need help and opinions on this. i have 2 hdd and 2 rom drives right now, and i jus bought another hdd. i am wondering if i should get an IDE card for the new harddrive, or a RAID controller card. 
IDE card or RAID controller card?
- Thread starter Wuming
- Start date
Don't bother with RAID.
I think IDE RAID is nearly useless...the RAID card will do everything the IDE card will do and then some, I just don't think the then some is that great, and it will cost more.
I think IDE RAID is nearly useless...the RAID card will do everything the IDE card will do and then some, I just don't think the then some is that great, and it will cost more.
Get RAID controller card. It's basically an advanced version of IDE card that has many good features.
oh wow...
Noriaki: why not RAID?
Charles: if i am going to get a RAID card which one should I look for? the one from Promise?
Noriaki: why not RAID?
Charles: if i am going to get a RAID card which one should I look for? the one from Promise?
I'm not a big fan of IDE Raid but I'll feild this question and try to give you some pros and cons. I'm sure someoen will correct me if I'm wrong. Just a reminder there is disk mirroring, disk striping, and combinations of the two (at least for cheap IDE controllers).
For striping, you will be "combining" two hard drives to act as one. Spreading data evenly accross the two (or more) drives. This new drive size is double the size of the smallest drive in the array. This will provide a better transfer (with striping) due to pulling data off of both drives simultenously. This does not help with seek time.
This is great for computers that are accessing large files constantly like editing video files and databases. Won't help you load that little text file any faster. Also, this doubles the odds of a hard drive failure wiping everything out (only half the file is left on the undamaged drive).
Mirroring will make an exact copy of your drive and in the event of a failure of a drive, you simply pull it out of the array and move on with a complete copy of your files.
There are combinations of the two that require more drives in the array.
With the exception of one IDE Raid controller (and SCSI raid), they are all a software based version of Raid. THere is no processor onboard that is dedicated solely to the location of the files like on the SCSI Raid controllers. So there will be some CPU overhead.
Decide what is better for you. Sometimes, Raid can be a fickle thing. My suggestion: If the Raid controller is only a few bucks more, get it. You can use it as a regular IDE controller until you want/need to do Raid. Matching hard drives are better for stability but aren't required to give good stability to the array.
I have a Raid enabled motherbaord but do not use it as in that capacity. I use the extra channels but not with Raid. Reason: I have had 3 hard drive failures for one reason or another in the last 2 years on various boards and systems. I don't want to push my luck and double my odds for another. Plus I do not do much that would require the higher transfer rates at the cost of CPU cycles.
For striping, you will be "combining" two hard drives to act as one. Spreading data evenly accross the two (or more) drives. This new drive size is double the size of the smallest drive in the array. This will provide a better transfer (with striping) due to pulling data off of both drives simultenously. This does not help with seek time.
This is great for computers that are accessing large files constantly like editing video files and databases. Won't help you load that little text file any faster. Also, this doubles the odds of a hard drive failure wiping everything out (only half the file is left on the undamaged drive).
Mirroring will make an exact copy of your drive and in the event of a failure of a drive, you simply pull it out of the array and move on with a complete copy of your files.
There are combinations of the two that require more drives in the array.
With the exception of one IDE Raid controller (and SCSI raid), they are all a software based version of Raid. THere is no processor onboard that is dedicated solely to the location of the files like on the SCSI Raid controllers. So there will be some CPU overhead.
Decide what is better for you. Sometimes, Raid can be a fickle thing. My suggestion: If the Raid controller is only a few bucks more, get it. You can use it as a regular IDE controller until you want/need to do Raid. Matching hard drives are better for stability but aren't required to give good stability to the array.
I have a Raid enabled motherbaord but do not use it as in that capacity. I use the extra channels but not with Raid. Reason: I have had 3 hard drive failures for one reason or another in the last 2 years on various boards and systems. I don't want to push my luck and double my odds for another. Plus I do not do much that would require the higher transfer rates at the cost of CPU cycles.
I don't think that IDE RAID0 is worth it. RAID1 might be in certain circumstances but your average AT user doesn't care that much about his data that it's saftey is worth the cost of an IDE RAID controller, a second hard drive.
As for IDE RAID0 well in certain cases like cavingjan said << This is great for computers that are accessing large files constantly like editing video files and databases >> then IDE RAID0 can be kind of useful. But for average computer usage I don't think it's very good.
Why:
Well it theoretically doubles STR, but in average use STR is not nearly as much of a factor as Seek times. This is doubly true for Virtual Memory where you are randomly accessing (because it is virtual RAM) very small chunks...maybe 4k at a time. For gaming other than load time the only time you use the disk usually is for Vmem, and I've just pointed out it doesn't help there. In fact instead of a RAID controller and a 2nd hard drive, just get 128MB more RAM and your games will probably stop touching disk for Vmem at all.
It also uses a bunch of CPU time because it's software based RAID..for the minimal hard drive speed difference most people will observe using as much CPU time as it does (IDE already uses alot compared to SCSI) doesn't seem worth it to me.
It also doubles your chance of having the drive (in this case the array) fail on you, though that's probably not a big deal at least not to most of us.
For office applications most of it is limited by the human interaction speed. So disk isn't really a factor...
it's also more expensive because you have to buy two drives instead of one. Even if you buy 2 20Gig drives, where you would buy a single 40 gig without RAID, the 2 20s are usually more expensive.
Choosing to go IDE RAID0 has some tradeoffs. Personally I don't think the lost CPU time and Cost are worth it for the increase in STR. If it increased seek time that would be different, but it doesn't.
If you are setting up a budget A/V editing machine IDE RAID0 would probably be very useful to you...but for the average machine I think it's just an extra cost with no percievable benefit.
As for IDE RAID0 well in certain cases like cavingjan said << This is great for computers that are accessing large files constantly like editing video files and databases >> then IDE RAID0 can be kind of useful. But for average computer usage I don't think it's very good.
Why:
Well it theoretically doubles STR, but in average use STR is not nearly as much of a factor as Seek times. This is doubly true for Virtual Memory where you are randomly accessing (because it is virtual RAM) very small chunks...maybe 4k at a time. For gaming other than load time the only time you use the disk usually is for Vmem, and I've just pointed out it doesn't help there. In fact instead of a RAID controller and a 2nd hard drive, just get 128MB more RAM and your games will probably stop touching disk for Vmem at all.
It also uses a bunch of CPU time because it's software based RAID..for the minimal hard drive speed difference most people will observe using as much CPU time as it does (IDE already uses alot compared to SCSI) doesn't seem worth it to me.
It also doubles your chance of having the drive (in this case the array) fail on you, though that's probably not a big deal at least not to most of us.
For office applications most of it is limited by the human interaction speed. So disk isn't really a factor...
it's also more expensive because you have to buy two drives instead of one. Even if you buy 2 20Gig drives, where you would buy a single 40 gig without RAID, the 2 20s are usually more expensive.
Choosing to go IDE RAID0 has some tradeoffs. Personally I don't think the lost CPU time and Cost are worth it for the increase in STR. If it increased seek time that would be different, but it doesn't.
If you are setting up a budget A/V editing machine IDE RAID0 would probably be very useful to you...but for the average machine I think it's just an extra cost with no percievable benefit.
Sorry. Bored at work today and didn't want to start a new project since I only have a week of work between now and February. Its about time I start using vacation time.
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