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INPUTS FOR RAID CONFIGURATION WELCOME...

L

lcravagnani

Junior Member
Hello,

I am a long time reader but new to posting on this Forum. I will surely appreciate your input on how to set up the RAID array in my PC w/ 2x 150GB Raptors and 2x 500GB Hitachi. I was thinkink about doing 2 0+1 Raid Arrays (One for the OS and applications on the Raptors and one for Storage with the 7K500s). I run Windows XP Media Center so I need the extra storage. Also, any comments on the rig are much appreciated.

Thanks for the help.

My Rig:

Gigabyte Aurora w/ Swiftech Liquidcooling system
PC Power & Cooling T1KW
DFI Lanparty UT DR Expert
AMD FX-60
4GB Ballistix Tracer
2 BFG 7800 GTX OC 512
2 150GB Raptor
2 Hitachi 7K500
2 Plextor 716A
NVidia NVTV Dual TV Turner
Soundblaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
Thermaltake Hardcano 13
CoolerMaster Musketeer 2
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2
 
your rig looks awesome..i'm amazed at how you spent 😛

sorry for not being able to give you any valuable input but can i ask you a question, why do you want to raid your hitachi drives? when you say "2 0 +1 Raid Arrays" do you mean 2 drives in raid 0 (raptors) and 2 in raid 1(hitachi)? cause that seems alright but from how it seems, it looks like you wanna raid 0 your raptors and raid 1 the raptors with the hitachis...i'm not sure that's gonna work if that's the case
 
Thanks for the reply. This is my 3rd build and it is finally what I wanted. I sold the other 2 with little profit to be able to construct this MONSTER. Anyway, what I was thinking is actually setting up 2 different arrays, both in 0+1 (stripped and mirrored), one with just the raptors and one with just the hitachis. I need to do a RAID on the Hitachis because the less drives you have assigned under Windows when running Media Center the better (I tried to have 3 drives assigned under MCE on my first build and it was a mess... I believe this OS still have some bugs on it). Thank you for the help.
 
Originally posted by: lcravagnani
Anyway, what I was thinking is actually setting up 2 different arrays, both in 0+1 (stripped and mirrored), one with just the raptors and one with just the hitachis.
Click to expand...
You can't do that. 0+1 requires four drives per array. See this page.

What is it you're trying to accomplish exactly? It sounds like you want to set up a RAID just because you can. That's not very wise.

 
I see. Thanks for the link. So in order to do such an array, you need 4 identical drives or can they be different (like the ones I have for example)?
 
I play a lot of games on my computer, and I also use the Media Center as my primary TV. I was thinking of using the raptors for the OS and games and the Hitachis for storage (mainly TV and Movie libraries). Any input you can give me on how to set this up, is much appreciated.
 
my suggestion: Raptors in RAID 0 for speed, Hitachis in RAID 1 for data redundancy.

You will have tons of space (a little under 300 gigs) on the Raptors for booting, running all programs from, and a fair amount of short term storage.
Then you will have a little under 500 gigs on the Hitachis for storage of whatever.

It would be what you initially wanted to do, just 2 different RAID configs.
 
My suggestion is to ditch one raptor from this system because raid-0 is a bit of a waste for that, and 300gb is way overkill for a system/programs partition. Then raid0 the hitatchis for a larger drive, or (better) get one less raptor and one more hitachi and have a 100TB raid5 storage array with redundancy if your data really matters to you). You would probably want a hardware raid controller for this to maintain performance.
 
Thanks for all the inputs. That is really helpful. Unfortunately, my mobo is packed so there's no way I can put an extra Raid controller on it. ABOOTHMAN, in the case I set it up like you've suggedted, is the RAID 1 Array going to be a mirror of the RAID 0 array, or are they going to be totally different? Also, what happens if I set up a straight RAID 0+1 Array with all 4 drives? Thanks again for the help.
 
Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie
My suggestion is to ditch one raptor from this system because raid-0 is a bit of a waste for that, and 300gb is way overkill for a system/programs partition. Then raid0 the hitatchis for a larger drive, or (better) get one less raptor and one more hitachi and have a 100TB raid5 storage array with redundancy if your data really matters to you). You would probably want a hardware raid controller for this to maintain performance.
Click to expand...

100TB??????????????????????????????????????

I want his/your money.... 😀
 
If all 4 of your drives are on a RAID controller it would not be any trouble. It is possible that there is 2 seperate controllers you have to work with.

You cannot do RAID 0+1 with your 4 drives. You would need 4 of one or the other.

If you cannot do a RAID 0 and a RAID 1 array, then take 3chordcharlies idea above...give up 1 raptor, and get 1 or 2 more Hitachis.
1 More would let you do RAID 5 if you have a controller that can do so, and 4 total drives would let you do RAID 0+1.
 
Thanks for the input. I am using the ON-BOARD NVIDIA RAID controller,so, in your opinion, what would be better overall, keep the drives and do one raptor array on RAID 0 and one hitachi array on RAID 1 regarding the onboard controller can do that or if I sold the 2 raptors and got 2 other Hitachi, then go for a straight RAID 0+1? Would that make too much of a difference when playing games? By the way, I really appreciate you taking the time to help me.
 
Originally posted by: SnoMunke
Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie
My suggestion is to ditch one raptor from this system because raid-0 is a bit of a waste for that, and 300gb is way overkill for a system/programs partition. Then raid0 the hitatchis for a larger drive, or (better) get one less raptor and one more hitachi and have a 100TB raid5 storage array with redundancy if your data really matters to you). You would probably want a hardware raid controller for this to maintain performance.
Click to expand...

100TB??????????????????????????????????????

I want his/your money.... 😀
Click to expand...

hurray for typing! So yeah...
 
If you put all four drives in a 0+1 array you will lose half of the size of the large drives and lose the effective speed of the raptors, not a good idea.

I would
Raid0 the raptors and Raid0 the Hitachis, but I do regular backups of what little critical data I have

If you want more security. Raid0 the raptors and Raid1 the Hitachi's then perform scheduled backups from the raptor array to the Hitachi array for any critical data you accumulate on the raptor array.
 
Originally posted by: cleverhandle
You can't do that. 0+1 requires four drives per array. See this page.
Click to expand...

Drives do not have to be identical. I am running two different drives in a RAID array on this PC right now with no issues, for over 18 months.

Matrix RAID on most Intel 775 boards (not sure about AMD) allows you to do RAID 0+1 on 2 drives.

My suggestion is to do RAID 1 (mirror) on the two Raptors and RAID 0 (stripe) on the Hitachis. That way you have a fast but ultra stable OS + Apps volume and a very large and very fast media volume.

 
Since you've already spent such an asinine amount on that system (gotta be over $5,000 without a monitor, right?) why wouldn't you just get two 4GB i-RAM cards in a RAID to put your OS on and get rid of one of the Raptors?

I mean, i-RAM has 200X faster access time and twice the transfer rate of a Raptor 150.
 
Originally posted by: hellokeith
Originally posted by: cleverhandle
You can't do that. 0+1 requires four drives per array. See this page.
Click to expand...

Drives do not have to be identical. I am running two different drives in a RAID array on this PC right now with no issues, for over 18 months.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but it is really stupid to RAID a 150GB drive and a 500GB drive, because the size of the larger drive is reduced to that of the smaller. With a 120GB and a 160GB drive, this isn't a huge issue, but when you are losing 350GB of storage space per Hitachi drive, it isn't a great idea anymore.

My suggestion is to do RAID 1 (mirror) on the two Raptors and RAID 0 (stripe) on the Hitachis. That way you have a fast but ultra stable OS + Apps volume and a very large and very fast media volume.
Click to expand...

That is backwards. A person really doesn't need any redundancy for their apps the way they do their media/personal files. If one of your Raptors goes down, it is pretty easy to replace the OS and apps once you have a new drive (even easier if you use Norton Ghost to create a copy of the partition for safekeeping on the storage drives). Your media (especially iTunes purchases) and personal files (tax returns, pictures, home movies) can't be so easily replaced, so you want to proctect them with mirrored backups. If you have your media/mass storage on in RAID-0, you are just asking to lose everything when a drive craps out.

Keep in mind though that if you use the onboard RAID controllers, you could still lose all of your data even in RAID-1 if your board craps out and you can't get the same RAID controller on your next board. That's why a non-integrated RAID solution is usually better in the long run, because the card is usually portable between systems. Software RAID-1 is nice too, because it is also motherboard-independent (although it doesn't perform as well as the hardware solutions).

 
Originally posted by: Tostada
Since you've already spent such an asinine amount on that system (gotta be over $5,000 without a monitor, right?) why wouldn't you just get two 4GB i-RAM cards in a RAID to put your OS on and get rid of one of the Raptors?

I mean, i-RAM has 200X faster access time and twice the transfer rate of a Raptor 150.
Click to expand...

i agree

OP, we (at least i) still see no reason why you would RAID. for safety purposes you could choose to RAID but doing RAID 0 would not benefit you. RAID is best for multi-user platforms, not to load up your music and videos. that's DUAL CORE, not DUAL DRIVES. i'm not trying to be mean but you should really do some research before you choose to do something computer related.
 
Originally posted by: alimoalem
Originally posted by: Tostada
Since you've already spent such an asinine amount on that system (gotta be over $5,000 without a monitor, right?) why wouldn't you just get two 4GB i-RAM cards in a RAID to put your OS on and get rid of one of the Raptors?

I mean, i-RAM has 200X faster access time and twice the transfer rate of a Raptor 150.
Click to expand...

i agree

OP, we (at least i) still see no reason why you would RAID. for safety purposes you could choose to RAID but doing RAID 0 would not benefit you. RAID is best for multi-user platforms, not to load up your music and videos. that's DUAL CORE, not DUAL DRIVES. i'm not trying to be mean but you should really do some research before you choose to do something computer related.
Click to expand...

I agree with you here for the most part. RAID 0 is just pretty silly. The reason it's silly, though, is because it doesn't help anything for most people except take a second or two off your level load times.

So, yeah, RAID 0 is a waste, but it does have a very slight benefit, and there really aren't any drawbacks except the the increased risk of losing all your data. This guy looks like he would pay just about anything for a slight boost in performance, and I doubt he cares about the added risk
 
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