlicore inevitably taking over the desktop), you really don't need to sweat CPU overhead like you used to. Also, if you are using a software app like DiskSuite, Veritas Volume Manager or even the lowly Windows Dynamic Disks you don't have to worry about being your array being tied to a single type of controller. If you have a massive hardware failure and you are relying on the RAID controller's BIOS to manage the array, you probably won't be able to get the array back up and running if you are forced to plug the drives into a machine with a different controller in an emergency. Using software RAID also tends to make upgrading your system later a lot easier as well

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Wow, thanks batmanual. I think I'll do exactly that.

 

[batmanuel]

Actually, I went to check to make sure that nVRAID had the feature I was talking about, and I don't think it can create seperate arrays out of two sets of partitions like the new Intel Matrix RAID enabled controllers can. I though nVidia had caught up to Intel in this respect, but it looks like they haven't yet. Sorry to get your hopes up about it.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

O well... Maybe I'll just RAID 0 both of them and do backups like 2x a week?