I it possible to use two 1TB HDDs in Raid0 configuration

[thejunglegod]

First things first, i'm new to creating a raid drive and am going to attempt creating a raid array. Wherever i've read up about Raid drives, the description is always about 2 hard disks with lower storage values(something like 2 120GBs or 2 500GBs. I've never seen anybody configure 2 1TBs together in a Raid0 config. Can i even attempt to do this or have i somehow horribly lost the plot here??

 

[Ancalagon44]

No you can, it would work fine.

But why? You know RAID is generally not considered worth the effort, right?

 

[thejunglegod]

Hmm but why? thought its meant to speed up data transfers much better than standard HDD configs.

 

[dma0991]

Pros
Faster read/write speeds
Larger storage space

Cons
Corrupt data if either one fails (RAID 0)
Not as fast as a SSD
Higher power consumption

 

[thejunglegod]

hmm. i did not know about the higher power consumption part. Knew about the data corruption though. I think I may have to rethink this. Thanks.

 

[Bad ConNecTioN]

You can raid them, no sweat. But remember that if either drive fails in the raid 0 array, ALL of the data is corrupted. When you are talking about 2tb of data, it can be a problem if you don't backup often.

If you want improved performance, just get a small SSD for windows and some progs. Use the 1tb drives for storage. You can set the 1tb in a raid 1 array for a bit of data redundancy.

 

[dma0991]

hmm. i did not know about the higher power consumption part. Knew about the data corruption though. I think I may have to rethink this. Thanks.

Higher but not by a whole lot. I'm comparing two HDDs in RAID 0 vs a single SSD hence the higher power consumption. If you still want the benefit of storage space and speed, you could try the Intel SSD caching.

 

[Ancalagon44]

The main problem with a RAID 0 array is that the speed up is nowhere near as dramatic as you think.

benchmarks will show nearly double the read and write speed, but it doesnt make a difference in day to day life - ie booting windows or game load times. I dont really know why. I guess there are bottle necks elsewhere in the system? Anyway, the other problem is that it does nothing to boost latency, in fact I think it makes latency a little worse. Most programs have files stored all over the place on your drive, so the drive head has to seek back and forth. RAID 0 cannot eliminate this problem. Its one of the reasons why SSDs are so much faster - they have zero seek time.

 

[Dadofamunky]

See my sig.

 

[thejunglegod]

i dont back up at all. Which means 2TBs on RAID0 will be a very risky proposition. And if i am not able to see any major difference in load times and transfer rates then i guess its pointless. I'll definitely be going for a new SSD. Thanks guys.

 

[BFG10K]

I've never seen anybody configure 2 1TBs together in a Raid0 config.

You can combine anything you like. The total storage size of RAID-0 will be (the size of the smallest drive) X (number of drives).

hmm. i did not know about the higher power consumption part.

You didn’t know that two drives use more power than one? In either case, most drives only use between 5W-10W when seeking, so this is absolutely trivial for a desktop.

As for performance, sequential performance usually doubles while random access doesn’t improve much, if at all. Real-world performance will be somewhere in between.

Here’s a RAID-0 review of one of the fastest 7200 RPM drives currently available: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...rracuda-3tb-raid-0-performance-unleashed.html

I personally avoid RAID-0 because of the doubled chance of data failure, and also because two drives make more noise than one.

 

[thejunglegod]

You didn’t know that two drives use more power than one?

of course i knew that. What i didnt know was that 2 drives in a raid config use more power than 2 standalone drives.

And yeah, the doubled chance of data failure is a big big worry actually. Thank you for your valuable inputs sir.

 

[BFG10K]

What i didnt know was that 2 drives in a raid config use more power than 2 standalone drives.

They don't.

 

[thejunglegod]

Pros Faster read/write speeds Larger storage space Cons Corrupt data if either one fails (RAID 0) Not as fast as a SSD Higher power consumption

This is what i was referring to.

 

[dma0991]

This is what i was referring to.

You're misinterpreting my statements wrongly. I'm not comparing two standalone HDDs vs two HDDs in RAID 0. In that configuration, you're going to have the same power consumption. What I meant by that is a SSD vs HDD RAID 0. The HDD in RAID 0 consumes more power than a single SSD for about the same performance except SSDs are still faster. Then again for these devices, power consumption in a desktop is negligible.